This lovely couple is custom-built for the “Villa Cavrois”, located just outside of Roubaix, for their employees and associates. The Villa Cavrois is now a museum and used to be the residence of a textile industry dynasty, the Cavrois family, who had it built in the 1920s strongly influenced by modernist design and architecture concepts, inspired by movements of the time such as the Bauhaus.
Not the best conditions in the workshop this month due to the cold. The oven was doing its best and the participants of the frame building course were working files and hacksaws to keep warm. We had exciting projects going on during the courses, two frames came back from paint and are now fully assembled, ready to hit the road. I have a lovely photo story to share from Remi, who has documented his project from start to finish.
2023 has begun with a few exciting projects. Some were finished, quite a few are work in progress at different stages. Beginning with this year I would like to share more of what’s happening in the workshop. The plan is to have a little update once per month. I realise that I’m already running a bit late for January :). With all the projects going on, I have not been as diligent in the past year to post regular updates on social media. I find it harder and harder to keep up. So I will focus to keep my site up to date as much as possible.
France has a great network of high-speed trains, the TGV (train à grande vitesse), and it is possible to cross the entire country in just half a day by train in great comfort. The trains are usually very punctual and reliable, and at 300 km/h an amazing piece of technology. It becomes quite problematic though, when you want to take your bicycle on-board, especially if you don’t want to or cannot take it apart.
During the time of confinement to slow down the spread of the Coronavirus, cities around the world are taking advantage of the lower amount of traffic (car traffic that is) to implement larger lanes and more space for bicycles. In Berlin they are even called “Corona Bike Lanes”. Of course, the best way to slow down the spread of the virus is to stay home. But when moving, what better and healthier way to get from A to B is there than the bicycle.
The only thing possibly better than riding on a custom bike made to your measures and specific needs is building it yourself. Unfortunately there are not many places where you can do that.
So when friends asked me if they could come by and if I could teach them how to build their own steel bicycle frame I thought, sure, why not...
... This summer, during a 2500km bike trip across France, I have put my confidence in German technology and tested the probably lightest set up you can find in the market to reliably charge devices on the go while riding at average Joe speed: The Velogical three-phase generator and the geeky “Forumslader”
When I first heard about the event at the beginning of this year I got immediately excited: a race of traditionally built bicycles in the style of the great French builders of the 1940s and 50s. Bikes and designated riders have to pass three different tests, a 235km long road race with more than 4000m of altitude gain, a 55km time trial up and down a mountain, and 70km of gravel tracks, three days in a row in the beautiful area of Ambert, in the region of Auvergne.
