I have had a weekend of seeing interesting and unusual bikes, and have had the privilege of visiting two sheds which might make owners of
SEEKRIT BUNKERS squeal with delight.
We were out with the Easst Sussex DA of the CTC, camping in the garden of some friends, with the unexpected but nice addition of Superstoker.
So - where to start? On Saturday's ride, we saw the following bikes,
inter alia:
Ephgrave
The Leader
Barry Hoban
Mercian
Hetchins (Curly)
Viscount
Cinelli
Carpenter
Moulton
etc etc
We rode to someone's house, where we saw the biggest collection of Leaders anywhere - including a USWB tandem frame that had been in store for about fifty years, and is about to be built up.
In his shed, he also had, (among others - I have no chance of recalling them all):
Couple of Raleighs
Allin
lovely kids bikes
An ordinary
A child's ordinary (built by one of the other members of the party with his dad many years ago)
Moulton F Frame
Dawes Kingpin & Raleigh Twenty
... I'm sure some more will come back to me, but it was a cornucopia of delights.
And some PTWs, including a Vespa and a gleaming Royal Enfield
In another shed, 'somewhere in the Home Counties', we saw:
Roberts tandem
Roberts solo
Two homebuilt lightweights
A 1950s French frame with a working Osgear
Granby
Trice
Moulton spaceframe
This shed was also fitted with a fully equipped workstand, toolboards, toilet & sink, parts washer, oxy-acetylene, wheel jig, the biggest index of nuts, bolts & spokes I have ever seen (including a box of
Philips spokes!), rims & hubs hanging on the wall, and a rod holding every sort of axle nut you could possibly imagine.
Oh - and, above the row of bikes, there was another mezzanine storage area, which has been used as a sleeping platform, but now contains more stuff.
Simply heaven!
Oh - I almost forgot to mention that Sunday's ride brought out kids on a Mercian and another classic lightweight I'm ashamed to say I can't remember, a Les Rigden
, a TJ Quick, and a small posse of others.
Classic heaven. Shame we had to come back to the 21st Century via a long motorway drive straight after before we got home & flopped into bed. I'm glad Butterfly isn't in work today, so she can unload the car.