Prescription glasses for cycling - Rudy Project, RXSport, and why I hate Oakley

Cheryl at RXSport. Web-only means low overheads.

Not so long ago prescription glasses for sport seemed to be taboo. If you were an athlete, then you were assumed to have perfect vision. Here is my tale about how I finally, after quite alot of difficulty, located the right pair of shades at the wrong price, instead of the wrong pair at the right price.

If you love contact lenses then no need to read on. Personally, I do not think they work well for cycling. One piece of grit and you're doomed.

But prescription glasses for athletes? This industry is still in the dark ages. It is monopolised by very few dominant players and the prices are ludicrously high.

On that, more later.

But let's just rehearse how to actually find the perfect pair of prescription shades for cycling, price no object. It is not nearly as easy as you'd think.

For context, I already have the cheaper but clunkier Optilabs cycling shades, actually glazed by a company called Lubisol (although the UK-based trading company is in Croydon, south of London). The frames are a bit clunky, but I love the transition lenses, perfect for the low light cycle of much of an English calendar year. "For winter training," I said to myself as Spring came around. But now let's get something cool.

So earlier this year I started over, all fresh and excited in the hunt for the perfect pair. For this clean sheet exercise I went down to the Oakley boutique in Covent Garden. 

And indeed, all the bright young assistants help you try on all the cycling shades that Oakley make, and because they have a grip on the pro-peleton, they're the brand you want. The boutique even has a wind machine so you can get a subjective sense of protection.

But when I asked about prescription options, I was told that no one knew anything and furthermore they were not allowed to tell me anything. All I had to do was go to affiliate brand high street optician David Clulow, across the square. They could advise on prescription, but worry not, they carry the entire Oakley range!

So over I went to David Clulow. Now this is a cautionary tale. They do not carry the entire range of Oakleys, and most of it is not on the premises. Furthermore, the frames I wanted, the Racejackets (AKA Jawbones, of Mark Cavendish fame) could not be glazed (I was told firmly) even with a simple, single prescription. So that was the end of that! I was dejected.

I then went back online to RXSport (www.rxsport.co.uk), who I had looked at before. They are a web-only supplier of prescription sports glasses, offering many brands and shipping them all over the world. I called up, and low and behold, "Yes, you can have a prescription for Racejackets, and yes it is not an insert (clip-in addition) nor an implant (where they glaze the prescription bit on top of the regular shade, adding quite a bit to weight in the process)."

So little independent RXSport can do what the mighty Oakley cannot, bearing in mind that the mighty Oakley is actually a minnow within the truly mighty Luxottica conglomerate - the largest eyewear company in the world. Why they are so crassly incompetent I do not know, but it is probably a result of being part of something too big.

By then I was sufficiently unhappy with Oakley to want to explore all the other brands, and there are many.

RXSport sent out two pairs of frames on a 'home trial' which costs £4.95 plus return carriage (which was £8.00 because I wanted full insurance for the return. These items get stolen alot.)

So now I had a pair of trial Rudy Project Rydons alongside the Oakley Racejackets, to examine them side by side. I instinctively preferred the Rudy Projects. They had thin arms that fitted well under a time trial helmet, and had been well reviewed as well. Plus, they fitted my quite-narrow head well, unlike the Oakleys. Great but not perfect. The lenses were shallow in the vertical dimension, so you were aware of seeing 'out' of the bottom. Not fully protected in other words.

By now I was starting to despair.

But being a journalist, I decided to escalate everything to another level and visit RXSport. To my amazement they said it was possible, despite not having any retail premises, and yes, they had enough stock for me to try everything on.

So I pre-booked a train to Peterborough, north-east of London one hour, and took my bike with me. From the station, with iPhone mapping my only assistant, it was a terrifying case of negotiating main roads to get out of town and 14 kms to Thorney, an idyllic village. Always a reality check compared to the superb cycling culture London now has.

