Inside the Factory: Bicycles

Documentary series. Gregg Wallace explores the largest bicycle factory in Britain, which produces 150 folding bicycles every 24 hours, and joins a multi-stage manual production line to make his very own bike. He learns how to put together 1,200 individual parts and attempt to braze a bike frame together using extreme heat of a thousand degrees, a skill that takes years to master. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey gets some tips from Cycling Team GB to help us all improve our pedal power, including how lowering your body position can make a 10 per cent improvement to speed and efficiency. She also learns how to paint a bike frame fit for the British weather using an electrostatic charge and a 180 degree hot oven, and investigates why cyclists and trucks are such a deadly combination. Historian Ruth Goodman reveals that folding bikes date back to the 1870s and discovers how 70,000 folding 'parabikes' were manufactured during World War II, some of which played a role in the D-Day landings.