The Local Bike Shop

Do you use your local bike shop?
Or are you a devotee of those vast emporiums which inhabit the internet and sell at highly competitive prices?
Perhaps, like me, you use them both but in so doing am I leaching the life blood and history away from our Local Bike Shops?
Readers of this blog will know that I am both a novice to cycling, an Old Age Pensioner,  not very competitive and a real beginner at cycling mechanics. I am good at finding cake stops on rides and love to talk about the world of  cycling, both past and present. And so I thought I would post a series of articles on the Local Bike Shops of Derby and its surrounding areas.

Most, if not all, of the cycle shop proprietors are keen cyclists themselves and many have turned their hobby into their livelihood. Ralph Wyld was a fine example of this and in each of the three years prior to the 1928 Olympiad in Amsterdam, he with his three brothers won the National Team Pursuit. The brothers were however split up for the Olympics itself where the Wyld brothers Harry, Lew and Percy were joined by Monty Southall and won the Bronze Medal in the 4000 metres Team Pursuit

Ralph started Ralph Wyld Cycles at 61 Nottingham Road, Derby in 1928 and his brothers also helped him out there. Five years later in 1933 the business moved up the road to 95 Nottingham Road and continued trading there until 1995 when it closed.

It is thought that the site was a Carpet Shop following its life as Ralph Cycles but now it has become a Sandwich Shop.

I was not interested in cycling in those days but a friend who was provided the following reminiscence

" When I went there regularly for my bits it was Ralph who was serving - a benevolent and slightly balding man of light build who treated me, as a very young cyclist, with respect and was ever ready to give cycling tips. He was stooped around the shoulders - probably from working on bikes :-)  The shop was old fashioned even then, and that was 50 years ago,  and contained lots of wooden drawers full of mystery and had bike bits like wheels and frames hanging on the walls. He must have had the odd ready built bicycle but I do not remember any. The shop was a labour of love and all the cyclists loved him. I remember Ralph dying but I cannot remember who served after..I think the shop was later sold.


Ralph was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire on 7.June.1907 and died, aged 64 years in 1972. The shop continued trading for another 23 years but I dont know whether it stayed in the family or was sold.

This article has been all about a local bike shop of yesteryear. The next one will hopefully cover Birkins  Cycles, a new kid on the block

The Mobile Mechanic

I am not sure whether every cyclist used to be a Boy Scout, but their motto of " Be Prepared " is something that all cyclists should adopt. In the case of cyclists this often boils down to the stuff they carry with them in case of the need for urgent repairs on the road. Whether or not they know how to ACTUALLY  use this kit is another matter entirely. And it is this which started me thinking when I misplaced my Multi-Tool the other week and was in need of a replacement. The modern tool is really a mechanics wonderland

Allen keys  of every size, tyre levers,flat and phillips screwdrivers, spanners and even a chain splitting tool; a cornucopia of instruments. And of course with this wide range of Allen Keys I could even remove and maintain the pedals. You never know, the next generation of multi-tools may even allow me to re-program my Shimano  Ultegra Di2 Electronic Gear Change System.   Perhaps.
Of course there is a minor downside of having this mobile workshop, it is heavy and we all know that weight kills especially when climbing hills.
But it was not always like this, though cyclists have always loved toys as shown by this travelling tool kit from Mafic.

Tyre levers were missing from this kit so had to be purchased separately as shown in this early tool manufactured by  Terrys

But compared to the vast array of tools for the mobile mechanic available today, some of us remember the first ever multi tool, and this set contained something all the others still miss....a pair of spoons which doubled as a musical instrument or essential when eating strawberries and icecream.

My lightweight cycling friends carry lightweight kit and one of the best I have seen are these, though I have my doubts over the life expectancy of those plastic tyre levers which double as a case.

My eldest son however has embarked on a plan which eschews all this modern paraphernalia and relies upon an Oyster Card, a £10 note and a mobile phone plus a bunch of flowers to a hopefully helpful wife .

Have you got any essential kit ? New or vintage?  Post a photo in the comment section below

Review of the Year

I love numbers

As such I tend to set myself targets, create spreadsheets to monitor progress and scour articles about gear ratios, rotational mass, power to weight ratios and other arcane things.  Needless to say, none of this affects my personal performance and I potter along as before.As a result of all this my favourite essential cycling accessory is probably my Garmin 800 which provides loads of data to keep me out of mischief for hours.
Having taken up cycling only recently, about 5 years ago now, and being an old age pensioner, I do have to accept that my ability on a bike is only going to go one way...downwards.
The act of retiring, and the receipt of a pension,  gives one a crystal clear perception of one's own mortality. The annuity bean counters make an estimate of one's life expectancy and payout accordingly, in my case they placed their bets on my lasting until I was 73 years old, anything beyond that then I am winning! My son tells me to be more optimistic and so for the purpose of target setting I assumed I would live until I was 80 years old. So, being a cycling novice I decided, at 60,  upon a distance target of 2000 miles ( 3200 km ) a year with the aim of reducing this by 100 miles per year to allow for growing infirmity. This then acts as the main yearly goal and for this year that translates into a minimum distance of  2400 km or  1500 miles .
Having so far ridden 7030 km and climbed over 50000m  then this first target has been achieved.

My second aim was to explore more of our countryside on my bike. Here I count this as a partial success. I have been invited to join in with other cycling groups in Cheshire, Shifnall, Leicester and a lung busting ride in Derbyshire. At all the places I have made new friends and been  made exceedingly welcome despite them all having to travel at a much slower pace than they are used to in order to accommodate me. Thanks go to Mark, Andrew, David and Scott for letting me tag along on  their rides. I was hoping to do a short cycle tour but in this I failed, not wanting to cycle alone and being unable to find others who had the same desire.

