It is not because they are inexpensive to buy: good ones aren’t.

The Quickfix mudguards from Windsor are portable, folding, snap-on mudguards that require no tools to fit to a bike. They are a simple elegant solution for those that don’t want a permanent mudguard, and easy enough to fit in a bag.
They cover your rear wheel only and come in Black, White, Silver, Red, Yellow and Blue and are £15 each.

If you want a lightweight solution to cover both wheels we have SKS Race Blades in either black or silver. They are ideal for road bikes as they come in two sizes, regular (700 x 23 – 25c, 297g per pair) and XL (700 x 25 – 32c, 307g per pair). The guards themselves are made from near unbreakable, UV resistant chromoplastic which should retain its looks through many seasons’ hard service.

For lightweight complete cover we recommend Curana C-Lite guards which are made of an aluminium and composite layered material. These are extremely light and strong with a clean high-tech look. At under 400g per pair offer excellent coverage without sacrificing weight and style.
They come in Silver and Black in 30, 35, 45mm widths for 28”/700c tyres. 30 and 35mm wide are £40 a set and the 45mm guards are £45 a set.

If you’re looking for something a bit sharper, then we have RSP 700C Race Plates in Black, Chrome, or Titanium. The RSP race plate has a flat profile constructed from aluminium. A highly durable set of guards designed to offer the ultimate protection from dirt on all 700c wheeled bikes.
Mudguard width: 46mm.
Weight: 444g.
Price: £41.00

For the classic look we have Honjo Koken polished alloy and hammered guards.
Since 1945 Honjo Koken of Tokyo Japan has produced some of the finest and most beautiful hand made bicycle fenders in the world. Honjo fenders, as they are commonly called, were the favorites in Vintage Bicycle Quarterly’s fender comparison (circa 2006).

They are available for a touch over £90 a set so if you are looking for a more cost effective (and a little heavier) solution then Velo Orange have some polished and hammered options.

For those more practically minded we have quite a range from SKS.

• Chromoplastic guards with 3.4mm stainless steel and plastic, built to last. They have some ‘traditional and unmistakable decorative stripes’ and include the ‘Secu clip’ which is a fail safe attachment that will save your front mudguard if something gets caught.
  Available in Silver or Black, and are priced from £32 a set.
• Bluemels and Bluemels matt which are made of a durable black plastic in either matt or gloss. They’re a more cost effective solution starting at £26 a set.

SKS guards come with a full fitting kit with stainless steel stays, are available in sizes ranging from 26” – 28”/700c (Matt available in 28”/700c only), as well as a variety of widths to suit most tyre sizes.

Here is Henny van Nistelroy, explaining how he conceived the space and furniture for our shop:

Velorution builds on being a hub for retail, recognized for value for money, to also become a place for discussion and presentation of issues related to cycling in the city. To accommodate this we set out concentrating on the pleasure of cycling, celebrate the innovative and stylish products and make a space for conversation.

The interior concept translates the brand identity of Velorution as set out in their web presence to their physical retail space. While creating an interior that is easily adaptable to different needs; product display, video presentations, cycle fashion shows, product launches. The display furniture has been designed to be multifunctional.

This ambition has been realized through an interior design composed of mobile units. For example the bicycle presentation platforms, which can be moved around to create different arrangements for a variety of uses; for use of bicycle display, they can be arranged like an arena for seating during video screenings and presentations, or these can be assembled as a catwalk for fashion shows.

A new shelving system has been developed in order to make easy changes of display for new products, special features, a general refresh of display or adapting to stock changes. This system creates an organized rhythm in the space.

Throughout the store there has been a consistent use of white surfaces to display products. White as a neutral background makes the smart products really come to the fore. These surfaces have been used in combination with Oak making a warm and friendly combination of clean bright surfaces with natural elements. The minimal design of the elements creates a transparent design that is understood in a glance and makes a clear display.

The ultimate winter tyre available today would have to be Continental’s ‘Top Contact Winter II, which was designed for our northern winters. With tread that extends well into the shoulder area and a Safety System Guarantee which covers the tyre against punctures for one year from date of purchase. This means that If you receive a puncture during this period, you can return the tyre to us for a free replacement. The tyre also includes a FREE INNER TUBE!
£50.00

If punctures are troubling you but snow isn’t a concern then a Marathon Plus might be what you’re looking for. With 5mm of SmartGuard protection and rolling resistance that is comparable to the Marathon we recommend them for those who are relying on their bikes or trikes to be ready to ride all the time.
£32.00 – £35.00

If you’re looking for a more cost effective everyday commuting tyre then Schwalbe’s Marathon, which comes in almost all sizes, or the economical Continental’s ‘Tour Ride’ would be ideal. Both offer puncture protection, have suitable tread for all year round, and are a great price.
£25.00 and £15.00 respectively.

