When Prince sings about the most beautiful girl in the world, we know he’s not telling us she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, rather that she’s the most beautiful girl in the world to him.
In 1994 or thereabouts, when I moved back to London after university, I bought a bike from a second-hand bike stall in Camden Lock. It was a Dawes Londoner, ten speed, in blue. I think I paid around £100 for it and thought I’d got myself a pretty sweet machine at a good price. The Londoner model was made by Dawes especially for Covent Garden Cycles, a shop with an excellent reputation for touring and utility bikes that, sadly, closed down years ago. But you still see plenty of Londoners on city streets.
“Handmade in England”, from a Reynolds 531ST (super-tourer) tubeset, it had 27 inch wheels, TA chainset, drop bars and a rack. That’s about all I remember. Until 2001 it was the only bike I owned and remained my main bike until a couple of years ago. It has been on a few camping tours of the West Country but mostly it’s been a bike for riding around London, as befits its name. Here’s a picture of me and the bike, taken in 2005 when the London Cycling Campaign asked for a photograph of me for its magazine because The Bike Show had just been awarded the Campaign’s prize for ‘Best Media’.
I probably rode the majority of The Bike Show’s rolling interviews on this bike. Over the years bits and pieces changed. It lost its lovely TA chainset and became a single speed, then a fixed wheel. It got several sets of new wheels, a Brooks saddle, a Schmidt SON hub dynamo and moustache bars. Here’s a picture touring in Devon over the Winter Solstice in 2007:
In 2008 I decided the paint had become so chipped it risked rusting away. So I took it apart and it stayed in the cellar for over a year and various components were accumulated from shops, markets and cycle jumbles for a rebuild. In the past six weeks I put my mind to getting it back on the road. The first task was repainting in a new colour: ruby red. Armourtex in Hackney, thanks in large part to the perfectionists at the London Fixed Gear and Single Speed Forum are now experts in repainting bicycles. They did a wonderful job of powder coating the frame, fork and a pair of steel mudguards I thought would look good.
I decided I wanted more than one gear and found an NOS Shimano Nexus 3-speed hub with coaster brake including an 18T sprocket, brake levers, cables etc for £15. I matched that with a Sturmey Archer 44T crankset with integrated chainguard from a little bike shop in Berlin (€25). This gives me gears of 49, 67 (direct drive) and 91. 67 gear inches is about perfect for everyday riding on the flat in London.
I decided to go for 700c rims which would give me a wider selection of tyres and more clearance on a frame built for the slightly larger 27 inch wheels. I had a pair of unused Vittoria Randonneur Pro tyres lying around that are 37mm and have quite a deep tread so should last a while and give grip and comfort on bumpy roads. However, the tyre clearance on the chain stays is barely a few millimeters and will need watching. The wheels are super-sturdy Mavic A719 touring rims and the front hub is a Shimano Dura Ace, salvaged from a pair of track wheels I found in a flea market in Belgium. The seat pillar is also Dura Ace and the saddle is a sprung Brooks ‘Conquest All Terrain’ model. The handlebars are basic North Road alloys, matched with a no-name quill stem. With a coaster brake there’s only one brake lever, combined with a twist-grip gear shifter. The rack is a cheap and cheerful Pletscher, made in Switzerland and the best-selling rack of all time, according to Rivendell Bicycles. The pedals are MKS Sylvan Tourers and there’s a kickstand from Decathlon.
Pavel at my local bike shop (the excellent London Bicycle Repair Shop) built the wheels and Wes put the bike together and did lots of small but clever things that really make it work. He made a set of mudguard stays from two lengths of 3mm stainless steel (the stays that came with the mudguards were too short), cleverly securing the to the braze-ons by reusing some V-brake washers. and routed the gear cable up the seat stay and along the top tube, rather than along the down tube. He suggested the addition of a lightweight chromed chain guard that runs the length of the chain and the wonderful Dia Compe Mod 750 centre pull front brake (based on the old Weinmann design). The brake not only looks outstanding but is a lot more effective than a side pull. The shop gave me golden ping bell that matches the Dawes decals.
And now, what you’ve all been waiting for, the result. As far as I’m concerned, the most beautiful bike in the world.
