Vintage cycling events have become massively popular in the last few years. The Tweed Run has been going for eight years and tickets for this year's London event sold out in just 30 seconds! The Eroica Britannia festival had its second outing last year and attracted 50,000 guests as well as winning the UK Festival Awards prize for the best non-music festival. This year, 4,500 are set to ride around the glorious Derbyshire countryside on pre 1987 vintage steeds, including Ride Velo and lots of our friends. If, like us, this is your first time, we're here to help you look the part!
Read MorePaul Smith's Cycling Scrapbook Review
As you’d expect from Sir Paul Smith, one of the great British designers of our age, his Cycling Scrapbook is a beautifully produced volume. The sort of book you savour as you turn each page. A book you’ll treasure and look after and show off to your friends. It’s an eclectic collection of photographs, magazine and newspaper clippings, adverts, cycling jerseys, stunning oil paintings, bicycles and profiles of famous bike riders.
Read MoreTweed Run 2016
Luckily, my old chum Bunty knew a chap and sourced a ticket on this year’s spiffing Tweed Run for yours truly. It’s the 8th edition and rumour has it they sold out in 30 seconds flat! Higgins worked like a Trojan to prepare the velocipede, dusted down the Tweeds and packed a damn fine hamper to boot. Good old Higgins.
Read MorePantani: a Tribute to Italy's greatest climber
When Marco Pantani died in 2004 from a suspected drug overdose in a hotel room in Rimini, 20,000 people formed a two mile queue to pay their respects at his funeral. 'Il Pirata' remains one of the most loved cyclists of our time. Monuments have been erected in his memory on the Mortirolo pass, the Col du Galibier and in his hometown of Cesenatico. Meanwhile the Giro d'Italia celebrates his legacy with the Cima Pantani, a mountain stage of the Grand Tour dedicated to him each year.
Read MoreREW Reynolds Classic Racing Shoe
The Tweed Run fast approaches. We’ve been bidding and been outbid on eBay for tweed jackets, plus fours and paisley ties for weeks as we desperately try to coordinate our retro outfits for that uniquely British event. For spring not only heralds those serious, brutal, gritty Classics like Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix, the snow and hail of Liege-Baston-Liege, there are more sedate affairs to be contested here.
Read MoreThe Best New Summer Kit
Most of us were blessed with glorious summer weather this weekend - perfect for dusting off the short-sleeved jerseys and exposing our winter white legs! But under the beautiful blue skies, the contents of Ride Velo's cycling drawer looked decidedly grey and, in one or two spots, moth-eaten (why do moths love merino so?) Ride Velo decided it's clearly time for a cycling wardrobe update. Here's our top pick of road cycling wear to get your heart racing this summer.
Read MoreReasons to Follow the Giro d'Italia
What’s your favourite Grand Tour? Is it the glitz, glamour and massive publicity machine of the Tour de France? Perhaps you prefer the more informal Vuelta? For many a fan, and for many a professional rider, it’s the romance of the Maglia Rosa of the Giro d’Italia, not the Maillot Jaune, which gets the heart beating faster and the hairs to prick up on the back of the neck.
Read MoreLondon Mayoral Campaign - What's in it for Cyclists?
Londoners - it's all change at the helm. After eight years, Boris is out (a Borxit??) and a new Mayor will be elected on Thursday. Although he didn't live up to all his cycling promises, few can deny that Boris was great for London's cyclists. The challenge now is for Londoners to return someone who will continue Boris's good work and to take cycling in the city to new heights. Before Ride Velo dispatches its crosses into the ballot box, we wanted to take a close look at the candidates' policies before deciding who's best for the mean streets of London.
Read MoreEat Sleep Cycle - Anna Hughes
Back in December, Ride Velo met Anna Hughes at the Attack the Pack launch party. She appeared to be just another punter enjoying a card game with her mates at Look Mum No Hands! Little did we know, Anna had recently published her first book and is a celebrated cycle tourer, having completed a 4,000 mile ride around the coast of Britain. She promised to send us a copy, but she didn’t, so we had to buy it. But we’re very glad we did, and here's why: Eat Sleep Cycle.
Read MoreTour de Yorkshire 2016
We’ve had the dramatic mountains of the Tour of the Basque Country. Last Sunday saw the Tour of Turkey pedal through that extraordinary meeting point of East and West in Istanbul. I even managed to catch a few km of the Tour of Croatia which looked beautiful and the exotic Tour of Kazakhstan is around the corner. Who else is going to get into the act? Well, today sees the 2nd edition of our very own Tour in God’s own country, the Tour de Yorkshire, from Friday 29th April to Sunday 1st May.