At one point I thought the whole mission was a stupid waste of time and a folly. Especially when I strayed onto the A47, which is a single lane highway clogged with big trucks.

But drawn on by my own curiosity, I eventually found an idyllic country lane leading to Thorney, a heritage village with a medieval abbey, in the grounds of which sit a gorgeous mansion and a converted stableblock. The stableblock houses eight desks and eight sales experts who between them, if my maths is correct, take £20-40,000 a day in sales for sporty eyewear for RXSport (based on 20 orders per person per day, which is average I was told, each sale with a median value of £200). A brilliant, highly profitable niche to exploit, and it's nowhere near saturated and growing rapidly. I hope someone reads this and goes into it too, if only to increase the competition.

Cheryl had spoken to me on the phone and we quickly located a Rudy Project frame that had the slightly deeper lens. It's called the Magster.

That's the end of the story. I placed an order; the finished item will come to me from a lab in 2-3 weeks. I've listed a few tips and insights at the bottom of this blog.

But here's the kicker footnote, and it concerns the industry.

There is only one laboratory in Europe than can handle delicate, single-glaze prescriptions in the curvy, wraparound style that we have come to take for normal on cycling shades. It's called Shamir and it's in Portugal. (http://www.shamir.pt/) That's where mine will come from.

From the RXSport website you can go for the 'official' Rudy Project glasses, which for a Magster with transitions comes to, wait for it, £589.99. Yep, you read correctly. That's near enough a thousand bucks for any Americans reading this.

If you source the RX version you get the same thing (but with a couple of deleted photochromic emerald green-type lens finish options) from the same lab, but for A LOT LESS.

But not SO MUCH less that RXSport aren't doing pretty nicely thank you in an industry premised on monopoly and extremes of greed premised on equally high levels of self-esteem among us, the customers. Remember the adage, that you can't put a price on vanity? It applies to cyclists and eyewear.

My Magsters cost £340.02. That makes me pretty vain I guess, but not as vain as £589.99.

So there are two other observations left to make in this little tale. The first is that Milan-based Luxottica coins in almost half a billion euros a year in net profit, and has a stranglehold on all the brands you thought were different but are not. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica

The second is that James Murrey Wells, the young chap who founded Glasses Direct, a UK company, is to be considered a hero, for exposing the fact that the industry is a giant rip-off. He sells prescription spectacles from £6, which is all you need to know about the real cost of producing a pair.

Maybe there is a third point. It is that when Wells tried to set up Glasses Direct he was the object of hatred in the industry, for exposing their dirty secret. He was bullied.

That tells you everything you need to know about the sector.

It would sweeten the bitter pill if Oakley could actually be competent as well, but by artificially dividing the non-prescription business from the prescription business, they've done themselves no favours. I know even less about Rudy Project, who are to all intents and purposes another Oakley, but in the end, I was just glad NOT to go with  Luxottica-owned brand.

TIPS and INSIGHTS
1. By a ratio of 5:1, northern Europeans prefer brown tint to grey, because it makes the world look warmer. I opted for a brown tint.
2. Getting the most expensive protective and non-reflective coatings is probably money well-spent.
3. Transitional lenses are now ubiquitous and make the glasses far more versatile than having to cart around multiple lenses for different conditions (another Oakley trick, 'persimmon for the evening and dark brown for noonday sun, and here's a special bag for carrying them all.')
4. Use the home trial service from web providers to examine as many pairs as you can before actually buying. Fit to different heads/faces is unique to each individual.
5. There is no truly budget sports glasses with prescription solution currently available, and Glasses Direct does not sell cycling glasses.
6. Shamir is one of very few labs in the world that can handle tricky prescriptions for cycling glasses
7. RXSport send out orders all over the world, via Portugal but from a UK base, suggesting that this is still a very specialised industry when it need not be.
8. Even allowing generously for expenses, the estimated profit margin on a pair of official Rudy Project Magsters at £589.99 is about 80%, compared to an average luxury goods gross margin of 60%.

