UK Handmade Bicycle Show, 2013, Bespoked Bristol, PART 1

Bargain beauty: Lombardy fixie in Lombardy blue, frame by Taverna

UK Handmade Bicycle Show, 2013, Bespoked Bristol, PART 1

OK, so compared to last year, this year this event EXPLODED. I mean there were so many people there thirty minutes after opening, that you could barely move. The place was heaving with lenses, and every frame and lug was subjected to relentless scrutiny. It was a sell-out.

Secondly, I notice no shortage of galleries already up:


http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/bespoked-bristol-uk-handmade-bicycle-show-2013-gallery/014676

So you can see every wooden frame, bamboo frame, fancy paintjob and so forth.

I'm going to pick through a more selective report from this show over the coming days, but for now just a solo image of the one bike that I most wanted when I left. The one that I was still thinking about the day after. The one that gelled as a real 'maybe', finances considered as well.

It's by this quirky company calling itself Racer Rosa Bicycles. Bad name, great products. The founder, Diego Lombardy (what a name!) has all the Italian connections but is based up the road from me in a studio in Walthamstow, East London. He and a friendly Polish assistant called Greg Hawro take your measurements, and ten weeks later you get a beautiful, silver-fillet-brazed piece of Italian magic from the workshop of Antonio Taverna in Padua.

What I noticed was this: the complete bike shown above (lighting was making it difficult to show the thing properly-) costs £1,500. That's with Columbus Cromor. But for an extra £125 you can go up two levels and shed 500g, and get the fantastic Columbus Life tubing.

Best of all is the colour and the spec: a strangely seductive blue they call Lombardy - it was an error 'mix' but they loved it. The build of the fixie you see here is all Miche (pronounced Me-Kay) - simple but brilliant and correct, with the black rims the perfect counterpart to the blue (if it was Ferrari red, I'd go all silvery - different aesthetics demanded by different colours).

Finally, the bottom bracket is stamped with 'Lombardy' in a jaunty little font, whited out - and no other decals whatsoever. Now that's classy indeed.

I just think Diego should give up the confusing name (there's that German direct order company called Rose, and then there's De Rosa -) and call the company Lombardy.

Diego Lombardy (left); Greg Hawro (right). No photo captures the blue quite right.