Hands® turned 1 today – officially, not publicly. It was the day the first lot of stickers arrived and we’d decided to go for a little ride around the city as i’d just quit my job, it was my birthday and my best mate had come up for the day to get some coffee/beers. I wasn’t in the best place mentally and it was looking like a shit winter was on the way. I needed something to focus on to get through it all so I made the logo, ordered some stickers, and started telling people about it. Not at any point back then did I imagine it turning out the way it has so far. Barely anyone I knew then rode a bike or even had one, and the ones that did lived far away. Neither did I expect anyone to understand what a bike club is or does (and I’m still figuring that out).
I put up a little video on Instagram this morning of all the videos I’ve recorded since that first day and you can see the seasons change, the group getting bigger, the rides longer – and everyone smiling. I’d lost a lot of hope this time last year and I personally wasn’t doing a lot of smiling, so to be sat here 365 days later and have all of this to look back on feels really good. We’ve done nine group rides, met a billion new friends and gone camping more than once.
So for that reason, I just want to say thank you to all of you. This whole thing wouldn’t exist without you, the effort you put in and the fact that you show up. Real people IRL are what powers this thing and that’s the way it’s always going to be. To borrow a quote from Jan and Michael, It’s just ‘People on bikes, doing things’.
This isn’t it for the year also: we’ve got another group ride (hopefully two), Map deployment into local Caffeination Stations®, longsleeve kit for the chilly heads and I’ll finally get round to rescheduling that Coffee Outside as the weather has been Naff™ for the last couple weeks. Fingers are getting pulled out too as the blog has been asleep for some months now so expect updates in your inboxes soon enough. Finally, Hands® is making its first movements into long-form video formats, we went camping and filmed it all. Give it a watch if you’re in need of a ATB bikecamping fix.
I’ve spent so long deliberating over what to write alongside photos from this trip, and I honestly have no idea why. It’s not like it wasn’t fun or hard to recount, but more of a ‘why bother you with the detail’. The images do enough of the work that I thought the writing would do, and what I really want is a home for them on the blog somewhere finally.
Uploading this at the end of summer, I had no idea how much of a deal ‘bikepacking’ would become over the last 4 months – maybe that’s why it felt weird writing about it then. It felt a bit surreal at the time, putting this all together as novices and setting off from the Velodrome. It looks like Summer 2025® really was the year everyone packed up their bikes and went camping, and I’m here for it.
So – instead of trying to be clever, here’s a dump of pics from the Hands® and Peak Magazine: Swift Campout 2025. Love to the entire Happy Camping™ crew for making it happen.
Photos by me, Tom Frimley and Matteo Lucherelli. More snaps from James Sofokleus over at Peak Magazine
A couple of weeks ago, I overcame something of a bike riding hurdle that I had come up against over the past year: cycling at speed. For the first time since getting a bike last summer, I found myself going faster than I had before, cycling at speed but also at ease. As I whizzed along—through an old apple orchard, beneath cavernous underpasses and down the Milton Keynes Redways in not inconsiderable heat—I found myself unlocking a memory of riding a bike from a very long time ago.
In fact, it was a memory from such a long time ago that it was one of my earliest memories: no more than four years’ old, cycling at speed along the seafront where I first grew up, weaving in and out of people, and no higher than their legs. This bike had a pink frame, white tyres, a white saddle and white stabilisers to match. It’s possible that the bike also had white tassels at the ends of the handlebars, though I might be misremembering. In any case, it was Barbie adjacent. I had a real Need For Speed on this bike, and I really prided myself on shedding the stabilisers way in advance of my peers. There I was, gliding along the smooth surfaces of the promenade, at speed and at ease.
I quickly outgrew this little pink bike and, if I remember correctly, my next bike had a red frame, black tyres, a black saddle and absolutely no tassels. I was a little thrown off by the size of this new bike and it took me a while to readjust. Not only did I need to learn how to manoeuvre this bigger bike, I also no longer lived by the seaside, and so the smooth surfaces of the seafront promenade had been replaced with the uneven gravelled surfaces of the back alleyway where my rides were now confined. Where once my only obstacle had been people’s ankles, now there were cars at each end of the alley and potholes to contend with.
But I was not deterred. Over the next few years, I rode my bike on weekends and over the summer—going on bike rides with my family and with friends, along the river, on the redways, learning how to ride with care along the road when my bike got too big to cycle along the pavement. I was, by all accounts, not athletic or sporty as a child (lacking eye coordination and wearing glasses does not a netball player or footballer make), but I really loved riding my bike.
So much so that, around the age of around eleven, I asked for a BMX for Christmas. And oh boy, it was a wicked bike—all black and complete with stunt pegs. It was a bike that perfectly suited by preteen surliness and nascent emo tendencies. But as it happened, this preteen attitude was also matched by a waning enthusiasm for being outside. Why ride a bike when you could, I don’t know, play The Sims? I never even put the stunt pegs on.
For pretty much the next two decades, I did not ride a bike. There wasn’t a specific moment when my bike riding days seized, or even a real reason. My bike remained in the shed for a while and at some point, it was got rid of or given away… It’s possible that it was passed down to one of my younger siblings—I don’t recall.
By my early twenties, the thought of riding a bike filled me with a little fear. I tried out a friend’s bike, but having never ridden an adult-sized bike, I was not at all at ease. By this point, my self-preservation had really kicked in, and the thought of falling off a bike (let alone getting on one) was all-consuming. I’d hear stories from friends or colleagues about coming off a bike and getting injured (!!). Even tales of bike theft were enough to cement the fact that I was Not A Bike Person anymore, or ever.
Moving to London in my mid-twenties only underscored this point further: the thought of riding alongside the 243, delivery drivers riders and just about any London traffic was not something I could seriously contemplate (and to be honest, I probably still wouldn’t). By this point, my life was so detached from riding a bike that I barely gave them a thought. My exposure to bikes was limited to novel encounters, I guess: trying the exercise bike at the gym and feeling unmoved by the offroad mountain trail simulation I selected from the screen.
There was the summer when the kids learned how to jump Lime bikes and the city was abuzz with the sweet sound of clack clack clack clack clack as resourceful riders figured out how to break the wheel lock and hack the bike(in fairness, the sound of the appropriation of privatised bike travel that has taken over urban and residential spaces and created problems of access along pedestrian pathways etc., was music to my ears).
Then there was the actual music being blasted by the tourist pedicabs that descended on central London, carting tourists around in fluffy pink carriages, soundtracked by only the best early-2000s Europop. And I have nothing to say about the bike-powered beer bars, other than: why? All of this is to say: bikes were pretty much everywhere I went, but they were not part of my life.
