Works Manager Steven Green presents Phil Webb with his Employee of the Year trophy.
Last week at the Smethwick Works, a small ceremony took place to honour our 2012 Brooks Employee of the Year.
Since his initial short spell with us way back in 1971, Phillip Webb has found himself at times elsewhere employed, but like the proverbial bad penny, he always come back. This, of course, is the only tendency which Phil shares with a bad penny. In all other respects he’s an excellent guinea, so to speak. And fortunately, his most recent stint has lasted thus far since 2004.
Excuse our French. A pair of knees at 2011′s Anjou Vélo Vintage. Photo by Edouard Sepulchre.
At the end of last year, we took a run through some of the finer cycling themed calendars available for 2013. If you got your hands on one of them we have a couple of dates for you to circle, or place exclamation marks around with a big black marker.
Actually, these dates are worth circling on any 2013 calendar, regardless of whether it has pictures of bicycles or not.
Nor in fact does the marker have to be black; let us stress again that these dates are worth keeping in mind.
Talk about seasonal! If you want a Kara Ginther for Christmas, you’re cutting it very fine.
With 2012 drawing to a close, the team here at Brooks England Social Media Services Inc. has unanimously decided that it would be an act of Gross Unkindness on our part were we to continue, day in, day out, enthralling our subscribers with the sort of compelling images and reading material for which we have become famous, all the way up to Christmas morning and beyond toward New Year’s, given that even a sub-standard-quality Brooks Blog post renders the typical reader unable to constructively focus on, or talk about, anything else until he or she has had a full night’s sleep, said Vicious Circle of post-reading-sleeping-new-post-reading-sleeping being entirely non-conducive to the successful acquisition of presents for family and friends at a time of the year when family and friends are kind of expecting to receive presents in exchange for the ones they have given.
The 2014 Tour de France’s Prolog, as well as its first couple of road stages will be taking place somewhere in England, according to reports which reached us last week.
Yorkshire has been definitively chosen as site for the curtain raising time trial, but beyond that, details remain to be fully thrashed out.
Brooks Head Of Marketing Andrea Meneghelli on a visit to the Moulton Works and Estate in 2010.
The sad news has been conveyed by a spokesperson from the Moulton Bicycle Company that inventor of the eponymous and well loved bicycle, Dr. Alex Moulton, passed away peacefully on Sunday last at the age of 92.
Moulton was an expert designer and developer in several fields throughout his long career, but among cyclists he will be best remembered for the iconic two-wheelers which bore his name.
Fans of any sport delight in comparing its champions across different eras, or attempting to, at least. Would Dempsey have beaten Tyson? Might Borg have foxed Federer? Perhaps Rees would have been too much for Taylor? It’s a futile exercise, of course, but it fuels Mankind’s eternal quest to answer: Who is Greatest Of All Time?
This is all by way of saying that a package landed on the desk at Boultbee Towers recently, giving us amateur cycling historians cause to once again ponder the conundrum.
The Brooks Works at Smethwick is well known as a popular port of call with people whose passions revolve around the human powered and two wheeled. Barely a week passes without some writer or photographer or documentary film maker rolling by to absorb the sights, sounds and smells of this icon of British manufacturing and design.
And so it was that Ben Wilson took one of his classes up to see us in Birmingham last year.
The B72′s patented Loop Suspension warrants this saddle’s position in our “Unique” category. The B72 is a good example of our Unique line of saddles.
As most who have browsed there will be hopefully aware, the Brooks England online shop lays out its collection of fine leather cycling saddles into a number of various categories.
For starters, we thematically divide up pieces according to their likely purpose, e.g., saddles best taken for frequent heavy mileage trips are in the Touring and Trekking section, while the saddles designed for a completely upright riding position are gathered under City and Heavy Duty.
That bike was a pale pink color only two hours ago. Suncream, people!
Of course, at the Brooks Blog we try to stay on top of all the important bike stuff. Purely, you’ll understand, in order that our subscribers can go out into the Conversational World, secure in the knowledge that they won’t be trumped by anybody on Bike Talk. Obscure fashion labels, bespoke frame builders, technological breakthroughs… it’s all here, right?
Paris Brest Paris is one of the toughest races, perhaps THE toughest if ridden on antique machinery.
The 1931 Paris-Brest-Paris is remembered as one of the most remarkable, from an era when the event occurred in the professional racing calendar once every ten years. After nearly 750 Miles, 49 hours of continuous racing, and numerous attempts to break away from a field that included Tour de France champions, the young Australian, Hubert Opperman ( Oppy ) won a frantic sprint from four competitors, swooping off the high bank of the Parc de Princess velodrome.