If speed and weight are important then Vittoria offers the Randonneur range with Aramid 3D Compound which is designed to deliver over long distances and abrasive surfaces, but retain the dynamic characteristics of sporting tyres.
£23.00 – £30.00

In January 09, we gave you simple investment advice, we hope you followed:

Three assets which will preserve your capital:
Gold
Farmland
Renminbi

Since then, gold is twice as expensive, farmland is at its most expensive, and the rembibi is flat versus sterling (other currencies, such as the yen, the Swiss franc and the Aussie dollar have fared better). If you had followed our advice, your capital will not just have been preserved.

So what to do now? Is it time to cash in on the above? And where would one put one’s money?

As Central Bankers have been desperately trying to reflate the world economy with pretty flat results, we need to ask ourselves: “What will remain scarce in the next few years?”, “What will be devalued to insignificance?” and “What will you be able to keep control of?”.

If you think most of the world’s oil has been found, burning fossil fuels will become ever more expensive.
If you think that politicians will continue to print money and keep rates at negative levels to save the banksters, financial markets will continue to be bubbles ready to be pricked by an algorithm.
If you think that life is too short to buy cheap stuff, it is time to refocus.
If you think that the focus of your investments should be creation of social capital, which ultimately will bring you fulfillment, security and happiness,

1st – Buy a good quality bicycle, or two. Nothing beats the pleasure, comfort and confidence of knowing that you don’t need to rely on anyone to get from A to B.
2nd – Invest in your community. Don’t wait for politicians: join forces with your neighbours to make your community resilient through local enterprise, energy generation and food production.
3rd – If you haven’t done it yet, sell your car.

Poster by Nick Dewar, via ReadyMade

P.S. As far as our model portfolio above, we recommend to sell at least half of the gold and reinvest in companies involved in water treatment [disclosure: we own the ETF IH2O].

BikeRadar has a good guide, with different approaches listed:

1 The Heel method

This is the one every bike shop owner or gym assistant will tell you whenever you clamber onto the saddle. You place the heel of your shoe on the pedal and set the saddle height so your leg is straight at the bottom of the pedal cycle with the pelvis remaining in a horizontal position… Despite this commonly heard method, there is virtually no scientific evidence to support it and it often leads to the saddle height being adjusted too low. Professor Will Pelever of Mississippi University for Women has written several papers comparing methods for finding the best seat height and says, “The main problem is that this method does not take into account individual variations in femur, tibia and foot length.”

2 The 109% method

3 The LeMond method

This is a popular variation on the 109% method and pioneered by the three time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond.

Also using inseam length as a guide, this formula calculates 88.3% of your inseam length and uses it to measure the distance from the centre of the bottom bracket to the top of the seat height.

Interestingly, Pelever has shown that this often produces a different seat height from the 109% method and although it seems to work for many people, it may not be ideal for someone with particularly long femur bones.

4 The Holmes method

As the smoke subsides in this very English subversion, here is a list of big looters:

1. By a huge margin, the banksters, who having made their companies insolvent, have bankrupted the country,
2. Gordon Brown, who has saddled hospitals and schools with rip-off contracts, under the PPP initiative,
3. Gordon Brown, who sold the nation’s gold at $300 and ten years later still claims it was a good deal (gold traded at $1800 today),
4. Boris Johnson and TfL who prioritise motorists’ convenience over our safety, using public money to build urban motorways or painting useless blue strips,
5. Tony Blair, the slimiest creep of all, under whose rule income inequality increased and social mobility stagnated,
6. Cyclesceme.co.uk who sell their services to rich (and stupid) companies and organisations gratis and then charge us independent bicycle shops,
7. All the lawyers and accountants who charge £200-500 an hour for generally shoddy work,
8. The MPs who went to Currys to get their TV during the day, and then sent the bill to us.

Cameron is right, there are sectors of British society which are ‘sick’; if he wants to heal Britain, I suggest he tackles the above looters (and their successors) who have robbed us of millions, billions and trillions with the same vigour he is threatening to use against the yobs who have lifted a few plasma TVs.

And to hear Harriet Harman and her ilk blaming it all on “the cuts”, when
a. Labour paid the banksters,
b. the hooligans spent most of their formative years under their regime,
it is spin at the Blairite worst.

My suggestions:
- Abolish private schooling
- Make cycling central to urban transport
That is the way to build a healthy, respectful and responsible society.

Image via The girl and her books

The Christiania tricycle is so easy to steer, that all you need is one finger. The back-pedal brake allows one to just use the right index finger on the handlebar.

Naturally, if you are going downhill at speed, a steadier grip is needed.

Photo by Copenhagen Cycle Chic.