REVIEW: Francesca Cucina
215 Baker Street, London, NW1 6XE
(Corner Melcombe Street, one block south of Clarence Gate, Regent's Park)

Apologies to non-UK readers, for whom this review may nonetheless resonate.

Rapha, the cycle clothing gurus of North London, San Francisco and Osaka, has for a couple of years now gathered a group of cyclists loosely calling themselves the Regent's Park Cycling Club - they meet at 08.30 on Fridays at Gloucester Gate, Regent's Park, and there's a strict Rapha-only dress code. They (I've only been once so saying 'we' might seem presumptuous at this point) ride for about an hour and then shoot off to work or coffee.

It's with them and the thousands of other cyclists of Regent's Park in mind, that I thought I'd write about Francesca Cucina, a new pasta kitchen situated less than a minute to the south on Baker Street, corner Melcombe Street.

Francesca Cucina is styled a slice of Italy, yet the main business is French, reflecting the Italian-French partnership of founder-couple Francesca Albanese and Bertrand Aborgast. It's unapologetically a chain with 118 restaurants worldwide, since inception fifteen years ago, and just this one so far in the UK, open now since 2012 (I love it that us Londoners get to try everything first).

The concept is wonderful bowls of pasta served al dente, but fast, at a very acceptable price, and it works. I kicked off with the pictured bowl of farfalle bolognese, but you can choose fusilli or spaghetti if you want - and several other sauces including vegan options such as spinacci. The pasta was cooked just correctly and the sauce was delicious. I would deduct a couple of points for no whole wheat option on the pasta front, but balance this by saying that I've eaten worse pasta in Italy (and when did you ever see whole wheat pasta offered there?). The boss of the UK fledgling business, Paresh Pandya (pictured), says they are looking to expand the menu and wholewheat pasta is an idea they are considering. Meanwhile, the underlying ethos of the whole company is a transparent supply chain rooted in Italy and healthy, real food. Another nail in the coffin for McDonalds et al.

I can't think of a nicer way to end a ride than to lock up at one of the racks on the corner (just in Melcombe Street) and have an early bowl of warm pasta. Scroll the news and emails on my iPhone, perhaps meet someone for business or mix it all up as we do, cycling and networking.

Paresh reminds me that the place is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner too until 10pm, so it's one of those reliable second homes. There are salads and paninis and the obligatory San Pellegrino beverages, but equally you can request tap water without eliciting obloquy - which is very welcome and unthinkable in Italy. If you go for the small bowl of pasta you can be all done for £5. Arguably this is better value than the equivalent sandwich + cookie from Pret, across the street, but I think Pret wins if you only want a non-carb superfood salad or whatnot, but then if you want carb-free food you're not a cyclist.

Cycling Mont Ventoux, top five dos and don'ts

View from Gorges. Provence is great cycling country

Mont Ventoux, top five dos and don'ts. JUNE 2013

1. Don't leave behind the knee warmers
This wasn't my first ascent of the 'Giant of Provence,' summit 1,912 metres (6,273 feet). I did it in the 2009 Etape du Tour, beginning at Bedoin after 155kms, in blazing heat and no wind. By comparison, this time I arrived in Bedoin to be greeted by the usual mistral winds, gusting violently to over 100kms at the top, and battering all the foreslopes in ways that were unusual by local standards, at least for June. This and the unseasonal snow that had re-opened one of Provence's ski resorts just the previous weekend. The snow had gone except at the summit, but it remained cool. Pulling in at one of the Bedoin bike shops to buy knee warmers, I was advised that it was only safe to go up if I was willing to walk the last 7kms from Chalet Reynard. So we waited two days and then climbed it early on a Sunday morning, in bright sun shine. Steph clocked 1 hr 47 and I came in around ten minutes faster (but from St Columbe, the next village up, so add +/- 20 minutes from Bedoin). The winds at the top were still fierce and the temperature cool. So that's the first piece of advice: carry a 'light winter clothing' system which extends to a jacket (preferably waterproof and wind proof), full finger gloves and knee and arm warmers. A lot of riders find they have to do a wardrobe adjustment halfway up. Temperatures can be 10 degrees different at the base and peak.

