This cyclist, Anthony Hoyte from Cheltenham, has quite an interesting hobby of drawing images on fitness apps by pedaling around
Even though Anthony calls himself a recreational cyclist and club cyclist, he puts a lot more effort and time than you’d expect from someone who is described as such. He says his Strata art creations take quite a while to plan but he tries to focus on quality rather than quantity. He’s gotten into it by seeing others do it: “I’d seen others doing it, notably Stephen Lund in Canada, and thought, “I’m going to try that!” said Hoyte.
His most recent festive drawing took 9 hours of pedaling to create
Last year, he surprised the cycling world with this adorable Santa that took 4 and a half hours to create
Hoyte is actually trained as a designer and says that even though he doesn’t use his training in his job, it definitely helps when it comes to planning his artwork. He usually studies Google and other online maps and looks for shapes in the existing roads—”[it’s] a bit like spotting pictures in clouds,” he says. “If something jumps out at me—like perhaps a road that looks like a nose—then I’ll try and find eyes and so on. If nothing jumps out, I’ll try somewhere else, but I’ll keep coming back to places to see what I see.” He tries to stick to the road pattern as much as possible but cuts through parks and car parks or university campuses if that’s required to get the perfect line.
And this cute Snowman was his version of a Christmas greeting card in 2017
But he certainly doesn’t keep this hobby only for the Christmas season
Since he’s living in quite a small city of Cheltenham, he usually visits bigger cities in the UK in order to execute his creations. So far, he’s cycled around Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, London, and Sheffield but says he’d love to cycle internationally and says that US cities would probably present quite a challenge for him with their regular grid patterns.
And keeps surprising us with various pieces of Strava art – drawings created on fitness tracking app, Strava
Hoyte started drawing like this back in 2016 and currently has quite a handful of “artwork” he’s created
Apparently, he even won 1st place in the Bristol Cycling Festival Strava art competition in 2017 with this piece
He says planning his drawings is a bit like spotting pictures in clouds – he studies maps and looks for shapes in existing roads
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