My new love

We were so very nearly star-crossed lovers. I'd decided it couldn't work. She would let me down (probably somewhere up Nottingham Road hill). I needed to go with my head, not my heart.  I started looking at others, cut from a similar cloth (the Dawes Clubman, the Raleigh Sojourn).

But then, just when I'd given up hope, she was there. On ebay. Nearly new, at a bargain price. It was fate.  And love at first sight.  

It wasn't plain sailing though. Before I'd taken her out for our first date ride, I'd managed to have an accident   Yup, that's right.  You might notice that the Roadster comes with a fold down stand on the rear wheel which raises the bike slightly off the ground. Well, a gust of wind and one clumsy owner resulted in the bike falling over and landing with all of its considerable weight directly on the right brake lever, shearing it in two...  Hand made in Britain... (sigh). 

The replacement sturmey archer doesn't quite match, but I don't mind that. I like odd socks, after all. The standard Pashley plastic grip needed cutting off in the process so this necessitated an upgrade in grips too (PDW Whiskey ergonomic, if you're interested). Again I wasn't too bothered by this as the original grips seemed a little cheap compared to some of the other components. The only other thing I've invested in is a Basil 'California' side basket. I'd spent many a fruitless hour searching for a pannier set befitting of my ride. None were quite right and the ones I liked the most were hideously expensive. I was also concerned about the thickness of the tubes on the Pashley's rack and the potential difficulty in fitting a traditional pannier. I've plumped for the very simple (and cheap) Basil basket as a stop gap. 

It just slots over the top tube of the rack and is surprisingly secure.  It's very handy for grocery shopping (I tend to take it in with me instead of a supermarket basket) and I love that I can just sling my existing school bags into it as they are (without any of the faff of swapping contents between bags).   Interestingly the Basil basket is marketed as the California here, whereas in the U.S the same basket is marketed as the Cardiff.  I guess Cambridge was taken!

I was surprised how well it handled on the first few outings.  Yes, it's heavy but only compared to today's bikes.  It doesn't feel any heavier than the Schwinn Sierra I happily rode for years before the Bad Boy. The 5 gears are just about enough to handle most situations, although I pity any oncoming drivers who were confronted with my strained grimace as I was climbing Nottingham Road for the first time. It's also quicker than you might expect but after being overtaken by a pensioner for the first time I've realised my brakes weren't the only thing that required adjustment - my ego did too.  

Riding in an upright position has been the biggest revelation. My morning commute was suddenly different, a route I must have cycled a hundred times before.  I noticed things I'd never noticed before. Then it suddenly dawned on me - cycling doesn't have to be about just getting from A to B as quickly as you can. There's pleasure to be had in taking in your surroundings, in the getting there. However slowly.

From bad boy to stately gentleman

This summer I've decided I want to do some proper cycling.  Not 'Tour De France' inspired endurance tests but some 'gentle' touring, at my own pace. In the UK. Staying in comfortable bed and breakfasts...   Well, you've got to start somewhere - right?

To put you more fully in the picture, I am an overweight forty-something teacher with persistent back problems (that narrows it down to about a million people or so I reckon) and the extent of my cycling for the last 5 years has been the short commute to school and back.  

Now, the bike I've been using for this commute is wildly impractical for any sort of touring (wildly impractical for just about anything perhaps): a single-speed 'lefty' without even the fixings for a rack. A Cannondale, ahem 'bad-boy'. Yes, it was a vanity purchase. But do you know what? It's great fun to ride. Most of the time.

Retro-fitting it with a Brooks Flyer saddle will give you some idea of where my bike tastes have been heading recently, but I quite liked the juxtaposition of ancient and modern styles (although the sheer weight of the saddle and the Ergon grips have impacted its nippiness somewhat).  Yet it has proven rather impractical for my commute too. I'm not going to use this forum to moan about teacher workloads but have you ever tried to pack full class sets of marking and a bursting planning folder into a rucksack? Besides, I was starting to hate the faff of getting changed out of my sweaty lyrca into 'school uniform', never mind the frequent taunts from school children I would occasionally pass in the morning while in full cycling gear - usually variations on "Look, Mr B's got tights on !" Or the general feeling that I looked like a Russian ballet dancer gone to seed...   

So I started looking around for a new bike - an exciting process in itself. I decided to try and take advantage of the 'cycle to work' scheme and its variants.   My criteria was thus: (a) it would have be a bike that I could use for the school commute (so a rack was a must)  (b) it would also need to be suitable for light touring and, most importantly, (c) it would need to satisfy my vanity (preferably something retro styled).  You would think I'd learned my lesson from the bad boy. 

Like any self-respecting teacher geek, I compiled a spreadsheet to help me narrow down my options.

Before I started doing the spreadsheet the one bike I had in mind was the Pashley Roadster Sovereign (see criteria (c) above). But the more I looked into it the more I realised it too was impractical: it was too heavy, it has only 5 gears, the hub gear system itself  is unreliable, the tubes on the rack are too thick to fit most panniers  etc    

So which bike did I end up with? 

The Pashley Roadster Sovereign, of course.