2. Keep your bike in the hotel room even if told not to
I'm based in Hackney, East London. We think of Provence as a much more secure sort of place, where you might happily leave bikes in locked cars and that sort of thing. We came close to being robbed. It might be an isolated incident or it might represent a crime wave that no one is owning up to, but what happened to our neighbours at Hotel La Garance should be taken as a warning. Here's what happened. Le Mistral was blowing. There were lots of battering and blowing noises. Just after midnight, right outside our ground floor room, an experienced thief neatly punctured a hole beneath the lock of a Belgian registered Mercedes Sprinter Van, gained entry and took the first bike of several, a three thousand euro Wilier, not six months old. He was obviously on his own. He rode away on it and left the rest. Nobody heard a thing including us, and despite the pea gravel. The bike was not insured (of course it wasn't, have you tried to get an insurance company to cover a bike unsecured inside a van? They won't - this is why). The hotel we recommend - it's run by a real hotelier, Dutchwoman Johanna Beaumont, and it's situated right on the Bedoin climb, so you ride right off the doorstep and not get lost. But she still puts up signs saying 'No bikes in rooms'. We were very lucky the thieves didn't get to my LOOK or Steph's Specialized, locked in the back of our rental car. Very lucky. The bikes came inside the next night.

3. Pace yourself
If you are only doing the Ventoux you can treat it like a 50 mile time trial - it's two hours at that sort of effort to clock what is considered to be a very respectable club rider time. The record was set by Iban Mayo in the 2004 Dauphiné Libéré. He did it in 55′ 51″.

4. It's not the Etape
By which I mean the roads aren't closed. It's laughably man-land and all the tribes are out: bikers, drivers, cyclists. There was a club of Renault 5 Turbo nuts (visible in the distance of the photo below); there were a lot of bikers coming down as I was going up, at high speeds, and sometimes coming right over onto my side of the road. That's OK but it doesn't allow for wobbling around. So get your gearing sorted. You'd think people would realise this but they don't. You need a 34 tooth inner chainring, a compact. Either that or you're going to be a top rider smashing it on a 39x25.

5. Don't forget the descent.
The classic ascent is from Bedoin. That allows you to descend to Malucene or back down to Chalet Reynard and on to Sault. The Malucene descent is the most fun because it goes on and on, the surfaces are excellent, and the sight lines are the best. The Sault road is bumpier, while going straight back to Bedoin is fine (I did this), but you really have to be careful because of the steep gradient. It's definitely the moment that you begin to respect the Pros and to start thinking about where precisely your limits lie in bike handling. Don't forget a gilet. You'll need it even if the weather is fine.

Mont Ventoux, June 2, 2013. Alps visible on horizon. 

REVIEW: Enigma Ethos Steel, Custom Build
£3,000

Visting Enigma, swimming in the sea afterwards

I know this is a big roaring debate currently, whether you should spend any money on your commuter/hacker/winter trainer. But for me, it was an easy decision because I've clocked up c.20,000kms in three years on my trusty Focus Mares, mostly commuting, and spent far more hours on this, my humblest ride, than on all the others put together (the cross bike, the TT bike, the road racer, the fixie and the trainer........).

I decided I wanted a Rohloff hub gear build from Enigma, the titanium and steel specialists down in Sussex, Southern England, but in the end I opted for an Ethos-based custom build, much lighter at the rear end with a derailleur.

Jaco Ehlers did a great job measuring me up

How it unfolded

First Enigma. Jim Walker sold his distribution company and founded Enigma a few years ago, buying the then-bankrupt Omega. Today he's doing 700 bikes a year and targets 2,000 as a comfortable but still highly bespoke business.

