The Chain Gang Cycle Tours

Come On England!

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God bless Gordon Mundell. Last week I received a very pleasant surprise. Gordon, who’s cycled with us before and is joining me in Umbria next week, is a member of ‘Club Wembley’, which means he gets tickets for all the England Internationals, among other things.

England play the USA tonight, and usually you can’t get a ticket to watch England for love nor money. Some time in the past, because we’ve spent more than 10 minutes together, Gordon and I must have talked about football. So he called me and offered me his ticket for tonight as he can’t make it.

Yippee! What a result! Eat your heart out Mike Pattenden, Garry Williams, Sean Brennan, Suzi Brennan, I’m going to Wembley to watch England!

I’ll let you know how we get on. I daresay I ought to offer up a prediction as some sort of hostage to fortune. I’ve never seen the point of ‘middle-of-road’ predictions. Shoot for the sky: 3-0 England, Rooney hat trick.

An Extraordinary Looking Bike

Last Friday, Pete and I met up with Toby, our newest guide.

Dodgy beard, sported by Toby, our newest guide

A lovely evening, naturally, and we talked about our hopes and expectations for the summer, but the most interesting thing was this extraordinary bike which Toby spotted chained to the railings outside.

No chain, see?

Oi oi, something's not right here

I thought it must be a hand-made one-off built by some engineering student, but apparently not. They’re imported from Denmark by this bloke we met in the pub, and it seems they’re made by a company called biomega.

It was a thing of beauty, I just think it looks so cool to have a bike with no chain, no oil, no derailleurs, just a beautiful, clean drive shaft.

Toby having a closer look

A close up of this strange beast

I’ve been reading a bit about them today. Apparently, they lose up to 5% over chain-driven bikes in efficiency, but who cares? I want one - my birthday is February 2^nd, by the way, and I don’t mind waiting.