Until last summer. Having moved out of London and to Milton Keynes for the foreseeable, getting around and about soon emerged as a something of a problem. See, having left home to go to university aged 18 in a city where public transport was cheap and walking was free, I hadn’t got round to learning to drive. And this was never a problem. I finished uni, I worked for a couple of years commuting by bus (okay, sometimes by taxi—I was never very good at waking up on time). On moving to London, I would, again, commute to work either by bus, or most likely on foot (the commute was almost entirely along a Cycle Superhighway and would have been infinitely quicker on a bike, but, alas and as above, the thought of riding through London was not something I was prepared to seriously contemplate).
As has been covered in another post already, last year brought with it something of a ‘wheel-based epiphany’ as Mr Hands® and I found our footing in Milton Keynes. We learned so much about the city that we called home and realised how little we actually knew this place at all. Going on walks in the early summer, we were increasingly aware of how much Green Space™ existed in Milton Keynes (over 6,000 acres).
Like the redways, the city’s valley parks (plural!) are all nestled away from the hectic grid system of roads (which I knew inside-out from the comfort of the passenger seat of a car or bus). These green spaces are in abundance and well-connected by the redways. However, Milton Keynes is so often traversed by car it can be easy to forget just how spread out and vast the city can be. For a while, we walked as much of the city as we could to get around. But it was time-consuming and not really convenient.
To quote Hands®, “In a jam? Get a bike.” Which is exactly what happened. To begin, I started by renting Lime bikes (yes, I criticised Lime earlier, yes, I know). It worked for a bit, but hiring these bikes is expensive, cumbersome and (rightly) subject to speed restrictions in Central Milon Keynes. Nor are they sufficiently nimble for enjoying Green Space™ at ease, not designed to navigate unexpected tree roots, etc. But it was a start. Within a month or two, and by the end of last summer, I found myself Lime biking across the city to pick up my own bike, bought online for £50.
Oh boy, was it a shock to the system. “It’s like riding a bike,” as the old idiom goes. Sure, Jan (not Hands® Jan). It was hard. My legs hurt, the saddle sucked, I hated it. During many uphill rides, I found myself shouting: “I HATE BIKES!!!” The leg cramp was intense, but so was my out-of-breathness. “See,” I found myself thinking, “there’s a reason I stopped riding bikes all those years ago.”
I’ll be honest, I can’t remember precisely when, or why, my attitude changed towards biking. As summer turned to autumn, I soon passed my newish bike over for walking. It was longer, but it was easier. I cycled even less over winter. On one particular occasion over New Year, I came so close to just abandoning the bike altogether during a ride-gone-wrong. I think it was somewhat justified: who’d have thought that attempting a first ride along the canal would be best undertaken on an icy January day? I thought I was going to fall in.
But with time, things started to change. Riding started to hurt a little less. I reclimbed hills I had sworn against and found that I could get much further without shouting. I could even get to the top. My stamina increased, slowly, but steadily. Cycling longer distances took less time: one particular route along the canal has more than halved to a sub-30-minute ride. I can even ride with one hand sometimes.
My bike conversion was also aided by getting some new parts: a better saddle, a higher saddle. A different frame (alright a totally different bike). I got some obligatory Blue Lug accessories (in lieu of the white tassels and BMX pegs of yore). A top-hat wearing alligator squeezy horn that looks funny but sounds like a dog toy. A leopard print handlebar bag to fit in little bits and pieces (a switch up from the Lime bike baskets which usually have soggy cig butts and have cans of Prime sloshing around in them, not bouquets of flowers or oysters on ice as per IG). Anway, I made the bike mine.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about this recent rediscovery of riding, though, it’s that what has made it so pleasurable isn’t necessarily the personalisation of my bike. All of this coincided with the first Hands® ride at the start of the year. When you’re riding in a group, you can find yourself riding further than you’d normally be comfortable. Chatting to people as you ascend a hill you usually detest is a great way to take your mind off the pain. Slogging uphill as you make new connections. With that in mind, I learned that cycling could also be about socialising (within reason: beer bikes should still be banned on aesthetically reprehensible grounds) as much as it was about getting around.
In little under a year—or more realistically, in little over six months—I’ve come to enjoy my bike in ways I didn’t think was possible. Here I am, gliding along the smooth surfaces of the red ways, at speed and at ease. Big Hills® still sometimes make me shout, but I’ve come to learn that there ain’t no mountain hill high enough to keep me from gettin’ thru.
Before I’d figured out the name for what you now know as Hands®, I knew that whatever it was going to eventually be called had to be human. I felt that there would be no sense whatsoever in it existing as a bike club, if I didn’t acknowledge that it was hand-built by some imperfect and flawed human beings. With that in mind, it’s so validating to see this sentiment being celebrated. For all the threat of automation Taking Our Jobs® (and the ensuing Artisanal trend for handmade tat products in response), there still exists a small pocket of the industry that has carried on just as it always has done for over a hundred years. In amongst all the BS, this slice of heaven harks back to a simpler time, when things worked. A time where we took time, and pride, in making things. There’s a two-letter acronym that is never going to be mentioned on this website that I’m sure you’ve all heard enough of over the last three years. You won’t find any hints of its existence anywhere on this website, neither will you find any trace of it at a small Victorian factory in Smethwick, just on the outskirts of Birmingham.
When words like ‘handmade’ or ‘made in {insert locale here}’ are used, it usually prompts me to generate an image in my head of a little person with a hammer, stood in a saw-tooth roofed factory, making something out of wood, metal or leather. At least, that’s what the teenage-brain that I observe the world from, thinks. It’s like the haute couture horror stories we hear about Hi–Fashion™ brands putting laces in shoes on Italian soil, but the shoes were actually made in factories on the other side of the planet – just to be labeled ‘Made in Italy’. We all know that a lot of the time, ‘Handmade’ don’t mean jack. It’s a marketing-led, box-ticking exercise, designed to out-do a competitor, and hopefully add some more zeroes to the price tag. Handmade, organic, artisanal, specialist, Pro Max. You get the idea.
It’s not just specific to Italy and high fashion of course. You might not have the same generative settings that I do, but imagine it like this: a lot of (not all) people think the UK is full of people in bowler hats and bonnets, drinking tea, riding on red buses and black cabs. We all immediately get annoyed because we know the UK isn’t like that at all. But, what if I told you that there’s a little bit of the UK that might not be bowler hat-wearing tea drinkers, but is made up of saw-tooth roofed factories with hammer-wielding workers making saddles out of wood, metal and leather.
For years, I’d always wanted a Brooks saddle (on my fixed lol) and so did my dad (on his MTB). I didn’t know why, but like adidas predators on Becks, like Paddington’s marmalade and Wallace’s cheese, it had to be a Brooks. There was just something about the saddles compared to the plastic ones my BMX had that didn’t feel ‘whole’. Fast forward a decade and we now have multiple Brooks saddles on all of our bikes. So does my gf and pretty much all of the Resident Ryderz® at Hands®. It’s only now that I’ve put some serious mileage with my backside on one, that I now understand that it wasn’t just hype, it was real.
