Following Mercian’s 80th Anniversary Festival of Steel, we were delighted to welcome Eddie White and Cherie Pridham to our new factory.
Eddie White was a valued founding member of the Mercian-Bantel Team, riding with the team between 1968 and 1979. It was a particular pleasure to welcome Cherie, who took time out of her busy WorldTour schedule as Sports Director of UAE Team L’Imad to join Eddie for the visit.
1946 was a special year: Paul Smith was born in Nottingham, Mercian Cycles was founded in Derby. Paul was a very good cyclist in his youth and rode Mercian bikes - his fondness for Mercian has remained, and the feeling is mutual. To help celebrate our 80th anniversaries, Paul has designed two special limited edition bikes, which were launched at Selfridges in early September.
After many months of effort, and a tremendous grant to help us on our way from Erewash Council, we launched three new eBike models at the end of August.
A great crowd attended our Festival of Steel ride out in August, to help celebrate the 80th anniversary of Mercian. Many thanks to Belper Cycling Club, and Andre Toczek in particular, for helping organise the event and doing a great job on the 4 rides. And a big thankyou to all those who attended the event - we estimate approx 300 people turned up to help us mark the day, but give it a few months and the estimate will have grown to 3000!
Congratulations to Jill Scott for completing her epic 388 mile "Coming Home" challenge, raising almost £500k for Sport Relief! Mercian were proud to help.
We doff a very large cycling cap to Greg James, who finished his 8-day pan-UK challenge in Edinburgh on Friday raising over £4.5mln. What an incredible amount!
After six decades Mercian Cycles workshop has moved.
Through the years there were a number of locations in Derby for the shop, the frame building workshop and sprayshop. But since about 1965 the frame building and painting was taking place at the Pontefract Street workshop.
Framebuilder Tim took the chance to head out on the Ventura All-road bike to go and pick up some dropouts from Bear Frame Supplies. An ideal opportunity to capture some video of the custom steel Ventura out on the gravel trails of the Derbyshire Peak District.
Maurice sent this picture in earlier in the year not much in the way of detail from Maurice but this is a part of his email :- Taking a rest by the Via Cassia, Toscana, on the Pilgrim Route from Canterbury to Rome.
My entry for the ctc competition - Hope you like it as much as I did.
Mikes bike pulling a trailer in the show. As you can see its running a belt drive. This drive system is becoming popular and makes for a clean and quiet / smooth transmission.
Mike writes in his email the following :-
With 32c Schwalbe Marathons - great tires -
and SKS 45c fenders, there is the righ
This is a picture of my Mercian King of Merica 653 frame, which I was telling John about today, built up with a Campag Anthea 8 speed groupset; Cinelli bars and stem;
Brooks Saddle and Mavic rims. I bought the frame secondhand and the rest of the bits came from eBay.
Quick Leigh update . This picture was sent to us earlier from on the road to Kashgar. He has been in touch by email for spares to be sent out . Chainring , Chain and Rohloff sprocket. Read more about his world tour here. You can also donate to the charity at this address.
Shop opening times over the Xmas period
Friday 24th open 9 to 12
Saturday 25th CLOSED all day
Sunday 26th CLOSED all day
Monday 27th CLOSED all day
Tuesday 28th CLOSED all day
Wednesday 29th CLOSED all day
Thursday 30th OPEN
Friday 31st OPEN
Saturday 1st January CLOSED all day
Sunday 2nd Januar
Well Jeff's come up with the goods yet again. Jeffs a avid photographer and dug out one of his film cameras which had a film in. He had it developed and look what he found. I've never seen a Mercian head badge before so this is certainly a rare item.
Jeff ( ergoman ) had a trip to the Derby magistrates court the other day. Only to see the Derby Gleam show of course not for a personal attendance. While he was there he took these pictures which was being projected onto the outside of the building. The show was from 7pm to 10pm and was a big hit he
This is Bart who had this bike completely renovated for his mate as a surprise present. The bike came to us in a bit of a state but we stripped the bike gave it a nice new coat of paint and rebuilt the bike to Bart's spec. His mate was over the moon with his surprise. While Bart was in Derby we were
