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The Bespoked Handmade Bike Show has begun at Lee Valley Velopark in London, and we’ve been for a wander round the halls to bring you a bumper gallery of the coolest stuff we’ve spotted so far.
To the uninitiated, there is always plenty of custom paint, lovely lugs and Chris King headsets on display amongst the mostly independent makers exhibiting at the show, and a fine selection of one-off quirky bikes that you will certainly not find in Halfords.
The bike above from Salitter Cycles, for example, is completely handbuilt and painted by the brand’s founder Sarah Green, who was one of four fledgling makers to be awarded a SRAM exclusivity scholarship. The winners were all given a booth at the show and top-end components from SRAM to kit out their bikes.
Another one of these winners was Avalanche Cycles of Paris, who wowed us with this as-of-yet unnamed custom carbon racer that has plenty of intricate details, while holding a candle for the humble rim brake.
Avalanche actually weaved this carbon seattube themselves, and it’s been through many iterations to pair it with the right clamp to hold it perfectly in place. There’s also a pattern on the top tube that matches a tattoo on its owner’s arm (the lighting in the room didn’t quite allow us to photograph this properly) which is a very neat detail.
In terms of pure custom-painted excellence, we were most impressed with this offering from Quirk Cycles…
The Japanese-inspired road bike is completely hand-painted by Lucia Bru-Alva and features intricate details such as Japanese trees and a house on the down tube and seat tubes. That crank is 3D-printed, as are the dropouts.
Rob Quirk told us: “Look closely and you will see Japanese landscape scenes and gold inlay. The frame is also adorned with many 3D printed parts, especially beautiful are the clean lines of the integrated seat clamp and cluster.”
There seemed to be noticeably less wooden bikes than in previous years, but Hereford-based Twmpa Cycles were back again with an impressive display of wooden excellence.
The brand’s new Urban 1.0 has some lovely details, and comes complete with a belt drive.
While there is way too much in the gallery to rattle through the lot, we had to give a special mention to this exhibition put together in tribute to the late, great Mike Burrows. The bike designer died in August, and a number of his innovations are on display at the show including the famous Ratracer recumbent.
As well as numerous trinkets and trophies Burrows amassed over the years, if you visit the show you’ll also find his track bike that inspired the Lotus 108 that Chris Boardman rode to a (now defeated) hour record in 1996, and his fascinating Gordon city bike.
We’ll leave you with this retro mountain bike-inspired madness from R.G Evans & Co, which we’re crowning the most Bespoked bike at Bespoke this year. Enjoy the rest of the gallery!
road.cc is also on the judging panel to choose the best road bike in show, and we’ll update you when the winner has been announced. You can also find out more about the brand new Spoon Customs Sestriere Scandium Disc in our Tech of the Week round-up tomorrow.
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