UPDATE: Enigma Ethos Custom Build, £3,000

There have been teething problems with the Enigma Ethos

In my original blog (May 12, 2013) I explained how I'd spent £3,000 acquiring the ultimate commuter/light tourer: a hand-made, custom build, Reynolds 853 from Sussex, England-based titanium and steel specialists Enigma.

Four months in and I've had a few teething problems.

The front brake caliper seemed to be slightly uphappy from an early stage, but only when I noticed strings of fine cotton pealing off the outside wall of the Schwalbe Ultremo DD Double Defense 700x25cc front tyre (not a cheap tyre!), did I realise that the nearside brake block had somehow worked its way above the rim and was lightly scoring the tyre every time I braked.

I was worried, because on inspection I realised there was no more vertical allowance in the caliper arm, and it was not a question of playing with the centering screw or anything like that. In truth, I think this demonstrates that you can't happily get a regular caliper over a 'normal' set of mudguards (in this case SKS narrow/road).

In fairness to Enigma, I think they'd tried desperately hard to keep me all-in with the Shimano 105 groupset, including the regular calipers. Plus, Mark Reilly their meister-frame builder offered to 'tweak the crown' if I could get the bike back to them for a couple of days. That's a big shipping bill or £50+ of diesel and hours of driving so I decided instead to order 57mm drop calipers (colloquially called 'long-drop' calipers).This is the obvious solution and should perhaps have been applied at the build stage.

I replaced the front caliper yesterday and have now ordered a matching back one, not wanting to be with an unmatched pair of brakes. Problem solved - except that to stay with Shimano means going down a groupset to Tiagra, where each caliper weighs 20g more and has a less slick barrel adjuster.

Yesterday, I was talking to Condor owner Grant Young (Grey's Inn Road, London), and he explained that every single time they meet with Campagnolo they ask them to make a long drop brake for the many, many riders who want a mudguard to slip underneath and the clearance for up to 700x28mm tyres (the perfect winter commuting tyre I'd suggest). But they don't.

So Condor commissioned its own brakes and they come in polished silver or black at £60, sold only as pairs (called Pioggio, there's also a lesser pair). Grant claims they are the equal of Shimano 105, but I decided to stick with Tiagra having already taken delivery of the front caliper. 

Another solution is to choose different mudguards - not the Crud RoadRacer 2s that every roadie is now fitting here in the UK, but I'm thinking something more durable for this sort of bike, such as Portland Design Works's aluminium guards (called 'Full Metal Fenders @$120 a pair, see: https://www.ridepdw.com/goods/fenders/full-metal-fenders), which come with special hardware to go around calipers. And they look amazing. Watch this space - I might try these as an experiment.

The next issue is replacement of the now-damaged front tyre, and probably the rear at the same time. But I've examined the front and it's OK for commuting duties until October and then I'll put on something wintry.

The final issue concerns sizing. From day one I felt it slightly large.

I took the bike with me to Sheffield and a Retul bike fit with Chris Last at Planet X (for a TT bike which I subsequently purchased, to be the subject of another blog). He offered to give me a quick check on the Enigma and noted that he'd knock a couple of cms off the stem and bring the saddle back and up, to get the right angles at the knee. Caveat: he was talking road race set-up, whereas this is a utility bike, so we agreed that I should just do what I wanted.

I would emphasize here that Enigma didn't do anything wrong. There are different sizing philosophies and none of them are exactly right. I'd tried to mimic the upright posture of the Focus cross bike, but translating this over into the road-geometry of the Enigma had exaggerated the length of the top tube. 

In the midst of all of this I had surgery for a mild squint which I'd had from birth, which has subtly changed everything and made me more comfortable with a larger saddle-stem vertical drop.

So I am still sorting these elements out. I've got a big spacer above the stem on a steerer tube that I'll need to trim, and am toying with slamming it even lower. Meanwhile, Grant at Condor generously lent me a 100mm stem (versus the 110mm stem fitted by Enigma), so I can mail Enigma the original, colour-matched grey stem, for them to colour match a 100mm replacement.

