Is it a rhino? Is it a bike?

No! It's... the rhino-bike, the conception of 60-year old appliance engineer, Andy Lindsay. After a lifetime of fixing boilers and hoovers, he is dedicating his time to saving rhinos. And he wants to enlist your help.

To mark World Rhino Day on 22 September, Andy is riding the rhino-bike from Carshalton in south London to Bedfordshire's Whipsnade Zoo, home to southern white and greater one-horned rhinos, to raise money for Save The Rhino International.

"Everyone loves elephants - they relate to them more, and to gorillas," Andy told Velocity, explaining his passion for the ancient horned beasts. "Rhinos seem very unloved. Yet they're such incredible creatures. When I first saw white rhinos I was astonished - they're as big as a truck. But they're the underdogs and I've always rooted for the underdog.

"What really got me going was discovering that the population of northern white rhinos had been poached right down to just about 24 [they are now extinct in the wild]. How horrifying is that? Such amazing, iconic creatures. And the poaching is so utterly pointless, for rhino horn that’s ground down for natural medicines that don’t actually work. And the cruelty of the paoachers is desperate - rhinos hacked to bits while they are still alive, and the calf that won't leave the mother and is just running around...

"It's just so hideous I used to lose sleep about it, and had to do something. So I came up with the rhino-bike."

The bike has taken several forms, including a four-seater, and a version built on and joining two separate bikes side-by-side, in papier mache on a chicken wire-and-wood frame. That version crossed 535 miles from London to Edinburgh in 13 days. "On a good day I managed 60 miles," Andy recalled. "But it weighed a ton." 

The current model is fibreglass, and even heavier. "But it's almost indestructable," Andy said. "I'm going to see a guy about getting an electric motor for it."

Ahead of the September Rhino Cycle, Andy is planning a Spring training ride from south London to London Zoo, well-known to Velocity readers enjoying regular "chat laps" around Regent's Park. If you'd like to join and/or support Andy, email him here. "I hope it's not too late for the Javan rhino, or the Sumatran," Andy said in closing. "Maybe we can do something."