By On the language border of the French and Swiss-German speaking Swiss communities, there’s a village that sits on the French speaking side called Jaun, and where everyone speaks German as a primary language. Jaun is the Swiss-German name for the village, and Bellegarde is its French name. Confusing I know.
Epic! The Helvetic Phoebus Mutaped
It’s weird how things happen in a sequence and seemingly unconnected, until one thing joins them all up. In this case, the ‘one thing’ is a catalogue from a Swiss company long since gone. My friend Stefan, who you made have read about before (see links at bottom of page),
A soulful bicycle which carries the name of a true cycling raconteur; Raphael Geminiani
My soulful, 1956 French Randoneur needs a new headset. I should’ve replaced it when I brought it back to life 4 years ago, but it worked reasonably well and it’s an odd size to find a new replacement. I bought the bicycle as a ‘project’ on eBay from a location
The ‘Do-it-Yourself’ TT bike – The Final Part
As a follow-on to the two previous posts about this Time Trial (TT) bike build (if you haven’t read them before, you can check them out by just putting ‘Time Trial’ into the search bar), I can announce, that the last piece of the TT bike jigsaw has finally turned
“I want to ride my bicycle” – The ‘make-it-yourself’ Time Trial bike – Part 2a.
Welcome to Part 2a (which you may read before Part 1) to my TT bike build. It’s taken a bit longer than I anticipated to build the bike, which shouldn’t normally take more than a day to go from ‘parts-to-ride’, but instead, it has taken 3 months, to date. This
The ‘Make-it-Yourself’ Time Trial bike – Part 1
Question: Have you ever made a model kit by companies like Airfix, Revell, Tamiya, IKEA or followed a complicated knitting or crochet pattern? Well here’s the same make-it-yourself format, but applied to a Time Trial bike. Much, much more information, instructions, pictures and wait for it, a ROAD TEST, will
The rare Swiss Barn Find
The bike featured here was for me, a genuine barn find, in that it was in the upstairs hay loft of a massive Swiss barn when I first set eyes on it for real. Before we say any more about the bike, lets just deal with this ‘barn find’ phenomenon
Tour de France Cinderella shoes
Two people meet at a party one summer evening in the middle of France somewhere, and in late June, 1975. They are dancing that evening to songs like ‘Jive Talking’ by The Bee Gees. They are having fun, fuelled by a couple of glasses of champagne. This means they are
Nice salami sir. Is that bicycle yours?
9 times out of 10, when you’re driving down the road in the Car, and one of the passengers spots something he/she/they want to stop and look at, either you’re going too fast to stop, there’s another car behind you, there’s nowhere to park or, you just can’t be arsed.
Born in a windmill and by the sea; The Punk-Bike
How can an example of the worlds most efficient form of human powered transport (the bicycle) be inspired by two cars, a classic motorcycle design, Easy Rider, The Black Keys, and an iconic bicycle sport category? Well, read on to find out…….. The man that made this Punk bike both