Graeme Raeburn, Rapha's chief designer and a friend, had a Reynolds-based steel racer and spoke highly of it. I decided to investigate further. Enigma is an impressive company leading the charge back to British, hand-made bikes. I decided I'd pay a visit.

Ti or Steel?

I decided for steel over titanium

The Test Bike - I almost wanted this one, right away

I visited Enigma in September 2012, with a maximum Bike-to-Work voucher of £3,000 in my back pocket. I rode a ti bike and then a steel one made of Reynolds 853. Steel won the day. The titanium was a racier bike but I wanted one for city life and audaxing would be its fastest outing. I found the titanium to be tighter and less comfy than I had anticipated. Steel frames, mated to the right tyres, roll beautifully. There's a nobility about the progress and bump absorption. With panniers on the back on a daily basis, weight wasn't my number one concern, but I wanted to match my 25lb, alumnium-framed Focus Mares Cross/commute bike.

Getting the fit and build right
Jaco Ehlers, a South African, sorted me out brilliantly and was very generous with his time. Lots of fitting led to a quite different-from-stock build, with a taller head tube for city work, but on a tight, road-bike derived geometry. I ditched the Rohloff idea as soon as Jim showed me one. It weighes a tonne and costs even more. The build was coming out at a fantastic sum of money. I got nervous. In truth, I'd only had my derailleur bent once in three years of London life. It's not that difficult to fix and you can easily replace it.

I opted for classic script, instead of 'modern'

Enigma moved to a larger facility early in 2013

The money goes into the custom frame. We decided on Reynolds 853, which is more comfortable than 931 or 953, which are both very stiff and for racing. Enigma's renowned frame builder Mark Reilly was on hand and he told me that 853 was the best tubing for stiff/compliant, given the intended use. I wanted a steel fork with bosses for a low rider, to accommodate light touring. With all the boxes ticked, the rest of the build was Shimano 105 with tweaks, and a cheap but strong set of stock, Mavic Aksium wheels. Smart in black, and my favourite fast commute hoops, very cheap to replace and just 1,700 grams the pair. I got a smaller large chain ring, an FSA 46 toother instead of the 50/34 compact. In my view the 16 tooth drop of the compact is far too much, and for commuting, the 50 is simply too high. In the city, it means you barely ever go on the big ring and effectively waste half the transmission, accelerating the wear on the inner ring. These are the sort of details I wanted addressed. Another consideration was avoiding toe overlap with the front mudguard, even with size 44 shoes, clips and straps. This was achieved by extending the front fork out by 40mm, and has solved one of the big bugbears of the Focus. To keep a lid on weight I ordered a Tubus Logo Titan titanium rack, and checked the box for a carbon seat post. For a touch of bling, I ordered the Chris King headset.For a touch of real world, I ordered Cane Creek cross-top brake levers, which I swear by on a

5

My Bike: battleship grey and black

commute. They give you hair-trigger braking.

Colour dilemmas
It's one of the great things about a six-month wait for a custom project. You can still change your mind. I'd specced Ferrari Red but had a sudden change of heart. Battleship grey - one of the sexy, avant-greys that are circulating right now on certain Bentleys and Porsche 911s, retro but modern - had come into view and was subtle, less likely to attract thieves but gorgeous to my view, especially with the matched, painted handlebar stem. I called up Jaco and I was lucky: they were due to get the bike painted a week later.

Picking it up
One of the oddities was seeing the bike for the first time at Bespoked, Bristol, where Enigma had asked me if they could feature it on their stand. I was very happy with what I saw, but I couldn't ride it or take it away. A week later I drove down to Sussex and Enigma's new facility at Hailsham. There were a few last minute adjustments and off I went.

