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Raleigh Recall

In the third and final instalment of the Raleigh mini-season, listeners to The Bike Show share their recollections of Raleigh bicycles they have loved – and loathed. Jack Thurston is joined by broadcaster and artist Ruby Wright and London man-about-town and Raleigh Twenty owner Jean-Marie Orhan. In a podcast-only bonus feature, Tony Hadland shares his thoughts on restoring old, neglected Raleigh bicycles.

Apologies to ‘Fun Run’ Robbie who is of course not ‘Fun Boy’ Robbie at all (or maybe he is?!) and yes, the town of Hawick in the Scottish Borders is pronounced like this.

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sat sun

Raleigh (part two): The Fall

In the second of a two-part feature on the Raleigh Bicycle Company, historian Tony Hadland and Jack Thurston look at Raleigh’s post-war success as the world’s biggest bicycle manufacturing company and its long decline to a point where it was sold off to overseas investors and abandoned manufacturing in its home town of Nottingham. The Raleigh name lives on as a brand owned by Accell, a larger Dutch company.

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raleigh

Raleigh (part one): The Rise

In the first of a two-part feature on the Raleigh Bicycle Company, historian Tony Hadland and Jack Thurston chart the rise of the company from a small backstreet workshop in Nottingham in the mid-1880s to the mid-1950s when it was seemingly unassailable as the world’s biggest bicycle manufacturer.

Tony Hadland is the author of Raleigh: Past and Presence of an Iconic Bicycle Brand.

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plug

Spilling the Beans

Nick Larsen is founder and creative director at Charge Bikes of Frome in the west of England. Charge is a fairly new company, remarkable for many things and not least the fact that all its products are named after something you would normally find in the kitchen. There’s the Juicer (a road bike), the Spoon (a saddle), the Bowl (a pair of handlebars) and of course The Plug, a simple single speed bicycle that launched the company into the big time a few years ago.

Nick talks candidly about the bike industry, his own motivations and inspirations, where future trends are coming from and the potential of the exciting new technology of ‘3D printing’.

This conversation was recorded live at last month’s Bike V Design night at the Design Museum.

Read more · Comments { 5 } · Art and design, England, Fixed wheel, Gear, London, People, Podcast, Science, Style
albert-winstanley

Remembering Albert Winstanley and announcing the Bicycle Reader

Tim Dawson and Jack Thurston talk about Albert Winstanley, the Lancashire writer, broadcaster and cycletourist who died earlier this year aged 95. Winstanley was a top notch nature writer and had the rare talent to convey in his writing the pleasures of a simple bicycle ride. One of Winstanley’s articles features in the first edition of the Bicycle Reader, a new collection of quality writing about riding, co-edited by Jack Thurston and Tim Dawson, and available for Kindle and other e-book readers for the very modest price of £1.53.

Read more · Comments { 4 } · England, Literature, Touring
Tourmalet600

Over the col du Tourmalet, 1879 style

This is an extract from an account of a summer touring trip to the Pyrenees, published in the London Bicycle Club Gazette (1879). The group of London cycle tourists rode their machines, or more likely pushed them, up all the major cols including the Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin & Peyresourde. They were almost certainly riding high [...]

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Rover ÔsafetyÕ bicycle, 1885.

To Coventry: Birthplace of the Bicycle

Coventry has a very good claim to be the birthplace of the modern bicycle, the “Rover Safety” invented in the 1880s by John Kemp Starley, one of the city’s many bicycle makers. Someone very happy to make that claim is Steve Bagley, Head of Collections at the Coventry Transport Museum. We go for a ride around the city and a trip back in time.

Read more · Comments { 4 } · England, History, Podcast, Rolling interview