Costs so far: Set of Tiagra brake calipers from Fawkes in Oldham (via web): £43.68. New stem will cost c£45 (colour matched to frame).

The Reynolds 853 frame: it is fantastic. You should really try to ride one. As such I am not having 'second thoughts' about the bike, although occasionally I miss the cowboy potential of the cross bike, which I abused mercilessly. The Enigma is too nice for that but it makes me feel older than I feel. No wheelies.

UPDATE: Can a vegan diet make you faster as a cyclist?

Bombay Wrap w/ home made plum chutney 25 Aug 13

I said I'd report back on my vegan experiment which began on January 1st, 2013.

I maintained a strict vegan diet for one month, before ending the experiment.

You might think that I then splurged on bacon butties and sausage meat, but I didn't.

I waited to see what would happen and my position six months later is very similar to Brett's (www.zentriathlon.com - a popular podcast series from this likable guy in Texas).

He recently had an interesting conversation with Rich Roll, another ultra guy who's made veganism the basis of a significant business. But Brett just said this: that he can go for days and weeks as a vegan without even consciously trying to, but it's not a strict commitment for him, so much as a life style choice that can bend in the breeze on the occasions when kale smoothies and chick peas are thin on the ground.

In my original blog, I noted that pro-cyclist Dave Zabriskie had reported his fastest season when he threw out most of the meat in his diet, going pesca-vegan - no dairy but a couple of weekly portions of salmon to get those omega fats.

I recently received a press release about a massive, long-term health and mortality piece of research conducted over twenty years over 20,000 subjects, and the winning group for sheer longevity were the pesca-vegans.

If I am faced with various non-vegan alternatives when (say) on a hearty press trip with motoring journalists who wouldn't know the difference between lettuce and spinach, I'll get the fish or the white meat or occasionally a steak - a piece of high quality red meat is better than plumping for a massive plate of fries washed down with beer, to say that you're still vegan.

So that's my position. Overall and no cheating or lying, I'm about 70% plant-based, the rest comprising dairy (I really like a drop of milk in my coffee, for example), fish, and maybe 2 or 3x a month a small amount of meat. I'm heavily indebted to my wife Stephanie, originally from the West Kooteneys, British Columbia, Canada, without whom I think I'd still be in the land of the sausage roll. She just made the Bombay Wrap displayed above. Whole wheat pita; curried hummous; carrots; purple cabbage; coriander; red peppers and home made plum chutney. Fantastic.

The biggest standoput result of my vegan experiment was that I lost weight and felt lean quite quickly. I was already at a racing weight, the experiment beginning in the middle of the Cross season, but by the end I was down to 68kgs and flying (warning: unless you are that mythical beast, a GC contender, do not make the mistake of losing too much weight - having said that half the guys in my club have stomach weight they should NOT be carrying, even if they are still faster than I am on the road). During the experiment I was eating a great deal, so it never felt like a diet. I never even set out to lose weight and in fact didn't need to. It just happened. A by-product of cycling a lot and cutting out meat and dairy.

REVIEW: Rapha City Trousers, RRP£150 (reduced to £100 at time of review)


To Londoners, Rapha needs no introduction. Increasingly that's the case in other cycling meccas from Melbourne to Portland. I personally inspected Rapha's clothing range in River City Cycles, Portland, Oregon, just last week. The only brand that seems to come close for attention to detail and, ahem, pricing, is San Francisco-based Mission Workshop, who focus on clothing and bags.

Rapha is streets ahead of Mission Workshop and has a much larger global brand presence.

It helps that Rapha now appear prominently on Team Sky's kit, because it enforces the sense that no detail is too small to ignore. I know this from experience because Rapha recently mended the shoulder of my five-year-old soft shell jacket, for free (for goodness sakes!). I can't think of any luxury brand anywhere that would honour product back-up for wear and tear so long after purchase. Raise a glass to Rapha and stop quibbling about price. You always, always, get what you pay for and double that for cycling apparel.

But putting one over on gigantic Adidas to win the Sky deal in 2012 doesn't mean that Rapha gets everything right first time, however.

I think these trousers fall into that category.