Riding it
I've laid down 300kms in little over a week, which included an audax, and a tonne of commuting. The bike is leggier and livelier than the relaxed Cross-bike geometry of the Focus. It is faster but I feel less inclined to cowboy about, partly because of the Schwalbe Double Defense 700x25 tyres (versus Schwalbe 700x28s on the Focus, which were necessary to soften the harsher alloy frame). There is no toe overlap. The titanium rack is exceptionally stiff. I use the whole transmission and switching between chain rings no longer leaves me grabbing a handful of compensating sprockets at the back. I'm happy to return to road brake calipers instead of MTB V-Brakes. They are slightly softer, but the V-Brakes required constant adjustment. That sucked. I love the looks and the grey/black combo is a success. My neighbour is a graphic designer and he is envious to a silly degree.

Final Thoughts
I was treated exceptionally well by Enigma and recommend them to anyone, unreservedly. There is one obvious comment applying to custom builds. It helps to know what you want but to be flexible as well, and better to be fairly involved than passive, otherwise what's the point? Above all, you have to be reasonably patient. You know if you are or aren't. If you get the colour 'wrong', you can take the bike back when it's all scratched up and get it done all over again. That's the magic of a proper, old-school build in the country where you live. You can even meet the guy who made your frame, in my case Joe Walker, Jim's son. It took him three days of painstaking labour. I am not against factories in Taiwan. Not at all. But I am firmly in favour of doing things properly, and provenance, as in the food chain, is just as deisrable when it comes to the most important object in one's life: one's bicycle.

Final, Final thoughts
After a fortnight of hard use, my only upgrades so far: black alloy dust caps on each inner tube valve, from Brick Lane Bikes (£2.00); Brooks Swallow saddle (£129.99). The saddle is my 4th Brooks (the rest sold off quickly) and so far it is the only one that is comfortable from the off - I had investigated buying a well worn-in B17 from eBay, but objected to the prices, while the 'worn-in already' range that Brooks sell is only available in tan! The Swallow is a racing cut but a very supple piece of leather with plenty of give. We'll see in six months whether it really is here to stay or yet another disastrous episode of Lofthouse-weakness-for-beautiful-object followed by a loss-making eBay expedition.
The only fly in the ointment with the Enigma, is that the Pitlock seat collar bolt doesn't fit the supplied seat collar clamp, so I am terrified that someone is going to allen-key their way to £200-worth of carbon seatpost and Brooks. This makes me think that bespoke bike builders should be making a much bigger effort (this includes Enigma!) to integrate a full suite of these security products into the original spec, if desired by the owner. There is nothing more annoying than taking delivery, only to have to replace every bolt and skewer with after market additions, and then finding, surprise surprise, that some of the parts don't translate over. That's the bike industry for you. It can be a very annoying place. Salvation might be at hand. I am talking to a simply brilliant new company called Atomic 22 (www.atomic22.com). The fantastic couple behind it, Patrick Wells and Ayantika Mitra have a fully fledged suite of beautiful, light weight and very secure bolts and skewers for every possible bit of the bike from brakes to saddles. That might be the next upgrade - but if I do it, I'll do it big and work over the whole bike in one go, so that I end up with one universal 'key' rather than a mix of Pitlock / Atomic. I'll pay a visit to Atomic in the process and report back, probably in June.

REVIEW: A2B Hybrid 24 e-bike, RRP £1,999
Retailers in the UK, www.wearea2b.com

It goes A2B. That's anti-climb glass atop the wall.

Rear hub motor, 250W

Integrated battery pack has excellent security

London cobbles, rite 'ard

It was my pleasure to recently interview Naveen Munjal. Bear with me. He's the managing director of HeroEco, the electric division of India's largest motorbike maker, Hero Motocorp. They make several million motorbikes and scooters a year. That's of direct relevance to this review, because the A2B Hybrid 24 is a hybrid in more ways than one.

