Living South - Wheels of Fortune

Peter Vaughan pedals back in time to explore the long history of Deptford's Witcomb Cycles

When you think of custom tailored suits you think of Saville Row; when you think of handmade shirts you think of Jermyn Street. But when you think of a custom made bicycle, chances are that you wouldn't think of Tanner's Hill in Deptford. This, however, is where the last remaining shop in London specialising in building you a one-off bicycle to your measurements has its home.

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The concept of taking time over things to get them just right - to enjoy the journey as much as the arrival - is gaining momentum again in our culture. Witcomb Cycles has always built bikes in this way, holistically taking the best ingredients, making sure that they suit the rider, planning the end product and then constructing it using other local suppliers for anything from the tubing to the hand-painted logo on the headtube. It is a slow process but the end result is like a meal from your own garden or a fine wine from a small chateau.

Read the full article in Living South here.

The Traditional Shops & Restaurants of London

"A gentleman," Winston Churchill once observed, "buys his hats at Locks, his shoes at Lobbs, his shirts at Harvie and Hudson, his suits at Huntsman and his cheese at Paxton and Whitfield."

Luckily for the gentlemen (and gentlewomen) among us, all of these shops and dozens more are still in business, providing the traditional British goods and food that they've been supplying Londoners for a century or more. More than fifty venerable stores and eateries, including Witcomb Cycles, are profiled in this book.

Bespoke shirt-makers, hatters, haberdashers, perfumers, bookstores, chemists, an umbrella maker, and chocolatiers are only a few of the small specialist shops included, most of which are located in the most quaint and beautiful settings in London.

The Traditional Shops & Restaurants of London: A Guide to Century-Old Establishments and New Classics
Authors: Eugenia Bell and Phil Nicholls (photo)
Publisher: Little Bookroom
Year: 2007
ISBN: 1-892145-46-4
Size: 11.94 x 14.48 x 2.79cm
Number of pages: 256
Weight: 386gr
RRP: £9.99

Not Just a Ride

On Wednesday, Matt Seaton explained in his weekly column on cycling for the Guardian why hand-crafted bikes are better:

[...] if you take your custom to an artisan operation, you are buying a bike where more of the price you pay has gone into making the bike than into subsidising the marketing campaign. You are also more likely to be offered a custom-made option. Instead of buying an off-the-peg bike in a standard size, you can buy one not yet made until your particulars have been fed through a computer program that will enable the frame-builder to size the bike precisely for you (and it doesn't have to cost a fortune; prices start at a few hundred). It's like having a tailored suit made, or a hand-stitched dress.

There is, of course, a snob value and perhaps an element of bogus mystique to the bespoke bike. But there is something special about riding a bicycle that has been designed around you. All-day comfort and the banishment of backache are the practical side. More transcendently, there is a sense of dynamic harmony, a blurring of boundaries between where you end and the bike begins.

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what you get may not, in a technical, performance-oriented sense, be as good as the off-the-shelf machine, but it will have a personality the mass-produced item can never match. That bike is not just a ride; it's a relationship.

Two wheels, Matt Seaton - The Guardian, 11 October 2007

Ernie and Barrie on ITV

While at the Cycle Show, Ernie and Barrie, were asked for a quick interview on ITV. You could say they got rather more than they wanted with our own Ernie Witcomb.

You can watch the video here on the ITN Local: London website.

Witcomb and The Incredible Shrinking Man

Here are all the symptoms of a contagious disease. My clothes hang off me; I spend hours each week soaked in sweat; I am half the man I was. I am a cyclist.

Such was the shocking confession made by Andrew Gilligan, best known for his 2003 report about a British government briefing paper on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, recently made in the Evening Standard, where he is now a columnist.

The article, while extolling the virtues of commuting cycling and debunking a few myths, explains how cycling has helped the writer lose weight; almost 30kg (about 4 stones) in 14 months.

A good fifth of the double page spread was taken up by a picture of Mr Gilligan and his bike, revealing it to the astonished world to be, you have guessed it, a Witcomb bicycle, a mountain-bike.

The incredible shrinking man, Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard, 18 September 2007.

(The picture showed on the link below has unfortunately been cropped differently from the one in the paper)