Pashley Cycles celebrated its 90th anniversary this year with a ride and picnic through the quaint environs of Stratford Upon Avon. As the participants dressed up in vintage clothing on their retro bikes and took tea and cake in an old fashioned English marquee, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a backward looking company, desperately clinging on to the vestiges of a time gone by.
But as Adrian Williams their MD, told me on my visit to their factory, “Don’t judge the book by its cover. Open it up and you’ll find that there’s a lot more to us than that.” And in the course of my afternoon there I can say that what I found was, yes, a British company with a rich heritage that does indeed play on the romance of the past. But there’s a lot more to Pashley than that: here’s that rare breed indeed, a British manufacturer that’s winning, expanding and building on its reputation as both a bike builder for the leisure cyclist, and a supplier to business. Pashley, after all, have just won the contract to supply a whole new fleet of ‘Boris’ bikes and beaten some much larger players in the process.
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Where can you dress like your grandparents, exhibit your dog, hang out with Chris Boardman and cycle with like minded people on some of England's most glorious rolling roads? The Eroica festival of course! Three days of vintage hedonism and heroism at its very best set in the stunning backdrop of Bakewell, Derbyshire.
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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.
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Cycling has always inspired artists and photographers to produce some of the most striking images: the noble heroism of the rider, the stunning landscape of the Tour and the Giro, not to mention the sheer elegance of the bicycle itself. No one has captured the essence of the romance of cycling in recent years better than illustrator Mark Fairhurst, so we asked him about his inspiration and how he has become one of the most sought after cycling artists of today.
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I'm going to start with the most awesome cycling products I've ever seen although some of you Generation X musos will already know about these. Kraftwerk are, of course, a German electronic pop group who are also keen cyclists. They released "Tour de France" back in 1983 and actually performed at the Grand Depart in Utrecht this summer, having done lots of cycling in between. What better credentials to release their own brand of cycling gear (from €30 for a T-shirt)? I should warn you that their online shop is paused until December 14th as the band are on tour. How rock and roll is that?? Just look at these and feel the love:
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