Every month citycycling brings you one of our favourite websites, or a website which you've stumbled upon and sent to us. This month we rediscovered an old favourite and were only too happy to find that it's still as well-written and fun as it was in the past. We couldn't let another month go past without introducing The Washing Machine Post, and spoke to the man behind it, Brian Palmer.

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Like many of us Brian cycled while at school, only to have that particular mode of transport fall into desuetude on moving onto a further education. Thankfully for Brian, and for us, he rediscovered cycling when moving on to a working life, and again the experience mirrors that of many of us, with cycling being the most practical and enjoyable method of moving around.

The genesis of the Washing Machine Post (and yes, this does contain an explanation of the name of the site) was in 1995 when Brian created a spoof newspaper front page for a friend's birthday, complete with the font used by the Washington Post. The subject of that spoof was Graeme Obree, famous, amongst some remarkable cycling exploits, for employing various washing machine parts in his homemade bike. Hence the name. See, it all makes sense.

"Fortunately, or otherwise," says Brian, "the name stuck, so I used it when the post went on the web in 1997. The early years, which are all still archived on the site, were fairly rudimentary, and pretty much consisted of my trivial ramblings every couple of weeks." The site has now got to the stage where Brian posts an article virtually every day, dedication which is being rewarded with thousands of readers worldwide.

That this site is run from the relative cycling backwater of Islay in the Western Isles will come as a surprise to many. Brian moved to the island in 1987, "My wife is an Ileach (native Islay person), so we used to come over here to visit relatives. Islay either hits you square between the eyes, or it doesn't. For me it did, and I spent five frustrating years finding some legitimate and economic way of moving. The last 21 years have been absolute bliss."

On settling into life on Islay Brian started writing for the local paper. Being the only cyclist amongst 3,000 inhabitants you would think that a regular article on the wonders and joys of cycling would meet with a limited response, and while in terms of converting people to cycling this was certainly the case, the articles and writing style had won over a following. This was inspiring enough to carry on submitting articles and it was a natural progression to a net presence wen the internet really started to take off.

While the site proved as popular as the paper-articles, the last three years have seen it go through the roof, as Brian's writing reaches the audience it deserves. And we can all start to join in with his obsession for Robert Millar and Colnagos.