Then, as if they’d seen our search engine history, they opened the doors. Somehow, it was also the first time in over 160 years that they’d opened them to the public, with no record of it ever happening before. The group chat was in a shambles – book now, book now, book now. We locked in the four most eager Saddle Sniffers™: myself, Jan, Jamie and my Old Man®.
To say we had a brilliant time would be a total understatement. That factory is special. What they manage to do there, on that scale, to that level of quality and for the amount of time they’ve been doing it for is testament to this country’s history of industry and manufacturing (that’s now mostly gone). Hand-built machines making handmade products designed to last a lifetime. The reuse and recycling of materials, keeping wastage down by sharing unused and discarded resources with the local industrial community. Literally: bits of metal that can’t be used by Brooks get sent to other factories and smelted down to be remade into nuts and bolts. Just like the saddles, every level of detail in the production process has been meticulously thought through and refined, not in the name of efficiency or streamlining, but just to make the process better as a whole. No automation on this factory floor.
We immediately gravitated towards the workers, nerd-mode® engaged. We learned that there is only ever 16 people max working on the floor at a given time, and on a good day, roughly 1000 saddles are made. We kept on falling behind from the main tour group, lost in the nerdiness. Łukasz showed us how some of the machinery actually works: steaming, freshly-welded rails for B17s that were still hot to touch (H&S no-no, sorry Stefan lol), and the comparison of brittle-ness between the steel and titanium struts (Jan even got to snap one).
20-year strong Steve showed us how filing down a discarded, broken rail helps to slip a bolt onto the inside of the springs on a B67. And even though it looks hard to use your hand to press the mounting bolts onto the hammock-y bit of the saddle, ‘you do get used to it after a couple years’.
Magda let us get up close and personal with the pre-moulded leather, showing us the moulding process and the parts required. Producing the shapes that our nether-regions all know and love involves a ridiculous amount of psi pressing into CNC’d chunks of metal – some over 60 years old.
Zsolt, armed with a sharp implement and forearms like Popeye, taught us how all it takes is one swift movement to trim the excess leather from the saddle edge. A technique perfected from over a decade of experience that made it look as easy as slicing through warm butter – just for us to give it one go and make a proper Pigs Ear of it.
John and Deepak, who we were all excited to meet after watching the Blue Lug tour, so we could witness IRL the precision with which they strike a hammer or chamfer edges of a saddle. They had no idea that this was the most viewed part of the video tour – to them, they were just doing their job. We asked them if they rode, to which they rebuffed: ‘Are you mad? Have you seen the roads outside?!’
Finally, Steve (I actually had to apologise before we left due to how far behind his tour we were), who comes from a generation of saddle makers for Brooks. His dad built machines that still run today, and he’s probably made many of the saddles we spend so much time on. When you hear someone speak about the role with the enthusiasm he did – no stone left unturned in the detail – it goes beyond being just a ‘brand’ that makes nice saddles.
It’s not often that you get to see behind the veil, especially for something that you really love and respect. Increasingly, a lot brands have started putting on tours and experiences, to show you how they ‘get stuff done’. But it can feel forced, staged and even fabricated too, just to fit a marketing narrative. But like any good product that is built to last, you can tell by the patina when something is real. This factory, and the people who run it, are real. They love what they make, they’re proud of it, and I’m sure – if things don’t change too drastically, they’ll keep on doing what they have been doing since 1866 for many years to come.
Big love to Stefan, Riccardo, Steve and everyone else whose name I’ve forgotten. Cheers!
Good morning class, and welcome to Biker Basics 101. Today’s lesson will be more Hands® on than previous – taking notes is encouraged but not required.
We’re gonna break this up into a couple different sections so it’s a bit clearer how it all works, where it all goes and what it’s all called. Binary Code is stuff that should be regarded as essential equipment needed pon road. You and your bike will work without these things but if the bike encounters an error – ya probably gonna be walking home without these bits. Hardware will cover peripheral attachments and customisations to the bike itself. These tend to be things that’ll require access to maybe some Allen keys, spanners and time most importantly. Finally, Software will be a list of form+function based additions you can pick up fairly cheaply that let you get more out of your bicycle’s carrying ability whilst adding some much enjoyed Flare™.
Here’s a contents page for you to jump to each section with ease:
Before we start, it’s also worth mentioning that Hands® is an open-to-all bike club. That basically means that no-one gives a shit what bike you’re riding, as long as you’re riding it. That extends to the style of riding too: No one gives a shit where/how far/ how fast/ how slow you ride, as long as you’re having fun. These two understandings have, therefore, informed the way our bikes are put together. You’ll find a majority of the Whips® seen in our photos will fall into the category of ATB (All-terrain-bike). This can obviously be any fucking bike on earth but stylistically, (’cause I’d be lying if I said Hands® didn’t have a style lol) that normally ends up being 80/90’s Steel Mountain/Touring bikes. There’s a lot of terms for these at the moment: Rat Bikes, Restomods, Super Commuters, Hillibikes, Klunkers etc – the list goes on forever. I’m telling you this because what I’m about to show you should work on most, normal bikes (there’s your A & T from ATB). If you wanna ask me if you can fit a basket rack on a carbon fork with bald-skinny tyres, I’m probs not gonna be able to tell you if it’ll work or not – ask me if it’ll go on the old Muddy Fox frame you’ve had in the shed since ’92, I’ll most probably tell you that you could mount 2 of ’em. Know what I mean? anyway, lets get into it.
Binary Code
Lights
BIKIL bike lights from the worlds worst bookstore.
The absolute worst thing to do, and you definitely would have done it at some point, is ride home from somewhere in the dark. Our eyes didn’t evolve to the point they have, uniquely reliant on light and its other sources in order for us to visibly see (and be seen) for us to then ride our bicycles in the pitch black. It doesn’t matter how many carrots you’ve eaten, put a light on your bike.
Most come with one of those adjustable clamps to put on your handlebars, but if you’re handy with the tool, you can mount them to random bits of your bike too. I’ve mounted mine to the base of my front rack; the beam is lower to not dazzle pedestrians and drivers, but still well-placed to light up the path in front of you without shadows from cabling/bells etc. And it looks cool.
Light mount bracket from Pelago.
If you can afford it, get a fairly decent one too – battery life and beam strength (measured in Lumens) is worth learning about. I bought what I thought we’re ‘good’ Knog lights when I first started riding. They were well made, lasted a decent amount of time and looked great. Problem was, they lit up just about the top of my front wheel and nothing else. I had no idea there was a difference between lights that are designed for you to ‘be seen’ vs ‘actually see’. I’d bought the prior and had to traverse about 2 miles of almost medieval darkness with lights dimmer than a match. Of course, the lights you pick can change on the time of year too. It’s a lot lighter for longer in summer and the cold of winter will eat through your battery life with ease. Check ’em out, find an acceptable level of Lumens x Battery for your liking and let there be light.
