UK Handmade Bicycle Show, 2012

People queuing at 9.25am this morning - a stunning spring day

Bespoked Bristol 2012 - The UK Handmade Bicycle Show (24 March 2012)

One of the vendors had a T-Shirt. It said: "There's more to life than bicycles, you know? (but not much)." A nice, inadvertently accurate take on this show, now in it's second year and twice as large. I was almost transcendental happy, especially after one of Look Mum No Hands' flat-whites. Lovely atmosphere, lovely people and intelligently organised so that for the modest £7.50 entrance fee, you walked away with a programme booklet that included a write-up on all exhibitors but also a directory that was wider than the show, thus throwing a loop around a nascent cottage industry in the UK. Superb. It was an immersive, bike-fest like no other, with a grass-roots texture - maniacal obsessives trying to do something truly original in the field of bike tech or design, whether retro or space age. This much colour is not easily found at the massive Eurobike held in Germany each summer.

Chris Sleath of Dynamo Works, Edinburgh, is reviving the non-digital art of hand printing with wooden blocks. I subsequently bought the print shown here - it summarises my philosophy entirely...

Quoc Pham - yes that's the name of the London-based, London-raised Vietnamese founder of this superb fledgling brand of very functional yet stunningly beautiful cycling shoes. Someone had to do it; Quoc Pham is surely succeeding by not exceeding it's brief. As Quoc said to me: "It's simple: shoes are my love." Great to see a city shoe with a completely recessed SPD cleat cutaway, so you can still walk on it all day in an office without causing clickety clacks; but I love all of 'em.

The Brooks Criterium Jacket

This coat caught my eye. It's a Timothy Everest-designed, Brooks branded, Foxes (of London) produced mega-garment costing £850 a pop. In retrospect, I didn't like the belt and the too-pocketed front, which apes Orvis and the 'Zambesi twill' approach to African safari. Where's the pith helmet Jeeves?
But I am told that within a month there will be an even lighter, summer version costing less. It will be called The Blackwell. The price-thing is not trivial when you consider the sorts of wheelsets you can get for £850. (NB - the chest straps shown here are from a bag, they're not part of the jacket)

www.atomic22.com (infiniti 3D security)

Possibly the most important exhibitor of the whole show, infiniti3D security is headed by Patrick Wells and Ayantika Mitre. They've done what the boys at Royce engineering said wasn't possible: design a 3-D key for a 3-D security bolt. More than that, they've thought through the whole geography of the bike so that every significant part from saddle to skewers has been secured. So they are evolving a three-key, three size solution to cover a whole bike. In theory, you'll only need one small D-Lock. The hardest thing will be to get manufacturers to fit from scratch, but it has to be the way ahead.

Cherubim Piuma frameset with steel fork

Highly desirable

London, Soho-based Tokyo Fixed gear founder Max Lewis told me that the fixed-gear market has sagged in the face of mass, cheap imports from China. Grant Young of Condor said the same. What was special and counter-cultural became mainstream and then tacky, just like snapping a finger. However, the 'boom' will, I predict, have long legs because riding fixed is so pure. It's an authentic, magical way to ride a bike so everyone should have a fixie in their armoury. I don't mind if it stops being a 'boom'.
The other consequence is a raft of new and wonderful discoveries, mostly with a roadie emphasis - such as Cherubim of Japan, which produces less than 100 frames a year and every one bespoke. Tokyo Fixed are importing them to the UK, and the Piuma got a rave review in Cycling Plus magazine. I subsequently rode the same bike and can vouch for that - it achieves an extraordinary degree of the impossible qualities of being very stiff and very compliant. This would be an amazing winter/cobbles bike. The Uli is even better, and with a carbon fork starts to look competitive for racing. Yes, the steel concedes a bit to carbon fibre on the weight front (1.3kgs for the frame set, ex-fork), but Max told me that customers have so far been completely wowed by the bike, making it their #1 ride including racing.....

Enigma Etape in white - yes, you can paint titanium

Dario Pegoretti's stand was the most avant-garde

Il Soigneur: the coffee thing just keeps coming up

Enigma of Sussex, southern England, had a superb stand and have now evolved alot of models to the point where you can have practically anything you like. For instance, the ever-green Etape (shown) can be painted, if you are weary of bare ti grey. Would they make the Rohloff-hub bike they've just evolved in a titanium frame? Yes - but it would be a custom build and take a few weeks. These guys are real engineers and theior prices remain real world, the Etape frameset weighing in at £1,300.

Original take on Roy Liechtenstein print made me laugh

Lovely venue, but will it be too small for next year?

Tom Donhue

Donhue Road Bike

Tom Donhue won best exhibitor last year and is already building frames for Rapha, with a six-month waiting list out of his Norwich base. His stand was so richly immaculate and original that you immediately wanted to stop and examine - bespoke shifters here, stunning paint jobs there, and several completely different kinds of bike to show that almost anything you dream up is possible. Above all he has revived the art of bi-lam, or bi-laminating, where you braze in a secondary tube and then cut it away, a sort of in-situ alternative to a hand-cut lug. The swallow logo is based on the symbolism of coming home after a long flight - and a typeface remembered from the Hino trucks Tom saw when cycling across Mongolia on a massive biking odyssey he took three years ago.