Fran's Friday Five
This week I have been liking...
Pashley Speed 3
For the first time in 18 months we actually have some Pashley bikes in stock at the shop and my favourite is a Pashley Speed 3. Pashley had one 24” frame left in the depths of their factory and we’ve managed to persuade them to build it for us. This is in gloss Buckingham Black as opposed to the original run in matt and also has steel mudguards.
In 2016 Pashley produces the heritage special edition ‘Speed 3’. Celebrating 1926, the year the company was founded by “Rath” Pashley, it is inspired by the path racers which were popular at that time and features a traditional Reynolds 531 steel frame in satin black with chrome and bright alloy components. These, together with the frame lug detailing and classic number plate, are deliberately reminiscent of the Art Deco period of the mid-1920s. It has been equipped with Sturmey Archer 3 speed gearing.
Moulton AM-ATB
This bike caused a stir at when it was shown at the Bespoked show last month. It’s a new build of the 1988 Moulton AM-ATB assembled with mostly new old stock parts that Moulton’s Dan Farrell has had sitting around his office since that time. You can view it here at the Traditional Cycle Shop and if you offer enough we may even convince Moulton to let us sell it to you but remember the first one they built last year sold for £7000.
Imperfect Bikes
We have a few bargains to be had - a selection of Pashley and Moulton bikes with small paint imperfections. You can view them on our website with close-up photos of the issues and these bikes are all in the shop and ready to go now.
Iberia - Julian Sayarer
I caught up with Julian earlier this week on his stopover on the Ride the Change cycle ride from London to Glasgow for the COP26 UN Climate Conference. On my boat outside the shop we talked about the environment, politics, bicycles and also his new book Iberia before he had his well-earned sleep - luckily there was no raw sewage in the Avon to disturb his sleep at that point.
Finding himself in Lisbon amidst a pandemic, Julian Sayarer decides simply to ride. through hazy landscapes and on baked roads, he pedals east. During long hours in the saddle, his thoughts traverse matters big and small – hopping from post-colonial culpability to the supremacy of an orange picked at the roadside. Across 900 miles of sun-drenched olive groves, vast mountainscapes, and dormant towns glimpsed through driving rain, Sayarer’s journey is punctuated by fleeting, beautiful moments of human connection.
Iberia is a celebration of a shared humanity and community found in a uniquely fragile time. In Iberia, one of our finest travel-writers offers his thoughts not just on his journey, but on journeying, writing, politics, friendship and the unbeatable scent of rubber in a bike shop.
Spectre - Emma-Jean Thackray
“Mental illness can devour a person from the inside, feeding on their joy, their passions, even their memories, and leave them to haunt the house like a ghost of their former selves. ‘Spectre’ is a means of catharsis.”
Taken from her debut album 'Yellow' which is out now. Emma-Jean won UK Jazz Act Of The Year at last night’s Jazz FM Awards 2021.
Watch this great live version below with its tuba bass line, which was recorded at The Church Studios in London’s Crouch End.