.any talk of bike materials is likely to become a heated discussion on the fragility of carbon fibre; the harshness of aluminium; the realness of steel; the madness of magnesium - but there are some people out there who are looking at things from a completely different angle from the rest of us - here we look at some of the slightly more 'eccentric' choices of bike frame material, and talk to Jan Gunneweg, carpenter extraordinaire!

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It was a 16 year old high school student called Marco Facciola that got us thinking away from the usual battlegrounds of bike frame materials. He hadn't made a bike that was particularly useable, but he had made something quite extrordinary - a bicycle made entirely from wood. And when we say entirely, we mean it.

The chain, the wheels, there's nothing on this bike that isn't made of wood. Possibly the most impressive aspect was the design of the ratchet system on the back wheel to allow a freewheel.

All good fun of course, but not in the slightest bit practical. And then in a moment of pure coincidence we then fell across the bikes of Brano Mares, or BME. The idea is summed up neatly on the BME website: "I have seen many amazing constructions made of bamboo and I always wondered, why such light, strong, stiff and elastic material is not widespread used for building of bicycle frames."

Yep, that's bamboo being used for bike frames - a concept which BME has taken to its technological zenith by creating a bamboo fibre composite road bike frame. And this is no pie in the sky, these bikes really do work.