Bespoked 2017 – The Singletrack Winners

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We were honoured again this year to be asked to award some, er, awards at this year’s Bespoked Show in Bristol. Some 70 or so of the UK (and beyond)’s framebuilders and building schools were on show in Bristol Temple Meads Engine Shed, along with hundreds of bike fans, fellow framebuilders and would-be framebuilders. The range of bikes, from practical town bikes to custom titanium fat bikes was enormous and choosing three winners was a hard job, but we made it.

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The prestigious rosettes
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Curtis Bikes Full Suspension

Gary from Curtis bikes showed this lovely, single pivot 150mm full suspension bike. With some of the neatest fillet brazing at the show, hidden by nothing but a clear-coat, we had to give it the nod. Gary had spent many hours building different swingarms until he reckon he’d got the balance right between weight and strength and stiffness.

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Gary looking cheerful with his bike. No, that IS his cheerful face
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Steel is very real. BTR also showed a new version of its Pinner bike (see next story for that one)
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Very shiny
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All made in a shed in Somerset

 

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No filing needed here

 

University of Iowa, ArrowHED.

Steve McGuire runs the framebuilding course at the University of Iowa   https://www.facebook.com/IowaDBR and brought his own bike, dubbed the ‘ArrowHED’ that he used for the Arrowhead 135 race (a bonkers, mid-winter race that sees snow and seriously cold temperatures). The bike is actually a two-speed – the bike shares front and rear wheel sizes to allow the differently-geared front wheel to swap with the back if conditions change. The super long wheelbase apparently gives great traction and a ton of room for snow/mud. It also leaves a handy space behind the seat tube for big Thermos flasks or other luggage.

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Looking for a sub-zero race near you soon.
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Room for bottles, flasks or sleeping bags
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The HED carbon rims help give the bike its name.
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Enough room there?

 

Dear Susan Beachcomber

Petor Georgallou is the colourful character behind Dear Susan bikes. Despite the scruffy looks of the bike and the verdigris paint job, there was a lot of thought that had gone into this beachcombing hardtail. Based on the late-80s bikes beloved by Geoff Apps (and featured in the History of British Mountain Biking film) it features a high bottom bracket and a short top tube, in contrast to the low and slack mountain bikes that are currently in-vogue. Petor had accessorised the bike with suitably nautical nick-nacks, including fishing nets, a fabric bucket for shell-collecting and a display stand that featured live fish, happily swimming around the plus sized tyres…

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The bike, sat in its display tank, complete with live fish
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Single sided fork for clearance and ease of tyre changes
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Matching Paul’s mechanical brakes. And is that a single sided dyno hub?

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Wood fired kettle for those sundowner celebrations
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Unconventional, yes, but a bike with a solid story and matching accessories won us over

 

We’ll have more from the Bespoked Show during the week as we finish sifting through all the photos. Congratulations to all the winners.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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