Bicycles Of Old York

FORK OFF!! But before you start swearing back, let me tell you the sorry tale...

Shortly after riding along the bike track [extra; this is where the track goes under the East Coast main rail line] on the way to see J’s dad in the care home, my bike started making funny rumbling noises.

At first I thought it was the front internal drum brakes. I pressed on for a couple of hundred yards and then pushed down on the front fork to see if it would make any difference.

It did. The front fork sheared on both sides at the brazed head. It’s an old design, traditional bike hand-made by the only remaining (main-stream) manufacturer in the UK to do so (and have been doing since 1927). Before you say it (again), yes, Old Bicycles of Old York :) Anyway, no injury sustained fortunately, just many expletives sounded off.

Decisions. I was too far on to turn back so decided to wheel it the next two miles to the bike shop from Heaven (previously blipped more than once) and they were brilliant. No fuss, they said leave it with us and we’ll contact Pashley, see what they say. The mechanic, Toby said “It’s too good a bike not to repair”...

I needed to set off walking and carrying stuff the next three miles to Heslington. This involved a not unpleasant (though I was losing time for when I needed to get there) trek across the Stray. There are four strays in York – ancient areas of common ground belonging to us all. This one, is part scrub, part bog, part moor.

Later, J wondered whether I’d been hammering the bike too much by taking it on farm tracks and bridleways. I said, bikes are meant to be taken to the limit, and anyway, steel forks are meant to give and flex over bumps. She said, but why don’t you use your mountain bike instead? I said, but how do I know I want to go somewhere random before I’m there? *Sigh*

Anyway, I do stray... Half-way there, in the middle of nowhere, I came across this bike randomly locked up on a small foot-bridge.

Oh, how lucky they were that I’d left my bolt-croppers at home...