Category

Events

Words

Tom Owen

Photos

Simon Weller, Tom Hill

The good times roll on

The Brooks picnic-paced tour of England continues

The summer rolls on and so too does Brooks’ picnic-paced tour of England. After visits to Keep Pedalling & The Woods Cyclery earlier this year, it was time to shine a light on three more community-focused Brooks retailers in Cambridge, Sunningdale and Ripon.

Join us to reflect on and relive the three most recent rides, each with a definitive flavour derived from the community around each of the three host shops: Bicycle Ambulance, Brilliant Bikes & Bikemonger.

Located in Cambridge, one of the United Kingdom’s most cycling-friendly cities, Bicycle Ambulance is a passionate, independent bike shop. A quick survey of the city’s streets tells you that the bike is seen here first and foremost as a utilitarian tool – shared by families, the many students, and day-to-day commuters. Bicycle Ambulance aims to support them all.

Sam Johnson from the shop explained his and owner, Ric Wilson’s ethos. “I suppose, we both really like fixing and creating in general. And bicycles! Repairing, servicing, wheel-building and custom builds kind of mixes those things up in a roundabout way, and gives us a chance to do those things and connect with the community at the same time. “Of course we can still create with our other interests like photography or drawing, and we both love repurposing old knackered stuff in to cool useful things or art, but the bottom line is that we're hooked on riding bikes and repairing them.”

Beyond bricks and mortar, the team also operates freshtripe.co.uk, one of the best places online to find niche bicycle parts and accessories for bikepacking, gravel, touring and fixed gear cycling. They also offer bespoke bicycle builds and wheel building.

As one might expect, this ride attracted more Bromptoneers than any of the other stops on our tour of England – with around three-quarters of the attendees arriving astride a folding frame. The London Brompton Club came out in force, and we set off for a quintessentially English adventure – headed to Royal Windsor via the Great Park, where we paused for scones with jam and cream.

We were lucky enough to catch the changing of the guard parade outside the Castle at Windsor, before turning round and heading for some restorative ales and classic pub fare back in Ascot. Honor Elliott was there to capture the ride from start to finish.

Situated in the beautiful Yorkshire town of Ripon, Bikemonger represented the northernmost stop on our picnic-paced tour of England. Sam Huby is one of the co-owners of Bikemonger. He summarised the shop's ethos. "'Adventure cycling’ best covers what we do at Bikemonger. Bikepacking, gravel riding – the less technical end of mountain biking and the more technical end of touring. We’ve evolved into a local bike shop too, on Ripon High Street, following a well-established online presence. We do all the basics to cater for riders' general needs too, but ‘adventure’ is our speciality.”

It has been especially pleasing for Brooks to see the way these rides have created an intermingling of communities, and Bikemonger’s was no exception.“The picnic ride was about half-and-half people we knew and people who had just signed up and showed up! It was nice, a lot of people from the local area that we didn’t necessarily know. And it’s been really great to see little riding groups that have formed since the Brooks ride.”

Situated as it is on the doorstep of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and not far from the Yorkshire Dales National Park, planning a glorious route from Ripon was no great challenge. In the end, we set out toward the famous Fountains Abbey, via Studley Royal deer park. As has become convention, the riding paused for picnicking refreshments. This time the rest stop was taken in the lee of one of those unmistakeable and emblematic features of this part of the country, a dry stone wall.

Speaking after the ride, Huby summed up the picnic experience. “We had a great day, it was perfect weather and it’s such nice landscape up there. Stef [Brooks England’s events lead] disappeared with his trailer at some point, and then we came out of these woods and into this field with this vista and scones and Pimms and cream teas laid out for us.” Evidently, it was not just Huby who enjoyed himself, “We’ve already had two people come in asking when the next one will be,” he concludes. Brooks offers its thanks to Tom Hill for photographing the day.

Brooks’ picnic-paced tour of England is not yet complete for 2025 with more events planned for the end of summer and early autumn. 

The list of shops selected so far is by no means exhaustive, so if you are the owner or a community member of a Brooks retailer, be sure to reach out with your ideas for a leisurely outing with plenty of scope for picnic stops and post-ride refreshment.