In one obvious sense, any e-bike (or pedelec, to use the correct term) is a hybrid. It has a motor that works in concert with a pair of human legs, the same way a Toyota Prius mates a motor to a combustion engine. The holy grail of e-bike fanciers is an urban nirvana in which the simple beauty of the bicycle is magnified by an electric motor, making it faster and further but without any of the registration, licence, training and insurance and parking burdens that apply even to the lowliest Vespa.

But the A2B Hybrid 24 is also a hybrid of bicycle and scooter design, and clearly reveals the impact of serious engineers coming at a brief from a non-bicycle trade direction.

The unconventional Y-frame was inherited from Ultra Motor, the UK company that created the Hybrid 24 and was acquired by Hero a year ago. It's quite massive, with substantial internal routing for the cables, and prominent welds that are very neat but still prominent. What do I mean by that? I'm not holding back from using the word ugly. But it's not ugly; it's burly, or some other word.

And that's the point I'm trying to make here. This bike is very lightweight compared to a Vespa, but it's barely comparable to a bicycle, particularly if you're viewing it from Planet Racing Bike. In that sense the Hybrid 24 fills a hitherto non-existent sector. You cannot do it justice by only coming at it with pre-conditions and prejudices.

As I ride it away, I keep the motor shut off and spin a low gear. It knocks along OK, but compared to my normal ride (pictured at the bottom of this post, for context), it's terribly upright, even by Dutch bike standards, and massively wide at the handlebars. It's as if this is aimed at a global citizen for whom a bicycle is unfamiliar, or scary.

Stopping to get the juice on, I'm impressed by the way you just wave a fob across the little digital speedo/battery indicator. It lights up neon blue. And then whoosh, as soon as I push down on the crank, the whole 250W mnotor pours out all its torque and thrusts me forwards. More follows until I hit 16 mph (25KM/h), and when I tackle my nearest hill, it makes mincemeat of it. Later on the same day, I come home via my local cobbles in Murray Mews, a secret testing ground I use for bikes. The A2B is in its element on this bad surface. The big tyres and front suspension just shrug off the cobbles as the rear hub motor powers it forwards. 

But it's not all good. I'd deliberately timed my test of the A2B with a week of heavy turbo training at home. There are times when you want the commute to go away. I had fantasised about this bike whispering me along, like a two-wheeled Rolls Royce. But the control system that defines an e-bike is not a power-on-demand (throttle) system like an e-scooter. It's a hybrid. If you don't pedal you don't get assisted. The 35kg weight of the A2B robs the motor of much of its substantial power, and by the time I reached work I had a soaking wet back, exacerbated by the need to wear a rucksack - the battery pack precludes hanging a pannier.

When I got home, I had to carry the A2B up a flight of stairs and wrestle its width and girth into my front room. You could not do this on a daily basis. 35kgs is alot of weight. Getting it down stairs is like controlling a runaway express train.

The weight totally determines how the bike actually handles. It is a sledgehammer to crack a proverbial nut. It's a very difficult bike to love if you're coming over from bicycles. If you're pushing on from a junction and encounter a pot hole, the driving rear wheel can bounce out and slam down - I think we call that axle-tramp, and might explain why such heavy tyres were chosen for an unsuspended rear triangle. At the front end, the suspension is supple enough, but suffers from dive under braking, a reminder that the budget has gone on the Berlin-sourced design (hence the groovy black) and the electric components, while other parts are lower than would be found on a conventional bike in this price range.

The saddle, seat post, derailleur (Shimano Alivio - nothing much on a £2k bike) handlebar, bell, disc brakes, chain and pedals are all straight out of bargain bicycle supply chain. The electric display, frame design and finish, tyres (Kenda 24 x 2.35, inflatable to 40 psi, slick tread), 36-spoke wheels, battery and charger, control systems and motor are all taken from somewhere burlier than your typical bicycle, even at the MTB end of the spectrum. They all feel like overkill for a bike that tops out at 16mph and is easily overtaken by any club rider training around Regent's Park, as I discovered.

