It’s so usually the best way with accumulating. Dip a toe within the water and earlier than you recognize it you’re virtually on the point of swim the Channel. That’s the way it was for British Biking president Bob Howden. He started accumulating bikes in 2019, with the modest and somewhat noble purpose of amassing one machine for every of the 4 a long time by which he raced. He reached that concentrate on rapidly – and easily saved on going. 5 years later, he has 37 machines adorning the partitions and flooring of his “man cave”, with extra frames able to be constructed up.
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“I’ve all the time been all in favour of something that entails workmanship,” says Howden. “Even easy issues like furnishings, simply taking a look at how issues are made. So by way of body constructing, good particulars, high quality stuff, it simply turned a means of accumulating bikes that I favored. It outgrew itself actually.” The 69-year-old Yorkshireman has sourced bikes from a variety of producers from every kind of locations. He has a Viking just like the one he had when he was 13. He has a Holdsworth within the traditional blue and orange Seventies group livery. He even has the Gios Compact Professional that he raced on again within the Nineties – the one machine left over from his racing days. Some he has present in collector’s situation. Others have been battered and unloved, in want of restoration. And sure, he has his favourites.
“My second bike as a 14-year-old was a Holdsworth Equipe, which was a sports activities bike duplicate of the Holdsworth Campagnolo group bikes,” he tells us. Now he has the true factor. “I bought the chance to purchase [team rider] Gary Crewe’s Holdsworth Professional bike. There was little or no to do to it. It got here from a collector, and now it takes satisfaction of place in my man cave.” Why is it his favorite? “It’s iconic,” he says, “and I used to be all the time an enormous fan of the Holdsworth Campagnolo group within the Seventies.”
The times of DIY
Along with his BC presidency following a 24-year racing profession, Howden has spent a lifetime in biking. He’s a commissaire too and the longtime organiser of the Ryedale Grand Prix. In 2015 he was awarded an OBE for providers to biking. Past bikes, he has additionally discovered time to discovered and handle his firm, Grass Concrete Ltd, which he’s nonetheless working at this time. “It’s truthful to say that I’ve by no means requested for a job in biking, however I appear to have acquired them through the years,” he says.
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Howden has a transparent love for nostalgia and easier instances when you might take aside and rebuild a professional highway bike with a easy toolkit. “I’ve all the time constructed my very own bikes,” he says, “since being 14 years previous. Again then, it’s what you probably did. You didn’t have a tendency to purchase full bikes, you constructed them and tailored them. For Campagnolo, it was once a six-millimetre Allen key, a peanut spanner for the underside bracket, some first rate spanners and also you have been away.” It’s a far cry from among the specialist instruments required today to assemble and fettle a motorcycle. Most of Howden’s classic bikes are dressed with Campagnolo, though that’s not due to the instruments. He was a “Campagnolo man” again when he was racing. “The vast majority of them are Campagnolo,” he says of his assortment. “I’ve bought bits of Shimano and varied different items, and my go-to [modern] bike is a Cervélo R5, and that’s bought Shimano on it.”
Retro root-around
Whereas the previous cycle elements could solely require a easy toolkit, sourcing these elements today as a collector could be a extra complicated matter. “It may be very tough,” he says. “For example, I raced on my first pair of Campag brakes in 1973; if I purchased those self same brakes once more now, I’d be paying most likely 4 or 5 instances the value I paid for them again then, because the Campagnolo gear tends to understand in worth. The long-lasting Nuovo Report chainset remains to be value fairly some huge cash. That was what everybody tended to journey again then.” Certainly, a fast look by way of eBay listings yielded Nuovo Report chainsets listed at something from £80 to £450.
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Howden’s previous racing buddy Dave Marsh, who runs Common Cycle Centre in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, is a key supply of classic gadgets. In any other case it’s cycle jumbles, or eBay. “It’s a must to take a look at the costs,” Howden says. “There’s such an unlimited distinction in costs, in addition to checking on high quality, that’s one other issue. I’ve bought assortment of apparatus now.” He tells me how one of many trickiest issues to supply are tyres – ones that keep inflated, anyway. “Discovering interval tyres is a significant problem.” He hunts for Clements and Vittorias, which return to the Seventies and Eighties. “It’s a rarity to seek out any that can inflate and maintain air from that interval. The rubber tends to be OK, it’s the sidewalls that perish.” An honest pair of interval tyres prices £70-80, Howden says, including: “Whether or not I’d really need to journey any distance on them is one other matter.”
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Fortunately, then, Howden’s traditional machines aren’t required to cowl lengthy distances. Sometimes he provides them “a run out” however typically they’re held on partitions and displayed across the room behind his storage – an enormous area that’s quickly filling up. “I would have to migrate a few of them to my workplace,” he says. Not each bike that Howden restores stays in his assortment. He tells me about one notably particular one which went on to assist younger GB riders. “It was an Ellis Briggs, on eBay with a Fanini-pantographed Campagnolo chainset,” says Howden. “I recognised the chainset as most likely being Dave Rayner’s. So I purchased the bike and authenticated it with Dave’s dad John, had it resprayed, did all of the gear up after which put that into the Rayner Basis Public sale. It raised chunk of cash for the fund.”
Keeper of the flame
One key facet of cycle accumulating not talked about up to now is how a lot it prices. “I don’t actually add them up individually – it’d most likely scare me off ,” he jokes. “The Holdsworth, due to its rarity, might be value something as much as a few thousand. The Viking Severn Valley might be value £1,000ish.” Does he regard these bikes as an funding? “As a money-making train, it doesn’t actually stack up,” he shakes his head. “However I don’t do it for that. For me, it’s about perpetuating a mode of motorbike. If finally they find yourself in a museum, I’ll have performed my bit to let future generations see what kinds of motorbike have been used again within the day.”
By comparability to model new fashionable machines, subsequently, traditional bikes are eminently aff ordable. So go forward, eBay is open for enterprise. Simply don’t get carried away…
Bob’s bikes
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● Legnano Gran Premio, 1961
“It’s from 1961. The again finish was bent and it had been painted with a rattle can in black. The one factor that made it recognisable as a traditional bike was the top badge, which is kind of iconic – the Legnano warrior. I had the again finish straightened, re-chromed, and resprayed within the traditional lizard inexperienced with pink field lining by Dave Marsh at Common Cycle Centre. Even my spouse likes that!”
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● Rossin, c. 1995
“I purchased it from somebody in Romania. It got here from a manufacturing facility liquidation sale. The underside bracket was cracked however I additionally purchased a Rossin Ghibeli BB with it. I bought Rick Powell, the body builder, to restore and respray it for me, and it’s a beautiful body.” Quite than an announcement, the black tyres have been “simply what I had”, Howden provides.
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● Jacques Anquetil, c. 1970
“That is really a Carlton [bike],” explains Howden. “Again within the day there was a deal performed in order that Anquetil bikes in Britain have been made by Carlton. That is principally a Carlton Professional bike. On the Continent they have been made by André Bertin. So those that the likes of Beryl Burton, Roy Cromack and John Watson rode, they have been all Carlton Execs.”