Zen and the Art of Bicycle Touring
Jet McDonald is a guy with a pretty cool name. He has a pretty cool lifestyle too - he's a psychiatrist who also writes for Boneshaker Magazine. He's done a bike ride to southern India and back. And now he's writing a book about cycling and philosophy - or is it the philosophy of cycling? Either way, he admits it's all a bit 'Pseuds Corner'. Jet's been doing the rounds, fundraising for his latest project, 'Mind is the Ride'. Ride Velo caught up with him at Bespoked UK in his hometown of Bristol.
Read MoreLIOS: A War Heroes' Tale
We’ve been privileged to meet and write about some incredible characters at Ride Velo: think of Maurice Burton’s single mindedness on the six-day circuit, Beryl Burton’s extraordinary accomplishments in competitive cycling, not to mention the self-belief and passion for his products that drive the likes of Matteo Cassini of Passoni. Meanwhile Mark Fairhurst’s vision that leads him to create such iconic cycling prints always inspires. But the courage, fortitude and determination of one man we met last week perhaps rise above even these remarkable people.
Read MoreSladda: The Flat-Pack Bike From IKEA
Having come back from our fabulous weekend at Bespoked, full of ideas, enthusiasm and a desire to design and create our own bikes, we were more than a little intrigued to hear that IKEA are launching their very own flat-pack bike. The Swedish company, better known for value furniture, innovative design and meatballs, is moving out of the home and onto the street. But before you rush out, Allen key in hand, to buy this competitively priced bike we're sorry to announce that it's not hitting the shops until August 1st.
Read MoreVelocipedia - Bicycles Designed From Memories
How hard is it to become a bike designer? What gives the geometry of a bicycle a certain beauty and how do you combine functionality with design? An Italian/American product designer has created a wonderful experiment which clearly shows it's much harder than it looks! By inviting 376 people, aged between 3 and 88, to draw a bicycle from memory, Gianluca Gimini has built up an unusual collection of crazy designs. None of them work - but that hasn't stopped the Bologna-based artist from rendering them as if they were production models - and the end result is stunning.
Read MoreBespoked: the Handmade Bicycle Show
Bespoked 2016: basically a long weekend of pure fantasy bike shopping! Absolute heaven. The 6th UK Handmade Bicycle Show featured, not only scores of bike builders, but also some fascinating speakers with inspiring tales of circumnavigating the globe and tips on dealing with taxi drivers too! Ride Velo hot-footed it to Bristol’s Brunel Old Station last weekend to indulge in a gluttonous feast of the best customised creations in the country.
Girona Gran Fondo 2016
The number of UK based sportives has exploded in the last couple of years, giving amateur cyclists a huge choice of opportunities to experience well-organised, semi-competitive, supported rides in our beautiful countryside. The only downside is our unpredictable climate – who can forget the wash out that was Ride 100 in 2014? In August! So it is that many of us have started to look further afield and beyond our shores and dark satanic mills for our next cycling challenge.
Read MoreFoffa Photo Love Shoot!
Look what fun we had when Foffa Bikes lent us a Plume and a Single Speed for the weekend!
Read MoreLidl's £25 Bike Workstand!
Twitter was all abuzz last week with news that Lidl have begun to stock a foldable bike workstand for what sounds like a very economical £24.99. Too good to be true? Luckily, Ride Velo Towers, our new premises, happen to be directly opposite Brixton’s very own branch of Lidl so we went over to investigate.
Read MoreA Stephen Roche Velodrome Masterclass
World Champion road cyclist, Giro and Tour de France winner Stephen Roche jetted into London on Wednesday from his home in the South of France to give an exclusive masterclass at the Herne Hill Velodrome in South London. Ride Velo were lucky enough to be invited along and receive the benefit of his wisdom.
Read MoreCafé du Cycliste - the Interview
The Cote d'Azur was looking more gris than bleu the morning Ride Velo turned up to interview Café du Cycliste boss Rémi Clermont. But the soggy weather didn't dampen our spirits when the elegant new café cum shop came into view in the old port of Nice. Rubbing shoulders with the super yachts moored outside, this slick cycle 'hub' reflects the hard work and vision of owners Rémi and business partner Andre Stewart, a Mecca for the aspirational cyclist in the South of France.
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