They are described as 'stylish city riding trousers with clever functionality.' The functionality is beyond dispute. In particular, I noted the durable weight that hit the mat when they arrived in the mail. They exude high quality. The Schoeller fabric is a classic, while the all-important Cordura seat panel will, I predict, outlast conventional cotton chinos by three or four times.

Laura Bowers, who masterminds the UK marketing arm of Rapha, explained to me at length how a cotton fibre unravels under pressure of riding and eventually disintegrates, while Cordura is all but indestructable. She is right. A really thick, £99 pair of Brooks Brothers chinos suddenly developed wear holes on top of my sit bones after less thna one year's commuting. That was a real shock.

Other details such as the one belt loop in a different colour, and hi-viz lining when you roll up a leg, are nice touches.

But my beef with these trousers is that the cut is wrong for the mostly professional, middle class audience who would consider spinning £150 on a pair of commuting trousers. The seat is perfection, but the waist gapes a bit at the back as you ride and sits very low, hipster style, making the gripper band seem superflous. Worse, the leg is cut very slim, so much so that it felt as if I'd returned to high school 'drain-pipe' jeans. Particularly around my thighs, which fully fill the leg to bursting.

I was down in London today and there were a bunch of twenty-something dudes shooting a film. Thin trousers, bare ankles, converse sneakers and plaid shirts. Rapha's city trousers are part of that look, but they are not part of a sensible wardrobe that I would ride to work in and then wear all day behind a desk.

Funny thing is, last Monday I visited the Rapha Cycle Club in the Cow Hollow district of San Francisco, and someone there said that Rapha would be introducing a 'sprinter's cut' version later this year, with a wider leg.

I hope so - but please note here that you don't need to be Sir Chris Hoy to need the more generous cut.

I also notice that Rapha has recently reduced all sizes and colours of this product (beige and navy) to £100 from £150, (www.rapha.cc), suggesting that on this occasion they did get the pricing a bit wrong. It's certainly steep when, as I mentioned earlier, you can buy a luxuriously thick pair of Brooks Brothers chinos for £99.

But the other comparison I'd use is more telling still. There's another UK brand called Rohan, who years ago started applying synthetic tech to conventional jeans, with a travel/adventure/expedition audience in mind. In recent years they've moved into the 'chinos' market, and I've recently been sampling a pair. While not aimed at cyclists, the cut is much better than Rapha's and Rapha could do worse than to buy a pair and copy them.

In summary, these are potentially great trousers that aren't quite there yet, except for a niche audience of whippety thin Shoreditchers. A couple more colours wouldn't hurt either - the beige is very pale and will pick up chain oil stains faster than a backstreet mechanic. Oh, and keep the price below £100, because the Rohans I mentioned cost £57 (reduced to £37 in a sale...).

BOOK REVIEW Cycle Road Racing by Tom Newman

Tom's book is homemade, like this image

Cycle Road Racing by Tom Newman, The Crowood Press, 2013
ISBN 9781847974341, £12.99

This book is interesting evidence for the cycling boom that defines England in 2013 (and this review written early on the morning of the day that will see Chris Froome win the Tour de France, the second Briton in as many years after Bradley Wiggins' victory in 2012).

In other words, what we have here is a tiny independent publisher, Crowood, trying to cash in on that boom by rushing out a series of 'how to' manuals for beginners. They have already published other titles in their series on cycle sportives and BMX, to name two. There is another one that combines beginner advice on road racing with time trialling.

This particular volume by established coach Tom Newman is supposed to be a more advanced guide, as revealed by the author who, at the end, fantasizes that even elite and professional riders will have 'gleaned some useful tips that they take on.'

But the advice is often tick-box stuff aimed entirely, one must presume, at the novice. Here's the entry on eyewear under the 'Equipment and Clothing' section:

'Eyewear Glasses provide protection from both UV rays and grit thrown up from the road. Better-quality glasses come with straight ear pieces so they can be placed into your helmet slots when not required when out riding.' (p24)

This falls right into the category of purposeless advice, blending as it does the obvious with the borderline inaccurate. There are extremely few, if any, instances when you can be safely riding with your inverted glasses sticking out of your helmet. It's what you do when you're finished, to swank around, or the odd pro on a very hot climb at low speeds. But I did not see Froome or Contador doing this on any climb during this year's Tour. 