One of the main reasons for being wary of cycle touring was my lack of ability as a bike mechanic and a fear of  breaking down in the middle of nowhere. During the year I have tried to address this deficiency and regular readers will have seen my efforts as a Novice Bike Mechanic.

Not having been a lifelong cyclist, I do not possess the fund of stories of the trials and tribulations of times past when all the hills were steeper, the wind was windier, the rain was  wetter and carbon was a thing confined to pencils. Indeed climatic and geographical change seems to have happened in the 40 years prior to my getting on a bike!  One of the things I did learn from these tales of yore was that "Steel is Forever "and that Mercians were the Prince of Cycles. And so the highlight of my year was in obtaining my own handmade, personally fitted Mercian Vincitore Special on my 65th birthday in March. This is an example of engineering beauty and excellence and draws spectators wherever I go.

As my interest in cycling has grown I have become aware of the competitive side to this sport. Whilst I am now too old to take part,  I have enjoyed watching the sleek riders on their aerodynamic machines as they compete in local Time Trials, probably the purest form of cycle racing. At the other end of the spectrum I have revelled in the mud spattered and bedraggled riders as they attempt the Cyclo Cross challenges that our  autumn and winter can throw at them. Muffled up against the driving wind and rain I am glad that I AM now too old to participate in this peculiar form of personal pain.

Perhaps my greatest achievement this year was to undertake Wiggy's Challenge. Wiggy was an excellent and enthusiastic cyclist who for a variety of reasons had fallen into the state of becoming a " Lapsed Cyclist ". His challenge was to resolve this problem by undertaking to ride every single day for a week and he asked others to join him on this venture and share their experiences. I wrote an article about this and as a result of the Challenge I have encouraged many others to get on their abandoned bikes and ride again. It mattered not how far, how fast or how often; the important thing was to cycle again and experience the joy and companionship such an activity can bring. So far I know of about two dozen people who have returned to cycling from me telling them this story.

Finally, this year I learnt something about the importance of nutrition to a cyclist. Whilst there are many tomes written about this and experts a plenty; at my level I have discovered it is all about CAKE. Being the generous sort of guy that I am, I wanted to share this knowledge with others and so have produced a little pdf booklet  entitled " Cycling Food on the Go  - Recipes for Success ". If you would like a copy you can get it from :-

http://thediaryofmybike.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cycling-food-on-go_15.html

The Novice Bike Mechanic ( Part 1 )

I worked for one of the world’s premier engineering firms for over 35 years but my skills were much more theoretical than practical and I must be a contender for the world’s worst mechanic.
So it was with much trepidation that I decided to teach myself how a bike was put together by actually dismantling and rebuilding one rather than just study a maintenance manual.
I also have to recognize that as I get older those Derbyshire Peaks seem to be getting steeper and, whilst I can still climb as well as any on our Thursday Veterans ride, the others manage it by having a chainset which is much more suitable for the task than those on my bikes.
My 1961 Mercian still has its original Campagnola 52/42 chain rings  to which someone has later added a 30 tooth inner ring and these combined with a 12-28 cassette mean that all hills encountered to-date are manageable, but this will not always be the case.

So, I decided that my introductory bike mechanic project would be to change the chan rings to a more hill friendly set.  One of the great things about cycling is that people are always ready to give you recommendations and advice on how to proceed. After much discussion at many tea and cake shops, and looking what others had fitted, I determined on a 46/36/26 chainset with a strong recommendation to buy some proper tools to carry out the job and not bodge my way through.
My first lesson about bike upgrading was that it is very similar to my wife buying a dress for a wedding or any other event.. There is an inevitable creeping project scope as the dress needs complementing by a pair of shoes, handbag, jewellry, special hair cut etc, none of which were envisaged in the original scope spec that I had imagined.  The final cost makes the dress look a minor part of the whole ensemble!! Now bike scope creep is much more exciting as I discovered that I needed a new compatible Bottom Bracket and obviously (??? ) a new set of pedals so I could be firmly attached to the bike when hill climbing. I also needed some tools so purchased crank extractors, pedal removal spanner, 2 sets of bottom bracket sockets ( as new chain rings were not compatible with old BB )  and, as it turns out, a BIG spanner.

One of the amazing things about practical bike mechanics as opposed to the theoretical reading about it is that where in the instructions it says “ turn bolt anti-clockwise to remove “ it mentions nothing of the fact that after 50 years the original pedals were attached without greasing the threads ( see, I am learning! ) and now the things seem to have welded themselves together never to be separated from the cranks again in man’s lifetime. However, fortified by an extra piece of cake, and using what I considered to be excessive force, they eventually gave in to reason and the nuts loosened. This theme of very difficult to loosen nuts/bolts was a recurring feature of the dismantling process and the crank removal was a particularly frightening experience as everyone warned me that the combination of hardened steel tools and aluminium crank threads could have dire consequences if you got it wrong.

But eventually I managed to remove the cranks and exposed the bottom bracket.

Whoever had installed this had obviously not read the same articles that I had. It was meant to be inserted and then gently tightened until just firm. In order to remove this I needed not only the correct socket but an 18 inch spanner which was repeatedly thumped at the end with a rubber mallet before I could get the bolt to move.  But eventually it did and the bottom bracket could be extracted.

Part 1 of the project, disassembly and removal, is now complete and the next stage is just to clean things up before rebuilding with the new bits begins.

Or is it?

Now that I have got this far, the frame does looked a little scratched in places, and you can no longer get 27inch wheels, and the tyre choice for 27inch wheels are very limited and am I really happy with those brakes?

Time to ponder.

Better cycle to the cake shop and have a think...