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.
Here's a few frames which are waiting for the transfers to be fitted before the final coat of varnish. A few track frames amongst them and some very nice colour schemes.
Please find attached a photo of my 653 Pro Lugless which you built for me back in 94. It was Veloce equipped, but over many years use it's now a bit of a mish mash with Record headset, a Chorus brake lever and Centaur crank. It's still very much a Mercian though! This picture was taken in July last
I just wanted to pass on my thanks and appreciation. I had a Strada Speciale frame built up by you and which I took delivery of late last year (09). I had long hankered after a Mercian and I wanted it built up to be as close as possible to the steel racers of my youth and which I could never affor
Just thought you would like to see the chap who is part and parcel of the spray shop. Two photos here one before the off on a charity 50 and the other as he passes the finish line with one of his lads Ryan waving him home. ( come on Phil start saving for that Mercian ).
I'm emailing to let you know how pleased I am with my Mercian frame I
had built up last year. For the past 10 months I've been riding it on
cheap parts I had lying around but have now rebuilt it using some far
better components to really do it justice. It's such a dream to ride,
feels really solid a
Well Leigh set out today from the council steps with the mayor of Derby to wave him on his way. There was quite a crowd their to see him off on his 3 year journey around the world. Please help Leigh's charity by clicking on the link on the blog page. I will be posting updates when we have them. His
I think you will agree with us this is a very nice looking bike indeed. Below is his email which he sent us earlier this week.... Just a quick note to belatedly thank you for putting together such a great bike and for the really helpful advice given by your team when i was wrestling with the spec. i
