by Michael Smith
This year's Cycle Show at Earl's Court did not appear to have the same number of vendors and exhibitors as previous shows. Instead of really showing new innovations, etc. and concentrated way too much on retail selling with the “shopping mall” that took over a large area which, in my opinion, could have been much better used for exhibitors showing the real cycling stuff.
Not only was it my feeling that Cycle 2008 was not as big as in previous yewars, many regular exhibitors also said so.
On the other hand a number of new products were on show of which Winkku particular attracted my attention and in the “being seen section, so to speak, ***. The Bigfish folding bike, which is a very new concept, designed in Slovenia and built in Italy, and I am sure it will, from what I saw, be a real runner. The other bikes of great interest to me were the Batavia range from the Netherlands. I would have loved to take one of them for a test ride and for a proper review.
Also and especially I wish I could get a Bigfish Folding Bike for review, for I think that the readers of this journal would be most interested to read about this new design of folding bike.
While there were tons of new and new-ish BMX bikes, Mountain Bikes and road racers on show, what was sadly lacking in numbers were “proper” bicycles, and especially proper commuter and local transportation bikes.
In the same way as there were a fair number of folding bikes for the city commuter and the one that I would, as I said, love to give a proper and thorough going over, being the “Bigfish”, the “normal” use bikes for shopping and such were missing.
Proof, I my opinion, yet again, if any were needed, that in the UK we are still not a biking society, unlike, say, the Germans, the French, the Dutch and the Danes.
This, may, hopefully, change if gas prices, congestion charges, etc. continue to bite.
The problem, presently, still is that people in the UK are too much tied to the car. They could not possible walk to the corner shop for their newspaper or to cycle, say, the two miles or so to the stores for their shopping. Let's not even talk if they use a bike to go to work with even if it is only a couple of miles, and less than 30 minutes. They rather get stuck in congested traffic for and hour or more than to use a bicycle and do the same in part of the time.
Children are rather taken to school, often less than 10 minutes walk away, by SUV and People Carrier than being walked there by parents or cycling there with parents – or on their own when old enough. Cars is everything they seem to think of here.
It was good to see that Pashleys, the beautiful British-made bicycles, real bicycles, as far as I am concerned, were once again represented with a nicely proportioned stand of their own and continue to attend the show. Unlike, for instance, Velorbis, from Denmark, who were ate the show before but seem to have decided that it is no longer worth coming to Earl's Court.
This appears to be somewhat of a trend and one can but guess that as far as bicycles are concerned this has two reasons: lack of real interest in the UK as regards to bicycles for other by BMXing, Mountain biking and road racing, and the fact that the UK venues are getting too expensive. The latter, it would appear, is also the reason why other shows are getting smaller and some have gone all together while other cannot get off the ground.
© M Smith (Veshengro), October 2008
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Cycle Show 2008 – Visit Report
