Search results for:

No Jaques Brel yet?

I have a pair on a Dave Marsh Cross Bike

If you are interested in both?

That's an odd bunch of tunes you have on there.

And this is how many people? Childish left wing politics attempting to make cycle campaigning class war with late 90s identify politics thrown in.

Best ignored

BTW- good piece in cycling weekly this week by Keith Bingham which aptly summarises where we are now.

One point I got from it was that things worked in Holland because Central Govt told local Govt what to do and held the purse strings. We have 32 borughs in London.

I understood that the shopping centre was planned before the Olympics as part of Stratford City master plan. However, the intention for was a development over 10 years that would not be dominated by a big mall and would be mixed use Then we won the Olympics and there was Westfield owing the main entrance to the site.. So Westfield had every one over a barrel.

Newham ,GLA and TFL could have tried harder, especially Newham, but it was not "new labour" to be against big retail. So we have a big Mall which will be the 1st thing you will see as you enter the park. Indeed, you will have to go through it and past a 24 hr casino to get to the park.

That said , its nice to have a John Lewis in East London .....

Loosing track of the days at present- but what about monday? Say Whipps x to High Beach & back to the Nags Head in the Village .

EEI & others, fancy a ride out to Essex over the weekend ? Out to where ever and then back to the Nags Head?

I ve known E15 and E numbers eastwards for over 25 years. I live in E10 and for work purposes WF is now part of my patch..

Its truly a much changed area, rough but on the whole peaceful if you are a civilian or not a male under 20. Mind you I do worry about the possibilty of tension between the East Europeans and other local communities.

In my view, the far east numbers suffers not from white working class flight but from the absence of affluence ; communities and individuals now just pass through on their way to the delights of Braintree and other "affordable" parts of Essex. Like many other parts of London its now got more small shops than it needs which, when combined with the short term private rented sector and mattresses in the gardens, means its looks scruffy. The same is true for Ilford and B & D.

However, its not all bad , why else would I live and bring my children up here...

Good things;the mix of people, some shops, the emergence of a music scene(eg Birkbeck, pubs I want to drink in ( eg Rose & Crown) and Asda Leyton..
And you can ride out to the High Beach Tea Hut..

Is that right? Are you sayings its now a no go area.That part of Maryland has been a Russian / East European hub for some years now.

Are you @ the Filter Beds now ? Our family have always loved visting them since we first found them 14 years ago. They remind me of the bird reserves in Suffolk such as Walberswick.For me, its where the Lee/Lea gets back some wildness and mystery , if only for a few 100 metres. Walthamsow marshes are also worth exploring, thats the bit N of you on the eastern bank. Its a SSSI and has a herd of cows, but they have now gone indoors till the spring

Whilst it does not look like it will happen in the next few days , the beds look great in the snow or the frost.

Go and see it,btw I am not a huge fan of such developments, there is a sense of pride in that we at last have shops like the rest of London does.

Yes, it could have been different

How much for the front and rear mechs?

Actually, local people are rather proud of Westfield. They see East Londoners finally getting decent local shops that they can get to by public transport. The" real "community shops there and loves it

Cycling to Newham has always been challenging as the only way in from the West was across the river lea and then around the one way at Stratord. Yes , the Mayor does not like us with an old "new labour " dislike for green policies. What East London needs is better and safer crossings for cylists of the Rivers Lea and Roding as well as N Circular. Haviing that would be a real Olympic legacy

The olympics- the best way to get about will be on two wheels. If you are going then there are, I believe , bike parks at all the entrances. So you can park on Hackney Marshes and in Victoria Park.

I have one which has the pegs on the seat tube. I think the braze ons changed each year. The later models, I rode one in 82, did not have pegs at all.

Try the Herne Hill jumble on New Years day for parts.

I have an early 80s Claude Butler Majestic- same as the Galaxy

Needs a bit of work ( possibly the headset and a longer BB ) but is ready to roll

The vintage bike cave has one up for sale, but its in better nick than that.

105 chainset , but with Dura Ace rings brought from Marxist Fixie...

The Dura Ace rings do actually feel different

Cost , what ever Hilary seems to be charging for such stuff. The chainset is in Walthamstow ...Can be collected or possibly delivered..

Uniqlo ski gloves worked well a couple of winters back

My Corrine Dennis ones are disapointing, primarily as they are not wind proof.

Knitted wool , and it must be wool or a wool mix , work well with glove liners. I used to use army ones from Silvermans. However, you only seem to get crap acylic gloved these days . Barbour, still do knitted wool gloves

Old CTC member comment coming up.....

There was a time when all racks were 3 point fixing and steel. My first racks in the 80s were and I camped and toured on them... So yes they are ok

^ I've had exactly that Bontrager rack on my bike for about two years, I'm surprised at how stiff it is seeing as one arm is held on with a P-clip to clear the brake (frame was designed for centrepulls but I'm using sidepulls, so the rack eyelet on that side isn't usable). Carried about 20kg on it for a day before and it was fine even with one P-clip, no word on long-term durability though, as most days I only use it to carry my lock!

Is that a guide to East London and beyond

We could do a "News from Nowhere " ride , but that would be Hammersmith - Bloomsbury - Oxford.

There's a further connection between Sylvia P and cycling. In the 20s she ran a tea shop in Woodford. Woodford would then have been on the edge of Epping Forest and cyclists would probably have stopped there on their way out or back from the forest.

The site of the tea shop is on Woodford New Road, just before Bancrofts School . You can easily find the site as its also where Sylvia placed her monument againt aerial bombing. This is a small stone statue of a bomb hurtling downwards. It can be seen from the road side, though its a bit hidden by bushes . The statue is about 1.5m high and is surrounded by railings . Sylvia erected in protest against the Italian bombing of Ethiopia and it predates, I think, Picasso's Guernica by some years.

One could combine a ride out to Woodford with a William Morris "News from Nowhere " ride out to Epping Forest. There's not much else worth seeing at Woodford.

Really, perhaps the connections were not as direct as I thought. I sensed @ the time, circa late 80s/ early 90s, that the couriers and others like triathletes were bringing in new ideas and fresh ways of thinking to the London cycling scene. I am a talking here of the early Dunwich Rides,people like Patrcick Field and shops like Bikefix...

I d try and differenitiate between pre and post couriers.

Pre courriers fixed on the road was slowly dying , only ridden by old club men, and I mean old club men. There were also ridden by parts of the CTC wing of cycling, and there's mid 80s tale of PBP on a 60" fixed , but it was not common . Try the Tim Hilton Book for more on the old club scene that . Cycling was a small group of 3 tribes back then: Racing, CTC and the LCC activists

We are talking here about up to the mid 90s. Buffalo Bill can say when couriers started fixed /SS and whether it came from the US or was inherited from british cycling culture as about that time there was a lots of movement between couriers, the MTB scene and cycling clubs via things like the beastway and eastway tuesday tens .MTBs were the cool bike then, road bikes and especially tourers were not. A Brooks saddle was the sign of CTC deviancy

How the hell they went from that to being associated with tattoos , piercings and Hoxton I ll never know . I rode fixed a lot between 86 and the early 90s. I rarely saw any one else on one gear. You never saw a lo pro on the road unless it was at a TT

Try the Glendene Jumble @ Navestock a week on saturday.

Doing home work listening to John Peel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peel

Taking albums to school just to shown off you had a copy of some thing obscure

I have some band on ones