Nonetheless, the book is a summary of plenty of wisdom by an experienced coach and died-in-the-wool club rider. Newman is very good at saying: the fashion might be this, but actually the time-hallowed advice is that, and sometimes the time-hallowed advice wins the day. You don't get this tone of voice in magazines, where the object is to breathlessly chase the latest product in a thinly disguised attempt to curry favour with potential advertisers.

In particular, if you are a rider wanting to hire a coach at £30-80 a month, it makes the book look cheap at £12.99 because many of the coach's training plans are divulged. You just need to motivate yourself and follow the schedule, always the hardest bit. The schedules are good ones, and distil lots of basic good sense. In particular, it was a relief to read that you really have to decide what it is you want to do and then do it. You can't be good at long distance time trialling one minute, a crit the next, and a hill climb the day after, exactly in the same sense that Tour de France riders lose a lot of grand tour form the minute they start doing lucrative fish and chip races for small town Belgian promoters. Focus on just one branch of the sport and do it, consistently. Across a whole season there is plenty of chance to switch focus from road racing to hill climbing, and then to cross racing - just as any traditional club calendar would anyway. This sort of structure is being rapidly blurred by the sudden boom in everything, anytime - summer cross series, urban hill climbs in July, winter road racing. As a newcomer, it can be totally bewildering.

As books go, however, this one is no thing of beauty. Production values are low. All the photography is homemade, and looks like it. There is a particularly funny picture on p24, of the author's baggy skinsuit hanging dankly against a cupboard, edging away into dark shadow. Another gripe is the shameless plugging of Quest-branded bikes, a never-heard-of no-brand based near the author in north-west London. Literary values are nil, and errors are conspicuous, such as the misspelling of names (Contrador!).

Some of these defects are endearing, and a reminder that amateur cycling has always been a grassroots affair, not to say a shambles. Look beyond it if you can.

However, the main criticism is that the advice given here is so uneven. For example, the advice on turbo trainers is really just the author's own view, without any effort on his part to look a bit further and see what the wider picture looks like. He says that magnetic trainers and electronic trainers are the best, and cautiously avoids mentioning any particular brands, and thus the vital fact that magnet trainers are cheap and noisy entry level affairs, while a top Watt Bike costs thousands. Why fail to even mention fluid trainers such as Cycle Ops, the one that most of us actually use and in fact one of the best selling turbo trainers of all time? In this instance as in some others, the author is not even providing a good service to beginners, who could glean more by going onto internet forums and by asking their fellow club members.

The section on women's training reads terribly. Clearly an afterthought, the author does that thing where he tries to exonerate himself in the first sentence by reminding us that women are very good at cycling, and some even better than men! Then we get one paragraph on why the menstrual cycle messes it all up and we don't know why, but it's a hormone thing. And then the author returns to his main theme again. This is nothing short of a disgrace, but I'm sure the author didn't even realise, and there was no editor to cast a critical eye over at Crowood. But that is how it reads and it IS disgraceful. He would have been better not to have mentioned women at all.

A comparably bad section is where on the discussion of power meters the author reproduces, verbatim, a long and self-serving press release from Garmin on their Vector pedals. He even thanks Garmin for the permission to reproduce the press release! Here as elsewhere we find that suddenly, from no mention of any brand we are back to extremely partisan support for a very few brands. The last chapter is essentially Garmin by Garmin, with Strava thrown into the mix.

Weird, but I ended the 'book' thinking that it is further evidence for the demise of the book. Not as long as a magazine (at 127 pages) nor as svelte as a 'bookazine', and not detailed enough to be a serious treatment of any particular subject, it is an uneven instance of a marginal genre. If this was an app, I'd be recommending it just for the training schedules, which are (possibly) worthy of the (steep) Kindle price of £7.99.

Verdict: Of some use to complete beginners, but only as a starting point. The training schedules may interest riders wanting more structure in their training, towards their first race or a particular goal.

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.