Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant sure does have a silky smooth voice and a way with words, and we've just been alerted to some of the best ones we think he's ever said that happen to be about cycling... yes this episode of Desert Island Discs (link is external) was published a week or two ago, but we'll just pretend the blog isn't so 'live' for a moment to recap on Plant's wise words.

As presenter Lauren Laverne mentions that Plant is known to have a love of cycling, he replies: "My father before the war he did several tours of the British isles.

"He had this deal about cyclocross, so he would cycle and then carry his bike. He would take photographs of the most amazing chains of hills and across the Pennines and into Cumbria.

"As I got older I used to cycle alongside him and he taught me how to conserve my strength. I started track racing, which was fixed wheel racing and it was really good.

"To share the same fascination and attraction to something when you have this generational thing which was radical then, but not so much now between me and my kids at all. But it did help us to discuss the meaning of life together as well."

A bike ride where you discuss the meaning of life certainly sounds like a peaceful and joyous one, and a lot less hectic than Plant's rock and roll lifestyle during his Led Zeppelin heyday. He's not the only rock star who loves cycling either: Rush drummer Neil Peart was known to like a bike ride, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons was spotted riding an e-bike in Las Vegas a couple of years ago and David Byrne of the Talking Heads even penned a book about cycling.

What bike do you reckon is at the end of Plant's Stairway to Heaven? Something steel and handsome from back when he was a lad, or perhaps a roomy cargo bike to collect up all the TVs he lobs out of hotel windows? Maybe those wild days are behind him, who knows...

https://road.cc/content/news/cycling-live-blog-28-march-2022-291443#live-blog-item-32829