Click here to view the image in larger scale.

By far the simplest and most popular is the child seat, very simply but securely fitted onto the front stem or the rear rack of a bike.   The benefit to the cyclist is that the investment to hold the child is relatively low, with most better quality child seats ranging at around £100 or slightly more. Miriam, who has a BoBike Junior for her four year old daughter says, “It’s easy to ride with her in back of me and she loves it too.   It’s my bike, which I’ve ridden for years and am already used to, so it’s great.   All I had to do was just get the seat put on and we were both ready to go.   It’s light and easy to maneuver and I get through traffic almost as easily as I did when I was on my own.”  There is a negative side to this type of transport, however: “I’ve lost my valuable carrying and storage space, though”, Miriam added.  She now has to carry her purse while riding, and her daughter has to hold her own backpack.  ”I used to use my panniers for all my shopping,” she says. Now she can fit just a couple of grocery bags into her daughter’s child seat when she’s not on the bike, as there’s no room left on the rack for panniers after the child seat is fitted. [Editor: Velorution can actually fit a longer rack which can fit panniers]

Also, while this is still a good and relatively inexpensive option for a single child, it becomes quite tricky and cumbersome when two or more kids are involved. I personally have seen a couple of dads haphazardly balancing with a little one up front and a slightly bigger child in back and the solution doesn’t seem particularly comfortable or well-balanced. For those that still want a two-wheeled bike to carry their kids on there are a couple of other options that might suit. A parent with twins, or with two little ones might like the Kemper PackMax Duo or Azor Twins bike, for example. The back rack is equipped to carry up to two child seats on it (or one and panniers), which can be removed once no longer needed, to expose a very useful long rack and there is a front frame-mounted rack that allows for a basket to be easily fitted or for luggage or boxes to be transported in front.

We do not recommend bicycle trailers for everyday urban cycling. They may be a good solution when touring but in congested city streets, they are awkward and dangerous, especially considering the lack of patience drivers show when turning left. And they get the thumbs down by most children.

Parents with kids who are old enough to cycle, or a mix of kids who can cycle and one who can’t, will consider the family tandem. One such product, the Tandem Transporter, can be customized to fit up to three kids, as in this particular model (one seated in a child seat). However, though a fun family vehicle, especially for little ones learning to cycle but still shy about going out on their own, the tandem can be a somewhat challenging bicycle to navigate, especially when the kids are seated on it. It also comes at an obvious expense, with prices starting at £1,500. An easier to ride, less expensive, and more flexible option is a little attachment called the FollowMe.  The great benefit of the FollowMe is in its ease of use.  One needs only a bike with 26 or 28″ wheels and a child bike that can attach to it directly and this will create a temporary, but sturdy, tandem that can relatively easily be dismantled to allow both parent and child to cycle on their own whenever they feel like, or re-attached if the child feels tired and prefers to be hitched.  A child seat can be fitted on any rear rack for the younger sibling.  However, this still leaves the issue of lack of carrying space.

But if we take a clue from the Danes or the Dutch, there’s a much better way to transport small kids: the cargo bike. In Denmark, particularly in Copenhagen, a significant majority of families with two or more kids cycle their little ones around in a very interesting looking tricycle called a Christiania.  The Christiania is available, for use as a kids’ transport vehicle, in standard and extended box versions and also with the option of electrical assist.  One can choose from a range of colours both for the box and the hood, or can buy a plain box and then decorate it with waterproof paints (by a professional artist) or vinyls, thanks to its wooden box.  The Christiania, just like some of its competitors, the Trio Bike for example, comes primarily in a three-wheeler version, though Christiania has recently launched a two-wheeler version as well, similar to the Dutch CargoBike by Bakfiets.nl; two wheelers are a bit faster, but suffer in manouvrability, balance and cargo space.  The Christiania tricycle comes in two size versions. The smaller three-wheeler version can fit two to four kids and the longer one can fit up to six. The box where the kids sit is in front, so both the parents and the kids get the advantage of the better view, while the parent can also keep an eye on the kids while safely manoeuvring them about.  The three-wheeler versions generally allow for more storage and sitting space than the two-wheeler variety and the ones created by Christiania provide the most space of the various competitors out there (which include Nihola, Kangaroo, Trio Bike, and Bella Bike among others).  Even when fully loaded with kids, the space is comparable to the trunk space in a smallish, though decent sized automobile. The Christiania is a practical, useful, and safe child transport vehicle that most parents who own one can’t later do without.  The kids who ride it also love the fun cycling experience and their parents will find that there is no shortage of playdates.