P.S – Rear lights should be mandatory too, strength isn’t a necessity for these though. You don’t want to look like you’ve got one of those funny blinking red lights on the back of Formula One cars.
Bell
Controversial one in every sense but I think a bell should be compulsory on a bicycle, even if it isn’t socially acceptable in your Locale. It has been the universal way of making someone aware of your, or their, presence for over a century. It’s only in recent times, where I think the idea of using a bell is perceived the same way as someone using a car horn: instant aggro. Regardless of that, there are big brain essays and philosophical discussions around bell etiquette and that is a lesson for another day. They’re also (if you find the right one) a really pretty addition to your bicycle cockpit.
I’ve mounted my Crane Bell a lá Français; which basically means – it’s on the stem, not the bars. It just matches ok, you won’t get it mum. Not all bells have to be Trad® though, you can get these nifty, covert style Knog ones that’ll blend in with your grips which are cool. You can even put an actual real-life bell on too. I’ve loaded a little extra-one (I pinched off a Lindt Chocolate bunny) underneath my front rack so it’s tinkling as I go along (my actual bell is super loud and makes people jump a lot of the time lol).
Pump
What do humans and tyres have in common? If your answer is rubbery and covered in shit on the outside but hollow, dark and with a faint odour of fish on the inside – You’re wrong. The correct answer is – we both need air to survive. Pumps put the air back where it needs to be. I’ve heard stories of people literally blowing inner tubes up with their mouths like they’re a sad balloon or something. Get a pump.
They come in all shapes and sizes, and like most things mentioned here, they have different applications. Floor pumps, frame pumps, mini pumps, electric pumps – where do you start? Considering this is the essentials, get a pump that can fit either on your bike or in-a-bag on your bike. mini-pumps are great on space but you’ll spend about 20 minutes per wheel if you’re starting from a flat. The bigger pumps do the job in half the time but obviously take up double the space. Do the math people.
The obvious answer would then be an electric pump, right? it’s true – they are great (I do own one from hoto but for home use). But, they’re bloody expensive first off. Secondly, they can be kinda bulky and you’ll normally end up having to pay more to downsize that bulkiness. And finally, (the worst thing) can you imagine how you’ll feel when you go to pump up your flat tubes, 5 miles from home, and realising your battery is flat? Me neither man.
It’s worth mentioning that you’ll need a pump that’ll fit onto the valves your inner tubes too (either Presta – the skinny one with the weird spinning end bit, or Schrader – The fat end with the little pin that lets air out when you press it, the same you’ll find on a car) but that’ll lead us perfectly to the next section.
Tubes, Tyre levers & Patch Kits
Spare tubes and/or a patch kit should be kept pon de bike at all times. Trust me, I’ve tried electrical tape, gaffer tape, super glue, a sliver of another inner tube layered over the top. I’ve even heard stories of people using leaves and grass. If it does work, it won’t be for long enough and definitely not far enough. Getting flats is a part of life and it’ll humble the best of us so tube up baby. Some people get pretty techy and run ‘tubeless’ tyres which basically means they have liquid latex sloshing about inside their tyres and not a bladder full air. Again, big argument on what’s better but that’s not what we’re here for.
Important to get tubes that fit too, if you’re unsure what size you have, it’s normally written on the side wall casing of the tyre, above the edges of the rim. It’s format will either be something like 26 x 1.25 or 700 x 28. The first numbers (26 for Mountain bikes, 700 for road/commuters) will be the diameter of the wheel, the second number will be the width of the tyre. Your tubes should correspond, so no putting 26″ tubes in a 700c tyre basically.
Multi-tool
Brooks Multi-tool I got for my birthday 12 years ago
Rattling bolts? wonky handlebars? squishy brakes? You never know what’s gonna come loose next eh. You thought you’d done those rack bolts up tight huh? That Redway® that hasn’t been repaved since 1982 thinks otherwise. “A person is only as good as their tools” or something-or-rather I think it goes. Invaluable and like most things in this category, essential to have in your arsenal. A lot of variety out there too depending on how you swing. A humble array of Allen keys and Phillips/Flat heads is a good minimum base to start off from.
You can get even techy-er ones that have all sorts of do-hickys and gizmos like pliers, adjustable wrenches, Dyna-plugs and the rest. Importantly, you want to keep it streamlined: hopefully we’re not going to be taking bottom brackets (you don’t even know what that is do ya eh? we got a long way to go I guess x) at the side of the road. We’re talking just the right amount of metallic instrumentation to put that seat post up a bit higher, or adjust the alignment of your brake pads so they stop squeaking. Multi-tools can set you back from £15 to £100+ depending on the tech innovation included, so play it smart, think how serious you wanna get, and stay strapped.
Helmet
Ok so let’s be honest here. I know Hands® is ‘cool’ and all that, right. And, I know I am personally not setting a good example – But, in all seriousness: I don’t have a single excuse to why I don’t wear a helmet. Of course I could hit you with the ‘I used to skate blah blah’ bollocks but ultimately, nothing is protecting my bonce from cold, hard tarmac – no matter how much hair I try and cram under my cap/beanie.
When my gf started riding a couple months back, it was one of her complete and utter non-negotiables. She had to wear a helmet or she was not riding. I respect it, I rate it and I fully endorse it. It’s the smartest thing to own and wear, without going into the benefits of it. The times of looking like a Dork® are behind us, and that’s exactly where they should be. Who gives a shit what you look like with it on? It’s there to save your life and prevent you from brain damage. It’s worth putting some funds into a decent one too. Yes – anything is better than nothing, but you also want to ensure you tick the Comfort and Function boxes – they even make ones that have lights or rain covers built into them now.
Lock
Kryptonite Evolution D-Lock
Finally, closing off and securing our Binary Code section safely; The dumbest and bulkiest, most cumbersome item on the list: The Lock.
I won’t lie, I actually hate locks. They’re heavy, they make this annoying fucking rattle when you’ve got ’em on your bike. They look dumb af when they’re hung from handlebars and most of the time (we’ve all seen the videos of the Bally Boys® angle-grinding that Electro-Trek in a city centre somewhere) they don’t even stop your bike getting robbed. But before I place my legal status in Jeopardy (all the above opinions are my own lol) they’re a good thing to carry *when* you need them.
I went to a conference a couple weeks back and stuck true to my anti-lock guns. The staff at the venue kindly let me leave my bike in a lock up while I was watching a speaker. I spent about 26 minutes with my heart rate over 180, caused by the crippling anxiety that it was in a fenced-off public area, with no lock. It was not worth the stress, at all. Locks, do not guarantee that your bike is safe. It’s a deterrent, and even then – if your bike looks nice, they’ll go for it anyway. I know friends of mine that have the Hiplock D1000 which is angle-grinder proof and the rest, but they’re like £300 – and they’re locking up e-powered cargo bikes etc so it actually makes sense.