Ron Cooper is a legend in frame-building. He started as a fifteen-year-old apprentice with A.S. Gillott, and his frames have come to define the very best of the British lightweight style. He talks about the early days learning from master frame-builders like Jim Collier and Bill Philbrook, his own racing career and his commercial success in the US in the 1970s. Along the way he explains the technique and motivation needed to hand build more than 7,000 racing frames. Having turned 79 in June this year, Ron Cooper is still building three mornings a week.
Look out for the cover story in Rouleur 19 on Ron Cooper, with photos (including the above) by Nadav Kander.
More than a few people have raised objections to the way the Mayor of London has, for the relatively modest sum of £5 million a year for 5 years, given Barclays bank the right to paint large swathes of London’s public highway in its corporate shade of blue, have its name emblazoned on street signs and plastered over the 6,000 new hire bicycles that will be hitting the streets tomorrow.
If you sign up for the bike hire scheme (for £45 a year) you’ll get a special key (costing £3) that you will use to release the bikes from their docking stations. Like the streets, the signs and the bikes, the key comes with some Barclays corporate branding. Fortunately, it is rather easy to remove – with just a scouring pad and a little elbow grease. At least you can prevent the corporate takeover of the London’s streetscape from extending into your own pocket.
Before:
After:
Photo: Richard Pope (Creative Commons – Attribution | Share Alike)
Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly shares his best moments of this year’s sensational Tour De France. Plus we look ahead to Bicycle Thieves, which combines theatre and BMXing on the streets of London, as part of the InTransit festival. Book tickets for just £4 here or by calling 0845 230 9769.
Paul de Vivie (1853-1930), who wrote as ‘Velocio’, was an early advocate of the bicycle, supposed inventor of the derailleur and the father of French cycle touring. Here are his seven commandments for the wise cyclist:
1. Keep your stops short and few.
2. Eat before you’re hungry, drink before you’re thirsty.
3. Never get too tired to eat or sleep.
4. Add a layer before you’re cold, take one off before you’re hot.
5. Lay off wine, meat and tobacco on tour.
6. Ride within yourself, especially in the first hour.
An extended, hour long edition of the show featuring French writer, poet, cyclist and cultural ambassador Paul Fournel (pictured). We stroll from the French House in Soho to the Rapha Cycle Club in Clerkenwell, to visit an exhibition of a hundred years of racing bicycles. The exhibition runs for two more weeks and is well worth a visit. Paul Fournel’s book Besoin de Vélo is one of the loveliest pieces of writing about cycling and is available in English translation as Need for the Bike. If you buy it after clicking through on the link, Resonance FM gets a few pennies. Rob Ainsley of the Real Cycling blog reports on the launch of London’s two new cycle superhighways.
On 30 July, 6,000 bicycles will be available for hire on the streets of London. Registration costs £1 a day, £5 a week or £45 a year and the bicycles are free for the first 30 minutes, then a rising scale of £1 for the first hour, £4 for the first 90 minutes, £15 up to three hours. The bicycles will be distributed across 400 docking stations. So what are the bikes like? [Read more →]
Tim Dawson joins artist Gavin Turk on the first of two rides in the East Anglian countryside. Plus a detailed look at the Mayor of London’s new cycle hire bikes, with Transport for London’s Gary McGowan, technical adviser to the special projects team.
To join the second of Gavin Turk’s rides, starting in Ipswich, on 17 July, book through Commissions East.
As part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture, Stephen Bayley leads a ride around the best of French architecture, art and design to be found on the streets of London. Stephen Bayley is the Observer’s architecture and design critic, the founding director of the Design Museum and in 1989 was a made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s top artistic honour.
If you’re interested in my drinking guide for this year’s Tour De France, it’s here.
