Sam Dunn | London, UK 🇬🇧

Sam Dunn is a freelance Illustrator and Photographer based in London, also she is one half of Little Wheels.

She grew up in Hartlepool, a fading seaside town in the far North East of England and spent her weekends exploring the dense forests of the Lake District National Park. Her love of cycling helped rekindle her interest in photography, the fast paced nature of races, the people, the places, the intricacies of the bikes themselves. She loves documentary photography, capturing small, unseen moments, cementing them in time as a still image.

Life motto: In our legs with have faith, in our mouths we have cake.

Where you live: London. Originally from Hartlepool in the North East of England.

Type of cycling you do: Fixed Gear and track cycling, I also have a BMX but i’m no pro. Should be getting a road bike very soon!

What inspired you to start cycling? Originally because I hated the underground so it was the easiest way to get around. After getting into Fixed Gear and Track cycling it became more of a hobby and something to do for pleasure rather than purpose.

What do you love about cycling culture? All of the great people I’ve met because of it.

London is a crazy place to ride, after traveling through a large chunk of Europe this year and seeing the different cycle systems in various capitals, I realized just how manic and fast paced life in this city really is. With such tight streets and overcrowding of traffic, riding through London streets is like squeezing through a giant, hazardous maze. It definitely makes you a better and more alert rider, if I ever start to drift off into a daydream, I quickly remind myself that there’s probably a car about to turn left into me at the junction ahead. It’s exciting and there’s always a buzz about the streets, the cycling community is quite closely linked and it’s very likely that you’ll spot a friend, or a friend of a friend each time you go for a ride.

Little Wheels was created by Dani Fejer and I after meeting at Herne Hill Velodrome and cycling around London together. We document our rides and do features and interviews on women’s cycling. It’s lovely hearing people say they enjoy our content and we’re overwhelmed with the response so far; from our MET helmets sponsorship to the custom pink Dodici Specials we recently received and our continuing work with Adidas UK. We’re hoping to continue to grow the site as we have done over the last year, make more t-shirts and fun stuff we’d like to wear ourselves and see where it all takes us.