Like I said, they are worth having. I personally use a small Kryptonite D-lock which does the job when I need it, mainly because my bikes have been worth less than the lock itself in most cases. But like all of these things, do the math. Don’t go for the cheapest on the list, don’t also end up on the opposite end of the spectrum (unless you need it) – just remember, you gotta carry that shit with you somehow.
Hardware
Baskets & Racks
Wald 1392 Basket with the built in mounts to handlebar and fork.
Now we’re getting to the fun stuff. Baskets and racks really take your bicycle’s functional utility score to the moon. Once you use a rack, you never go back amirite. The formats are:
Front racks: Usually used to support large handlebar bags or as a base to mount baskets and boxes from.
Rear racks: Normally used to attach Panniers (those rucksack looking things that hang either side of the rear wheel) but also useful to mount extras, like baskets and boxes again, on the flat surface on top.
Left – Tortec read rack (comes with a rear light but I’ve removed). Right – Brick Lane Bikes front T-rack
Imagine these aluminium climbing frames as literally that: If you can strap it on safely, it works. There’s this wicked instagram called ‘Carry Shit Olympics’ that shows how far the boundaries of Carrying Shit™ can go. My go-to combo of rack x basket at the moment is a ‘porteur’ rack (means ‘carrier’ in fancy French) which is normally standard across brands, and a Wald 137 Basket that I’ve cable-tied to the rack. Wald is the name of the manufacturer (still made in the U.S.A since 1905, wild) and the ‘137’ is the size/model. I got the 137 as it fits a 13″ laptop in a tote bag perfectly. I also have a Wald 139 which is double the size (imagine an A5 vs A4 sheet of paper) which is great for hauling even more Shit® but the way it mounts to the bike is interesting.
Left – Wald 1392 with mounts. Right – Zip tied Wald 137
It comes with mounting points to the fork and handlebar already attached to the basket which is great if you’re sans-rack. For beginners, I’d definitely recommend using something like that if you fancy dipping a toe in basket land without the extra costs of getting a fancy French rack (which in most cases, are incredibly fiddly to mount on too).
Bottle Cages
These little bits of (what commonly seem to be considered forgettable) metal, are the difference between you dying of thirst in the wilderness, or riding around with a beverage clutched between your fingers and brake levers. Neither of those options are enjoyable – a bottle cage will solve that. In most cases, they’re cheap – easily available from pretty much most bike shops and will do exactly what they say on the tin: hold your bottle on tight.
Aesthetically too, a bike without a bottle cage is incomplete. It’s even funnier when you see more modern bikes with mounting points (the little screw in bits for extras) covering the bike form front to back, without a single bottle holder. Mount it on the downtube (the diagonal bar that cuts down from your handle bars to your pedals) and you should, in most cases, be able to grab it while riding, drink, and pop it back. That’s the idea anyway – also bottle cap dependent. Bottle’s come in all shapes and sizes but most normal (think a regular Chilly’s bottle size) will fit in a regular bottle cage. It’s only when you size up to a Nalgene, Klean Kanteens and the big Stanley flasks that you’ll need to rethink your cage footprint.
Companies like Velo Orange and King Cage do cages specifically made to fit these larger containers (as well as the small ones) That aren’t only practical, but beautifully made too. There’s also adjustable ones that have a rotating knob to tighten the cage to your desired diameter. These last selection of cages are great if you’re planning on riding longer, camping or coffee outside but maybe overkill if you’re just riding to the pub for a couple. For the more simple tasks, remember: K.I.S.S (Keep it simple stupid – for those who weren’t taught it at school). Stay hydrated.
Kickstand
I will preface that the next 4 sections, aren’t a necessity at all, they’re just extra parts that either come with your bike as standard, or don’t. If they’re not there – you might not know how much of a difference they make. And if they are there, they might actually piss you off in all honesty, but I thought it’d be useful to include them as the can be considered as ‘extras’ or ‘useful upgrades.
With that being said, a kickstand. I’d never owned a bike with one until fairly recently – at first I didn’t really get it. Surely I could just lean my bike up against a solid object, right? Well sure, but those new handle bars you just put on have got a big ol’ scuff mark down the side of them now because someone didn’t lean it up correctly. There’s weirdly no argument to why or why not to have a kickstand attached other than, do you like to easily and safely know your bike can stay vertical on its own? Since I moved on from that original bike, I have actually missed being able to just prop it up when I need too. Yes the bike looks ‘sportier’ but sometimes, once you’ve got your basket on, swept handlebars and bags attached, it isn’t about sport anymore.
Even the simple task of loading a basket – just being able to have the rear end of the bike supported while you cram stuff on is a nice little extra. Things do admittedly get precarious when you maybe overload it and end up with the front wheel + rack and basket combo have the tendency to violently spin off balance and send your bike flying. But big brain geniuses like Velo Orange again – make this wicked little spring you can mount to your fork and downtube that increases the tension, avoiding any unexpected mishaps due to weight. You’ll find kickstands on most dutch-style city bikes, and that’s for a reason – they’re so useful using them in a city.
Fenders
These were what I was referring to when I prefaced these final four items – fenders (or mudguards) are wicked and extremely useful (and they look sick) but, they’re a pain in the chamois to put on most of the time, the nice looking ones are expensive af, and their usefulness is only recognised when it’s raining, which is the point lol. If you’re going in the direction of full fenders (i.e they cover the whole front and back wheel) your options are vast. Fundamentally they all do the same thing, but depending on the material used, you can dictate how easy they are to go on, how much noise they make and how bulletproof they are.
SKS Bluemels are a good start. They go for around £30 or so and are a plastic composite with aluminium struts supporting them. They’ll take a bit of a battering and won’t buckeroo you off if you accidentally suck up a stick which is a big plus. Also, if you go for the silver finish too, they look just as good as the more expensive options such as Honjo, VO again, and most of the Sim Works collab stuff. On the other side of the fender spectrum, is stuff that’s a bit more lightweight and inconspicuous. These nifty little inventions that fold under your seat called Ass Savers. I had one of these on my fixed gear years ago and they actually did save my ass a couple times. The cheap, super easy to add on,
Saddle
Brooks B17S – Shorter length for women.
Ok – I feel like this is the 17th Hot Take™ for this entire article so far, but, that’s maybe why we’re all here right? We want real-deal human-made reviews and opinions, and I guess we’re gonna get ’em. Here we go: ‘Comfy’ saddles are a myth. I’m talking the ones with the extra gel pads and shit that look like an armchair. They are (not only aesthetically, but functionally too) Full-on Nonsense. There is not a single saddle out there, that will be comfortable when you first start riding a bike consistently. It doesn’t matter how much squiggy gel has been injected into the cheeks of the seat, your ass is gonna hurt regardless if you’re only riding your bike once or twice a month. Want a comfy saddle? you might have to ride a bit more. It’s like getting a nice, new pair of comfy shoes. That air bubble isn’t gonna stop the blisters on the back of your ankles, or your toes being pinched together. What do you do? Wear them more. It’s the same with saddles.
