Cyclokairos

…they pull you back in. Mudguards. If I had to pick one style of bicycle as my favourite, it would be one in the style of a classic French randonneur. They have mudguards and various bikes I own or have owned have sported them. When building up The Other Green Bike over the winter, I had a stab at fitting a set but in failing to get a pleasing fender line (the American English name sounds better than mudguard in this context) with the rear wheel, I gave up. Well, despite a year of repeated heatwaves, the driest July on record, and drought for much of the UK, I had another go.

The trick with getting the rear mudguard to match the curve of the rear wheel was raising the point of attachment at the seat stay bridge. With my preference for a 700×35 tyre, clearance is tight there, tighter than on The Green Bike, where I crimped the guard around the seat stays. A section of a metal bracket did the job of raising the mudguard, and although out of sight I curved the edges of the bracket with a washer acting as the template to give it a more stylish look.

With the randonneur bug biting, I dusted off a front rack that had last seen service on a The Purple Bike (that is also white) in one of its previous incarnations. Plenty of faff: a spacer to stop the strut from the fork crown rubbing against the lower cup of the headset; curving said strut in such a way to avoid the straddle-cable hanger of the brake hitting it; and a cut down wine bottle cork to provide a third point of contact (all full-length mudguards, front and back, should have three points of contact to avoid rattling).

The bike is as close as I’ve ever got to a Randonneur. What would I change? A French fit of a fistful of seat post and drop handlebars. One day, one day.