After a week of hard drinking racing, the peloton will have earned its high altitude rest day on 12 July. The race continues with another punishing Alpine stage in which the riders must haul themselves over four different climbs culminating in the Col de la Madeleine (2000 metres above sea level) and you may want to join them in spirit by lining up four different wines from a dazzling Savoyard selection. The high altitude and dry soil of this region is only suitable for specific varieties of vine that are rarely cultivated elsewhere. So fill up while you can. Look out for Jacquère, Roussanne, Altesse and Gringet whites and Mondeuse reds. The stage finish is in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne where the iconic French Opinel brand of penknife is made. So celebrate by getting out the whetstone and introducing your blade to a few hearty Savoyard cheeses. Tome, Beaufort, Abondance and Reblochon would make a fine quartet for a dégustation fromages et vins. [Read more →]
Saturday sees the start of this year’s Tour de France, the world’s biggest annual sporting event. While the athletes will be subsisting on little but Lucozade and saline drips, we spectators can thankfully pass on such revolting fare and instead charge our bidons with the finest vintages and watch as the scintillating landscapes of La Belle France unfold before our eyes (live coverage on ITV4, I’m told). What follows is a handy guide for those who’d like to match their wines with each of the twenty stages of the three week race. [Read more →]
Yesterday I wrote a letter to Keltbray, the lorry company whose vehicle was involved in the collision with a cyclist on Borough High Street. (It was a Keltbray lorry that killed cyclist Haris Ahmed earlier in the year, on a backstreet just a few yards from where yesterday’s collision took place). [Read more →]
Not much text needed to accompany these photographs taken yesterday on the streets of Southwark and posted on the SE1 Forum.
Exhibit A: Lorry and cyclist collide on Borough High Street, junction of Dover Street. Keltbray services the Shard construction site and one of its lorries killed a London cyclist back in March, just a few yards from this spot. Note the lovely ‘guard rails’ that trapped the cyclist on her left. Photo credit: Phoney.
It’s time to blow out the candles on The Bike Show’s great big carbo-loaded birthday cake. 6 years old! To mark the occasion this week’s show features some of the more memorable moments from the first three years of experimental two wheeled art radio. Years four to six in due course.
In this mix you’ll hear from the following: Nicky Hamlyn, Sheldon Brown, Julia Lohman, Daniel Start, Navindh Baburam, Mark Ellen, Rosie Walford, Buffalo Bill, Patrick Field, Kieron Yates, Chris Bloor, Ruby Wright, Maisie Hitchcock, Chris Weaver, Richard Thomas, David Ferry, Fifi Fontanot, Michael Hutchinson, Johnny Green, Brendt Barbur, Dusty Limits, William Greswell, George Wright, Martin Newell Anna Shepherd, and a handful of other London cyclists whose names I don’t know.
Thanks to all who have contributed material for broadcast, taken part as guests on the show or submitted ideas. Special thanks to all the volunteer engineers at Resonance FM. If you enjoy the show, why not make a donation to Resonance FM, the volunteer-run radio station that is The Bike Show’s home.
With thanks as ever to the office of Jenny Jones AM here is this month’s batch of cycling questions and answers to the Mayor of London. Ian in Jenny’s office writes, “Lots of interesting answers from the Mayor. Real progress made on cycle parking at East london Line stations, as a result of questioning. Going backwards this year on greenways. Lots of good detail on the big schemes which are being launched this summer: cycle hire and superhighways. Delays in docking stations and it doesn’t look as if Barclays sponsorship funding is additional money.”
As always, reactions, analysis in the comments please.
Talking bicycle security with author and blogger Rob Ainsley and Anthony Lau, architect and designer of the excellent Cycle Hoop that cheaply converts street furniture into cycle racks. Anthony is also soon to unveil a new car-shaped bicycle storage rack (pictured, above) at the London Festival of Architecture. Rob gives his verdict on the new double-decker bicycle storage racks at Waterloo Station.
Sustrans is the sustainable transportation charity and lobby group that pioneered the national cycle network. It is also one of the country’s biggest commissioners of public art. Today’s show is devoted to one of Sustrans’s new Prospectives series, a handful of deliberately experimental projects that are more conceptual and investigative in nature than the more traditional kinds of public art you might find on the national cycle network.
Entitled Tranquility is a State of Mind, the project was conceived and led by Liminal, the duo of architect Frances Crow and sound artist and composer David Prior. They brought together clinical audiology, computational neuroscience and acoustics in a quest to understand more about the relationship between our sonic environment and personal wellbeing.
This week, a guest production by Stuart Watt. Life’s race from childhood to old age, as told by those who live it on two wheels. Original music by Chris Annetts. If you’d like to contribute material to The Bike Show, please get in touch bikeshow@resonancefm.com
. If you buy it after clicking through on the link, Resonance FM gets a few pennies. Rob Ainsley of the 