Franz, who rides her Christiania in Dereham, Norfolk, says that it’s changed her whole attitude about the commute to school: “I’ve always hated the school run. Everyone insists on driving to the school instead of walking so the road is full of parked cars with their engines running, an HOUR before the classes are finished! It has made my school run miserable for 4 years. Plus, trying to convince my little daughter to hold my hand instead of running away all the time was another problem! My son would then come out of school and start running and we had to pant behind him and try to find a space on the crowded path. We never arrived home in a good mood! However, since we bought our Christiania bike things have improved significantly. Now I can arrive to school in 6 minutes, park and wait for my son to arrive while my 3 y.o. daughter sits in the box with her Teddy. While I wait, a small crowd of people forms around the bike and I hear all sort of comments ranging from ‘This is cool!’ to ‘I wish I had THAT when my kids were young’. When my son comes out of school he can’t wait to jump in while his friends look at him with envy and he is full of smiles for them. Then while I pedal back home, my kids sing loudly and wave to everybody else. The other day, some people realised there was something new on the road and actually stopped walking and came back to take a closer look at us – we felt a bit like those pioneers who were driving the first cars in the 1940s! I am so glad I bought this bike and I recommend it to all those who wish to save £££ in MOT, Tax, fuel and gym fees and be green!”

For parents still unsure as to whether to cycle their kids to school or to use other means of transport, let me point out the vast research that demonstrates that kids directly involved in a parents’ cycle are more likely to cycle themselves later in life, which is a key health benefit that cannot be ignored.

Christiania also recently released a new electric assist version, making their tricycle an accessible option even for those in hilly areas and who need more assistance when cycling.  Candy from Salford, who lives in a particularly hilly area and who purchased an electric assist Christianias states: “My school run used to be a 30 minute walk and now it’s 12 minutes by bike, which has changed my life”.

Emma, who lives on Muswell Hill in London and has a very hilly ride to school replaced her car commute to one on an electric assist Christiania. “My kids go to a school that’s 4 miles away, so I drive through London traffic every day.” And, she claims, “it’s 10 minutes faster than by car! I don’t get caught in traffic jams and can park right in the school grounds, so no need to look for parking, as with a car.” Emma also said that riding on the Christiania significantly improved their commuting experience, as they are able to go through the park and get up close with nature and see things they used to miss when commuting by car. “It’s saving me near £1,000 pounds a year on the gym and tons on petrol and car wear and tear. My exercise is my school run routine. And it’s much easier to just pop to the shops. Going to the post office used to be a car parking nightmare. Now I just park the Christiania anywhere close by and quickly pop in.”

So, for anyone with kids (or groceries) concerned about the environment, or just for staying in shape, there isn’t a better transport solution than the cargo bike, for the school run and far beyond!

Written by Julia Keller,
Family Cycling Specialist

1962 – Riding on frozen Thames. In the Guardian.

Henry Cutler at Workcycles in Amsterdam has a handy guide:

How to fix a frozen brake cable

1. Let it thaw.

2. Remove the crimped end cap and make sure the end of the cable isn’t unwound or damaged. If it is either rewind, shorten or replace the cable as necessary.

3. Remove any kinks in the cable so that it can easily be pulled and reinserted through the housing.

4. Pull the cable out.

5. Seal the nozzle of a compressed air pistol against the upper end of the housing and blow everything possible out of the housing.

6. Seal the dispenser straw of a suitable light oil against the brake lever end of the housing. It might be necessary to pull the housing cap to do this. We use a generic multipurpose oil with teflon but just about any light oil should work fine. Don’t use “dry” type lubricant because it won’t displace the water for long.

7. Spray the oil into the housing until it begins coming out the other end.

5.5 Oops. Put a rag at the brake end of the housing to catch the oil coming out at great velocity.

8-9-10. Thread the cable back into the housing, readjust the brake and crimp a new end on.

This fix is valid for any brake (or gear) cable but I’m basically assuming the bike has roller brakes here. Drum brakes can pull their own freezing tricks and rim brakes simply aren’t suitable for storing outdoors and riding in snow country. Now the techies can ask me why I didn’t write anything about disk brakes.

Below is the advice we give to Christiania owners. The tricycle has disk brakes in front and a coaster or roller brake at the rear.

This advice is especially important if you park your tricycle outdoor overnight. It may happen that moisture around the brake cables freezes and the cables become stuck:

- Whenever possible, refrain from using the parking brake overnight,

- If the brake cables are frozen and the parking brake is ON, you may not be able to move the tricycle. In this case try to pull back the brake arms underneath the box. Please see the picture. When the brake pads are frozen on to the disk, then wiggle the wheel gently to loosen the pads.

- If the brake cables are frozen and the parking brake is OFF, then try pulling the brake lever on the handlebar to loosen it up. If it doesn’t work, you can still ride and use the coaster brake. But do check the front brakes before setting off.

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