Mercian—Say It Ain’t So!

 This will be one of the saddest posts I’ve written.

As you may have heard, Mercian Cycles ceased trading about two weeks ago.

I found out just the other day, when I realized I hadn’t received any notices from them in a while (I was on their mailing list) and went to their website. Their closure wasn’t exactly front-page news because Mercian isn’t like Schwinn, Raleigh or any of those bike manufacturers even non-cyclists know. 

Mercian, you see, was one of the last frame builders to make their bespoke and stock frames with traditional methods and materials, even if the latter were updated (e.g. Reynolds 853, 725 or 631 instead of 531 tubing). As for the methods: Mercian’s framebuilders joined those tubes in hand-cut lugs that were pinned and brazed in an open hearth before being finished with deep stove enamel paints.  A single builder made the frame every step of the way before the frame was sent to Mercian’s paint shop.

The result was frames that were more beautiful than even most other hand built frames, and certainly more elegant than almost any modern bike. More to the point, Mercian’s work resulted in bikes that you could forget you were riding—they seem to disappear under you—and, barring a crash or other mishap, could outlast you. I know this because I’ve been riding one of my Mercians—Tosca, my fixed-gear—since buying it in 2007, while another of my six Mercians—Negrosa, a 1973 Olympic I bought six years ago—rides as smoothly as it ever has. Oh, and Dee-Lilah, my Vincitore Special (the one with the head lugs in the photo) feels like a magic carpet.

I didn’t want to believe that no more of those wonderful bikes or frames would ever come out of that Derbyshire workshop (or that said workshop would become something else, or be demolished). So I sent an email to Grant and Jane, who had owned Mercian since 2002 and to whom I had spoken and written numerous times. In my response to my “say it ain’t so, Joe” message, I received this:

Hello
This is an automated reply.

Thank you for your email, Mercian Cycles Ltd has ceased to trade, and
we have instructed an Insolvency Practitioner to assist us with taking
the appropriate steps to place the Company into Creditors’ Voluntary
Liquidation.



We have instructed Opus Restructuring LLP and should you have any
queries their contact details are nottingham@opusllp.com.

I hope that some other builder or small company keeps the name and tradition alive (as Woodrup did for Bob Jackson a few years ago) and that Mercian doesn’t become another once-proud name affixed to cookie-cutter bikes from China, Indonesia or some other “sweatshop” country.

80 Years Ago Today: D-Day

 Eighty years ago today, uniformed fighters from Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and, of course, the United Kingdom and the United States, staged the largest seaborne invasion in history. Today we know it as D-Day.

I reckon that not many of those soldiers, sailors and other fighters who opened the door to liberating Europe from the Nazis are alive today. It seems not so long ago that there were many more survivors—you saw them at Memorial and Veterans’ Day parades and other events—and they weren’t much older than I am now!

Anyway, I am observing this day precisely because I am a (mostly) pacifist:  While I understand that Hitler may have been, as Kurt Vonnegut described him, “pure evil” and had to be stopped, I also understand that war is not only about the fighting itself or the ostensible causes; it’s also about the social and economic factors—including tax laws that reward a few people for making war on the planet, if you will. I shudder to think about the lives that have been wasted and ruined—including those of many veterans—as a result. 

In other words, ensuring that no veteran wants is one of the things we must do in order to work for peace.

Now that I’ve delivered my message, such as it is, for this day, I am leaving you with images of soldiers who landed on the Normandy beaches with bicycles strapped to their backs.  Of course they weren’t going for a pleasant tour in the countryside. They brought those bikes, which folded in the middle, because they could reach places, swiftly and silently, that couldn’t be accessed with motorized vehicles.

Another Ghost

 Yesterday I wrote about “ghost bikes”: who creates them and how bikes end up that way.

So what did I encounter on a ride today, near my apartment?

Unfortunately, this post is a sort of prelude to one I will write, if not tomorrow, then very soon. No, I am not ending this blog, or my others. Some of you may already have an idea of what it will be about.