I fully understand how you might feel if it’s your first time getting on a bike and the last thing you want to rest your bum on is a 3D-printed carbon fibre Pringle shaped thing. Surely, the next logical step must be to get the plump-est, most cushioned saddle you can find? Wrong. The correct answer is to psychologically accept the fact that when you decide to start riding a bike, It is going to be uncomfortable. That is the point. You can try and soften saddles and adjust its height so it’s slammed to the top of the frame like a BMX but all it’s gonna do, is make you hate it. You want something that will fit to your shape downstairs, and support it at the correct height too.
Left – B17S, Centre – B17 Special – Right – C17 Cambium.
Because not only is it just about insuring your nether-regions aren’t getting bruised, it’s also to make sure you can actually pedal the bike. If you’ve ever wondered why your knees hurt after riding a bike, it’s because your saddle isn’t high enough. I know – blew my mind the first time I found that out too. When your saddle is too low, you put a ridiculous amount of strain on your knee joints, which in turn, results in a really horrible ache in your knees. The second you start to send that saddle to the sky, you’ll literally feel the pain evaporate. Try it, and if I’m full of shit then comment below.
Pedals
I was indecisive about whether or not to include pedals on this list, just because they are, in a lot of cases, just an after thought. I also wasn’t going to include a Handlebars section because I felt that by that point I would be basically suggesting to change everything your bike came shipped with. But, Pedals are pretty inexpensive and relatively easy to switch up. Bars on the other hand can be spenny, and a can of worms if you don’t know what you’re doing. Anyway, the reason I thought I would add these was because they made such a huge difference to my gf’s riding ability that it was hard to ignore.
The bike she was riding previously was a classic Halfords special Ladies Bike®. Weirdly, the pedals that it shipped with, were tiny. I didn’t actually notice at first, it was only when I rode it once after servicing her brakes that I realised just how small and plastic they were. I’d wondered why she was always struggling with setting off, they’d always be some sort of adjustment before she could start riding a bike when lights changed or once a car had passed. I mentioned to her and she confirmed that “yeah, it’s really hard to get my foot on there properly”. I had a spare pair of MKS lambda pedals and swapped hers out for them. The difference was night and day. Other than the fact that they supported almost her entire foot now, they let her get more power into the bike and therefore more stability.
They’re also pretty nice to look at which is always a bonus. I know I’ve heard before that the most important parts of enjoying a bike are getting your ‘contact points’ (Bars/grips, Saddle and Pedals) right. This upgrade will obviously be dependent on what your bike has already shipped with, and how big ya feet are. Look for something that’ll give you a nice amount of support and platform, and leave the clip-ins for the Professionals™.
Software
Bags
Finally, we arrive at my personal favourite – the accessories. This is the stuff that really sucked me down the rabbit hole when I first started riding again. I’d owned and ridden multiple bikes before, but other than the odd sticker here and there, I’d never really given it a bit more personality than a couple skate stickers slapped on the top tube.
My dad likes to remind me of how much I disliked his Panniers he added to his Marin back in the day. I thought they made it look like an ‘old mans’ bike. Tbf, I was a kid, and now, considering I’m basically an old man, panniers are back baby. It was only when I first saw a picture of a fully loaded Rivendell, ready for a camping trip, that I began to feel new synapses connecting in my brain. I’d always had this idea of a mythical ‘dream bike’ in my head, but I had never seen, or known that it was possible, and did in fact exist. Handlebar bags, frame bags, stem bags, saddle bags, pannier bags, fork bags – the whole shebang. The moment was then cemented when I came across this video not long after finding that pic. What the hell is this shop called ‘Blue Lug‘? Why do I feel like I’ve been here before? (I hadn’t) Something felt familiar. It was like the first time I went to the original Slam City Skates store in Neal’s Yard. I felt at home, regardless of the fact I was watching this random dude’s YouTube video, thousands of miles away.
Anyway, I digress. You get the gist. Bags are fucking cool anyway, and they’re even cooler on a bike – not only that, but they’re fucking useful too lol. My personal everyday bag for my bike is a stem bag. They’re normally designed to carry a water bottle, but they double up perfectly for carrying your tools, lights, phone and anything else you need at a short reach while riding. My gf has gone for a similarly placed option from Outershell, but attached to the handlebars instead.
There’s so many options out there that it really is up to you, and your riding style, on how and what you use, I feel that my job is more of one to alert you to their existence. Places like Tokyo bike stock a load of bits from Blue Lug, Fairweather, RAL and Outershell. Also, Freshtripe in Cambridge carry a wicked selection from Swift Industries. And The Woods Cyclery has some niche bits from Ron’s Bikes occasionally. There’s also some awesome UK-based companies like Wizard Works,Zola Works & BitsByBee that are independent, local and rad – they’ll also put together custom designs or colour variations for you if you’re into that sorta shit.
Finally there’s Lancashire-based Carradice; an oldskool ‘made in England’ brand. I’ve been using their Nelson bag for longer trips and camping. Other than it being a beautifully crafted product, hanging beneath a Brooks saddle, it also doesn’t break the bank (some of the other’s mentioned come in at a pretty penny).
Reflectors
Normally, the first thing I do when I get a bike (like I assume most of you) is take the plastic reflectors off. The weird ones mounted to the front and rear, and especially the ones on the wheel spokes. I haven’t changed at all, but, I have spent a considerable amount of money in the last few months, putting reflectors back on.
That’s right. No, not the spoke ones, these ones: The Blue Lug triangle reflector. mount them under your saddle, to the front of you basket, on your keys; Anywhere you might want to be seen. They’re a rad little idea and because they have every colour combination under the sun, you can match them to pretty much anything you want.There’s a couple other companies out there, one makes a similar shaped offering but its decorated to look like a pizza slice, hence the name: Safety Pizza. Blue Lug even do one that looks like a Onigiri. Genius right? The possibilities of formats these things come in are quite literally endless, so check ’em out – they’re great if you’re in a pinch at night too, they really do light up quite well.
Straps
Now you’ve got all the racks, baskets and mounts under the sun loaded on, you need to keep things strapped down. Let me introduce you to the humble Voile Strap. Built to keep all manner of shit firmly attached to parts of your bike, you might not even of intended to attach things. They come in a variety of lengths, strengths and fastenings to suit your needed application. I’m using here to hold my Nalgene water bottle to save some space elsewhere.
Alternatively, for more everyday purposes, you can find innovations on the basic bungee cord from Blue Lug, they make these incredibly versatile straps when combined with a basket. One form is the X–Strap, great for holding bags in baskets with minimal fuss.
The Cargo net is another offering from the geniuses at Blue Lug, but it is possible to pick these up from most other places too. I’ve used mine to keep my handle bar bag secured but also if I want to stuff a jumper (or anything else) quickly onto the top for easy access.
