Spotted in Manchester

One of the things I have noticed since starting this blog is how many interesting bikes I see parked up around Manchester.  I have recently been noticing a lot of vintage bicycles around, in addition to a few interesting new bikes.  When I can do so without looking too abnormal, I take pictures of the bikes I see around town.

A Raleigh “Conniosseur,” spotted at Sainsbury’s in Fallowfield.  By the look of things the bike seems to be very similar to the Raleigh Sports.  I think it goes together well with the Tourist in the middle picture.

A very similar Raleigh to the one above, this time branded as the “Transit.”  I doubt modern Raleigh would name any of their bikes the “Transit.”

A Batavus BUB parked outside Piccadilly station.  One of the few bikes I have ever read about at the prototype stage and seen come to market, it looks like quite a comfortable ride.  One was given away as the grand prize in the LGRAB summer games.  The frame design was inspired by a paperclip.

A well looked-after rod-brake roadster, a Humber according to Sheldon Brown, identifiable by the unusual fork:

Curiously, I think I may have once bid on this very bike on eBay, before it got a bit too expensive for me.

A huge double top-tube Pashley Roadster, with my Tourist to the right for scale, and a Pashley Princess to the right of that.

I’m guessing whoever owns this bike is incredibly tall.

There are some very nice old and new bicycles around Manchester.  There are plenty of crap-heaps too, but they are less photogenic.

Old Dutch

Before I found the Raleigh Tourist, I came across the Batavus Old Dutch online.  I have recently had the chance to have a proper look at one up close, parked up outside work.  The bike is priced around the £350 mark, which is quite reasonable considering some of the components on the bike.  On closer inspection however, some of the component choices of the Batavus are quite baffling.

The bike has the usual mudguards, chain case, skirt guard, rack and dynamo lights you would expect from this kind of bike.  The saddle appears to be a pretty basic affair, the frame is nicely lugged, although I think that the seat tube angle is a bit steep for this kind of bike.

The Old Dutch comes with a SRAM 3 speed internal hub gear with coaster brake.  It is odd to see SRAM internal hub gears on a bike in this price range because of the three main manufacturers of internal hub gears (Sturmey Archer and Shimano being the other two), SRAM are by far and away the most expensive.

Presumably because of the expensive rear hub, Batavus decided to cut corners on the front-end of the bike:

The front end of the bike has a rather uncharacteristic calliper brake instead of a drum brake, and the dynamo is a bottle dynamo rather than a hub dynamo.  I am curious as to why Batavus would choose such an expensive rear hub only to pair it with such low-end components on the front.  For the same money as this set up they could have used a Sturmey-Archer or Shimano 3-speed coaster brake hub on the rear wheel and a Sturmey drum brake and dynamo hub on the front (or a Shimano roller brake and dynamo hub if they wanted to go down the Shimano route).

Having seen one of these bikes up close, I am quite glad I ended up finding the Raleigh Tourist instead.