Hurrah, Bike Week is upon us! Well, like most national events it has a major sponsor so to be absolutely correct... hurrah Samsung Bike Week is here!

If you’re wondering what an electronics firm is doing sponsoring a major cycling event, don’t ask me, but it has come up with a nifty app you can download and for every mile you cycle, it promises to donate £1 to charity.

That could end up being quite a lot of money but if, like me, you are technologically inept and can’t work out where to find the app in the first place, Samsung will be let off lightly. If by the end of writing this I have figured out how to get the Samsung Hope Relay APP on my Blackberry, I promise to share the details.

If you were thinking Bike Week is just another event jumping on the overladen bandwagon of events promising to get the whole country cycling, think again. It is actually nearly a century old; it didn’t originate in the UK but somewhere else in Europe, back in the day when cycling was seen as a solution to personal transportation of the masses.

Today it is promoted in individual cities, co-ordinated by small groups of passionate cycling volunteers.

I myself can boast such involvement but must also mention the great work of the rest of the team, and especially the wonderful person who keeps the whole gang of organisers singing from the same hymn sheet, Philippa Major.

We’ve even got a dedicated Oxford Bike Week website – visit it at oxfordbikeweek.co.uk to see the whole list of events.

This year I promise to get out of bed and turn up at 6am, yes 6am, in Broad Street for the Solstice morning ride.

Every year the larks who make it tell me of the wonderful morning they’ve had cycling through empty streets, watching the sun rise and enjoying a slap-up breakfast afterwards.

I always congratulate them warmly but secretly seethe with envy and disappointment at my snooze button addiction.

Consequently, I will be setting every alarm clock in the house for the ride this Thursday and am setting a personal bet that if I fail I promise to eat my helmet.

I also hope to rush along after work for the Sustrans route 57 ride on Wednesday night to Shabbington and can’t decide whether Tuesday’s night ride will be the Architecture ride, which encompasses 22 of the greatest buildings around the city or the foraging ride around the countryside, finding food for free.

I guess it will depend upon how hungry I am when I turn up in Broad Street, but methinks the foraging might win.

I reckon with my feeble commute, my weekend rides and all the extra Bike week rides I could be knocking up quite a bit of money for charity, but that Samsung app is still evading me.

Answers on a postcard will be most welcome – or why not come along to one of the Bike week rides and show me in person?