The alternative: black graphics on grey, instead of grey on black

So my verdict? There is another generation of speed pedelecs hitting non-EU markets (USA, Switzerland) with double the power. That would suit the Hybrid-24. I wanted more power more of the time. As it stands, it's an interesting experiment but it doesn't solve a problem, it just migrates it some place else.

In the EU, e-bikes are legally restricted to 250 Watt motors, and 25km/h top speed (you can go faster under your own stream, but you won't). So the only way ahead is to reduce weight. This is why Richard Thorpe spent a fortune at Go-Cycle to perfect a magnesium wheel for his e-bike, which is more fun to ride because so much lighter. His brief was to create a great bicycle with benefits. HeroEco has created, instead, a light scooter restricted to the mechanics of a bicycle. It is too heavy.

That said, I love HeroEco. They are just about to bring out an entirely new range of e-bikes. And they are bringing the mindset of a global company to the typically small scale, slightly shambolic world of the cycling industry. E-bikes have a huge, global future as an alternative to cars and petrol-engined motorbikes and scooters. They are already ubiquitous in China, which makes 29 million a year. Meanwhile, one in five bikes bought in Holland are now e-bikes, and the Germans are taking to them in droves. I've seen just three in London over the past three years, but even here they will come. They will get better and they'll catch on, it's just a matter of time. We're not there quite yet though, judging by the Hybrid 24.

Exposure Six Pack - end of test

END OF TEST: Exposure Six Pack Mk 2 (2012 model), RRP £424.95
2000 Lumens, 362g, 6 x XPG LEDs



I've become very comfortable with Exposure's Six Pack, and I'm very sad to come to the end of the test and return the unit to Exposure. If the Six Pack was a car it'd be a Bentley. It's luxuriously over-the-top in all regards.

Like a Bentley, it feels big, and the 2012 Mk2 model that I've been using throughout the past winter weighs 362 grams, which might feel chunky on a road bike around Regent's Park. This unit is really aimed at the MTB/Downhill market. Second, you have to fit it at the right angle of deflection otherwise drivers start yelling because you're beaming straight up into their eyes. Third, there's the price, which is also top end.

But none of these issues, aside from the price, have been a problem for me during real world testing. In fact I've come to regard each of them as a strength.

I've been using the Six Pack for commuting on a Focus Mares cross bike. Whether to be seen or to see, the Six Pack exceeds its brief with bragging rights to spare. There is no light like it. It's so bright that you only have to run it on low beam, even on unlit stretches. That's how mentally bright this light is. It is the bike equivalent of a top-drawer BMW bi-xenon. If it dazzles someone at least that means they've seen you. I have always felt safer with this light than before, when 'before' meant the also-excellent Exposure Joystick. But a big light is sometimes better than a small light, and this is the way of the Six Pack. Once you've upgraded, you are unlikely to go back. When the chips are down and the rain is streaming down on a dark night, having a huge reserve of power is just thrilling. As I said in my original review, it is on occasions like this that you might throw caution to the winds and full-beam it. Believe me, there's a sense of occasion to this. It's like turning on the Christmas Lights in Regent's Street.

For the rest of time, running on low beam means infrequent re-charging. You can get about 18 hours out of one charge, allowing me to go for nearly three weeks in deepest winter. That is deeply practical and would amply cover any 24-hour Audax or enduro event, or even an entire Paris-Brest-Paris.

As for size and weight, it's not true that the Six Pack is too big for a road bike, and the 2013 model has dropped a significant 75 grams. Initially I wasn't sure, but even the heavier test unit I had would only upset the handling on a fully fledged racing bike, just as a large Garmin GPS unit starts to look out of place. For commuting, it's in its element, whatever your wheels.

If I was handing out ratings, I'd give this light 9/10, the missing point being the high price. So start saving now - it's money well spent even if it hurts.

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.