Some people yearn to travel by both land and sea. Now, a man in the UK has engineered a single human-powered device that can do the job of both. Enter the Pedal Paddle.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A man in the U.K. has engineered a single human-powered device that is both bicycle and canoe.
BEN KILNER: I would say sort of mad inventor in his workshop.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
OK. So picture a canoe, but with bicycle wheels, one attached to the front and two towards the back. Ben Kilner made it, and he calls it the Pedal Paddle.
KILNER: That is built using a skin-on-frame canoe, very much how ancient canoes used to be built. And it has both a bicycle mechanism and a pedal paddle mechanism on it, which allows it to be propelled on land and water, and very effectively in both modes. However, some challenges, especially up steep hills on land.
FADEL: Kilner used his pedal paddle on a 150-mile trip this summer across Scotland, catching a dual thrill of the open road and the open water.
KILNER: It gives you the ability to travel on land and water pretty much without restriction. It’s that aspiration towards complete travel freedom – never ever being blocked by a river or a lake ever again. Just convert into water mode and shoot over it.
MARTIN: So what if you want to take the plunge and design your own amphibious boat?
KILNER: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And if you’ve got an idea, just bring it to fruition.
MARTIN: More than 300,000 Instagram followers are tracking Kilner’s adventures. He is raising thousands for a group called A Leg To Stand On, which arranges prosthetic limbs for kids in developing countries.
FADEL: And he’s working on a new craft capable of circumnavigating the British Isles.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENEMIES’ “FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY”)
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