This concludes our lesson today, class. Thank you for participating, and well done if you made it this far – we’ll be picking this up over the summer with some extra-curricular activities to refresh your brains, just in case. For those of you that have stuck around till then end, take this: *Obtained Token*…
We’re gonna be holding a monthly bike clinic at Blackened Sun/Barista Culture. The whole thing is in partnership with the Crüe at Sabbath Cycles, there’s gonna be more on all of this soon enough but for now – let it be known that Hands® Resident Ryderz will get a 10% off labour on repairs or services. We want to keep you all rolling, so – big thank you to Chris, Gary, Georgie and Tom for making this all happen. Love to all of you.
Panic in the group chat. Uh oh, that’s our ride gone.
“Jack joined the waiting list this morning and got one within the hour, just try it”
Anyone would have thought we were off to see Oasis.
“Why would you need tickets for a bike ride? I’ll just ride along side you” – technically, not wrong.
“There’s like token things. For drinks at the stop halfway round…”
Well, now, we were well and truly fuc-
“Hang on, I’ve just had an email…”
We were in fact, going on a bike ride in Cambridge. And fortunately, some dumb legend (me) booked two extra tickets though didn’t I.
“See you in the morning at 7, leaving for half past boys”
The state of us lot. Honestly – Worth every ounce of panic lol.
Looking back at the photos now, I’m a shite photographer (I never actually claimed to be one to be fair) but the only reason they’re terrible is because we had such a great day. I don’t know why but we were treating it like Christmas; I think I even went to bed early Friday, regardless of the fact we were riding on Sunday.
My Dad had given his B17 Carved a fresh coat of beeswax, Resident Riderz® Tom, Jack, Jamie and Jan all cushioned atop of a variety of Birmingham built cult classics: Swift, B17 Special, Team pro. We felt like a proper bunch of nerds off to ComicCon. We were.
I was excited to finally see the place that’d I’d sunk the remainder of my last pay checks before going full time on Hands® – Bicycle Ambulance (A.K.A Freshtripe). I’d bought enough niche Japanese bicycle parts from them in the last 8 months that I felt I knew these guys on a genuine, personal level.
Anyway, as per: Play it cool.
The title to this article is 100% fictional, but when we turned up – you could almost hear each other’s inner voices.
Other than Crusty Cruise last month, this was the second outing we’d had as the Hands® Engagement & Leisure Liaison (also known as H.E.L.L®) and this time, it was with the Big Bois™ (Not that Craig isn’t a Big Boi™ but he hasn’t had people sitting on him since 1866).
The ride was great, and beautiful. We stopped for scones and strawberries, rode some more. Stopped for a beer in a town with no off-license. Rode some more, tried to get ice-cream opposite Kings College. Rode some more and ended up back at Bicycle Ambulance where Stef (Boss man) made everyone an Aperol Spritz. Me, my Dad and Jan, chewed the ears off of Sam from BA and Simon who was shooting photos and surprisingly, we didn’t piss ’em off. I even left with a new pair of Albatrosses for the Diamondback. Wonderful bunch of dudes, and hopefully will be riding with them again, home and away, soon.
Hello everyone. Welcome if you’re new, welcome back if you’re not. I’m writing to you from the comfort of my bed – was on a big ride round Cambridge and its surrounding hamlets yesterday with Brooks, the saddle makers. I’m knackered but had a lot of fun, blog post incoming. I had to get up early to get everything ready for today (probably could have scheduled this but I’m not a professional). Nothing crazy, just making sure it works etc, I’m not even sure it does.
Anyway. The reflective t-shirts I’ve been teasing about IRL and OL are now up for pre-order. There’s a link to the store up in the top right of this page or here for email readers. We’re doing it like this because I do not have the money, space or time to carry stock – Like I said, I ain’t gone Pro® yet but this gets it closer. If I fuck it up the first time round, we’ll have it fixed the second. I’m a mistake-making Human Being™, but I’m very sure we’re all in agreement that we’d rather a have a dumb ape with Hands® doing this than Skynet.
Speaking of dumb apes – Real 100% human beings not from concentrate made this shit happen. Jay the absolute gent from Forty Forty Printhouse printed these up for us in the same studios we all work from. I got introduced to him by Resident Riderz® Rich & Jan so this is well and truly a Milton Keynes labour of love. Jay also rides bikes, listens to hardcore, likes clothes and basically just Get’s It®. He knew what I was trying to do the second I said “Can we make it 3M?”. We ran the road testers to friends and family to begin with just to see if they’d hold up a battering. They do. If these go down a treat, there’ll be more. we just had to K.I.S.S this first time round before getting too cocky.
Finally, pre-order will shut next Monday (02/06) so you’ve got the whole of this week to figure out if you want one.
There was always going to be something a bit mentally ambitious about trying to convince your friends to stand around a gas stove in the woods with you at 8:00am on a Sunday morning. And considering we’d never done this before, I think we struck gold. – Coffee outside is super fun.
After the brief threat of clouds and rain via Apple weather, we were treated to another Perfect Blue®. I do have to say, as much as I’m enjoying the weather this last couple months, it does make me worry for the greenery. 20ºC for the last 3 weeks is great for riding bikes and all, until you have to do important things like pollenate crops and balance the water table etc. Winter felt especially rough this year and it’s nice that the Sun gods felt compelled to make it up to us all, but you know when something doesn’t feel ‘normal’ anymore? All that being said, the woods are beautiful at that time. lime green leaves are starting to appear, bluebells are carpeting the floor. We picked a little picnic spot and set up our stoves. Pots of Carlo’s Concrete Cowboy bubble away. I actually think we over-stimulated ourselves to be honest.
The general consensus afterwards was that we should try and do this way more regularly. There’s some even more beautiful spots to pull up too as well (Not that I’ve been to Sequoia National Park before but there’s a section to the south that we passed that could pass easily if you wanted to fool someone lol).
Thank you to all the Worm Getters anyway, wonderful turnout and it makes me so so stoked every time a new face turns up. Catch you all at the next one. Enjoy the snaps!
Before we joined The Crüe® for HANDS002, we were busy crossing the border – a couple of Buckinghamshire fugitives, ditching the grid-system for some good ol’ fashioned Victorian terracotta brick and mortar. Here’s some ‘candid’ snaps I took while riding/trying to manually focus and set aperture.
We met Bill, Paul and Alex back on the severly Rain-Damaged® HANDS001. They braved the cold, rode the train 10 minutes to Milton Keynes – and ended up riding all the way back to N-town due to cancelled trains (Yes – the weather really was that bad.)
Given the vibes they brought on our maiden voyage (and being the mad bunch of bastards they are) we thought it was only fair that we return the gesture in their manor. I’d been wanting to ride in Northampton for a while and they really put on a spread for us – This was the inaugural Inter-county Foreign Exchange Programme. Yellow Bourbon Coffee Roasters, The Orangery at Delapre Abbey, and topping it all off at V&B’s in the town centre.
I really have to admit, Northampton and its surrounding area is sick. Maybe it’s just me but I think we should be entertaining the idea more that these guys are only just up the road. There’s going to be a couple more of these rides booked in extracurricularly so keep an eye out. Anyway, Love to NN’s Bill, Paul, Alex, Dale, Jason and Andy – and Hands® Resident Riders: Rich, Jamie and Tom.
Midway through summer last year, my girlfriend (Ellie) went to visit her Nan and Grandad for the weekend. There was no space for me to stay with her so I stayed at home – no biggie. I had no plans, the weather was looking alright and I needed to nurse the remnants of an xtra-lite hangover I’d picked up from the day before. I’d received signal that some mates would be about later in the afternoon so thought I’d spend the initial two thirds of the day out on my bike.
I’d just bought this bike brand new (looking back now: stupidly expensive, but who cares?)and had spent nearly every day riding it since it arrived. We’re your average Driverless™ couple so had mutually made the decision to find ourselves a form of transportation in lieu of owning a car and the bike seemed the logical and cheap (LOL) choice. I hadn’t bought a bike in over 10 years and hadn’t ridden consistently since the beginning of lockdown – Ellie had never ridden a bike at all, except for the two or three Lime bike rides that led to our wheel-based epiphany. I’m about a month back into it at this point and had worked out the majority of the links and routes to get me around Milton Keynes; I grew up here but hadn’t ridden since I stopped skateboarding and moved away. This day was different though, I had nowhere I needed to be, and nowhere I needed to go.
It was a pretty standard hot summer’s day ride and I meandered about leisurely. Rode past the lakes, stopped at the Peace Pagoda, all the good stuff (right?). By late afternoon, I’d bumped into some of the Crew® at the Theatre District and was planning to make my way closer to home for the evening. I hadn’t used Google Maps all day – it wasn’t a super-direct-responsive-fast-commuter-travel kinda day. But for some reason (maybe a combo of heat stroke and Hair-of-the-dog) I felt compelled to use SatNav™ to guide me a Casa safely.
Nothing out of the regular right, I knew The Route to get me home. But today, for whatever reason, once the directions loaded, the app instructed me to ride through Linford Wood. Now, I’d never bothered with this route before, no real reason why. I just thought it wasn’t sending me in the right direction (I now refer to this as Car-Brain: navigating yourself as a pedestrian/cyclist/etc in the same manner as a car). I thought to myself “Fuck it, why not?” It’s bright, it’s warm and the route takes the same amount of time without cycling next to a main road orup a hill. I took the route and the map didn’t lie – it was just as fast as my usual, and it got me back in one piece. Not really anything exceptional about Google’s ability to provide GPS navigation but whatever, right?… Except, maybe, for one thing.
Now before I go on – it’s probably worth mentioning, at some length, that I’d respectfully picked up the hangover, mentioned at the beginning, drinking (surprise, surprise…) in London the night before. And said drinking was in celebration, not solely but in part, due to Ellie having a little letter published in the newspaper. She’d been riled up by a bad case of Shit Journalism™ about our dearly beloved ‘MK’ and had responded to an article discussing Labour’s proposals for new ‘New Towns’. Milton Keynes – justifiably in some cases, unjustifiably in others – gets a bad wrap. Roundabouts, concrete cows, MK Dons? Tell me something new. In all honestly, I don’t expect anyone who hasn’t spent more than 5 fucking minutes here to see it in any other way, considering the only landmarks you see by car are literally: roundabouts, The Concrete Cows™ and Stadium MK, so complaints about the city’s blandness from commuters and day-trippers make sense, but they still ring kinda empty.
Anyway, this little article Ellie decided to reply to was an interview with a leading British Architect who was chatting shit about ‘MK’, which is funny because – and personally I believe – there are two demographics of people who see Milton Keynes for what it actually is and can critically comment on its design: Architects and Skateboarders.
So – as a ‘retired’ (tired) Skateboarder myself, I remember the ridiculous number of professional skateboarders (athletes: now that’s its in the olympics lol) that would fly from the other side of the fucking planet to come and skate the humble ‘bus station’ and how they still talk, to this day, about the mythical marble ledges and flooring of this infamous skate plaza (if you thought the Foo Fighters coming to town was craaazzzyyy, you never saw P-Rod skating the DC Pad). Does a single soul outside of the skate community know how revered Milton Keynes is globally, let alone ‘MK’ citizens and the council (cough cough)? And given the (dis)respect the community has received over the years, all things considered, if anyone’s permitted to chat crud about this place, its us.
In the same way, through meeting Ellie (who is in the final stages of a PhD in Shopping Centre architecture), I learnt that architects adore Milton Keynes. Even better – the people who designed Milton Keynes adored architecture. It might be hard to believe, but underneath all of the ridiculous monstrous shit that keeps popping up, is the DNA of Mies, Corbusier and the rest. The amount of detail they painstakingly put into every millimetre of this ‘City’ (Development Corporation logos under every paving slab etc etc), you start to get the idea that they actually cared when designing it. And it wasn’t just the city centre: the housing developments, the flood plains and balancing lakes, the cycle and pedestrian infrastructure, the close-knit communities – the entire bloody city was planned like this on purpose: for people to love and enjoy.
So – this article. Unfortunately for those architects (and us) the crystal ball hadn’t and still hasn’t been invented yet, so neither of us expected it to turn out like this…but what is this? Well, at the moment, ‘this’ is: Urban Sprawl® and lack of Green Space™, according to this guy:
Look – I’m gonna try and wrap this up now as I think it speaks for itself, but everything I’m trying to say boils down to this. This city gets a lot of things wrong, for sure. And it’s pretty polarising for a lot of people outside of its perimeter. I don’t expect everyone to understand what ‘MK’ is and I don’t think that everyone should. But given the state of things at the moment (not even worth mentioning lol), I feel that even with all of its flaws and stereotypes, there’s something here that we should be proud of and that we can enjoy. Maybe there’s something here that other places could learn from too, irrespective of those borrrrring stereotypes that Milton Keynes can’t seem to shake.
—
Riding home that late afternoon, just as I mounted the path to enter Linford Wood, I saw two deer. In broad daylight, about ten metres in front of me. Smack bang in the middle of ‘MK’. Not even 24 hours after that article was published: our infamous Urban Sprawl® and lack of Green Space™, and here I am staring at fucking Bambi. I was born here in ’94, moved away in 2017 and I’ve only seen deer a) driving through the Chilterns at night and b) in Clissold Park.
I’d already loosely had the idea to start Hands® by this point, but this was the moment that cemented it. We all know there are deer everywhere in the UK, and yes, we have all seen deer before. But the last place any of us would expect to see one (let alone two) is right in the heart of the ‘concrete-grey dystopia’ that is supposedly Milton Keynes.
