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.
Its a quick look around the shop for you all. If you would like to see a short film from anywhere else please let me know. I have a nice Vincitore track frame picture for later ....
Piam from West End Bicycles in Houston one of our state side dealers sent us this picture of his Vigorelli. All that sun and mudguards ! It certainly looks very nice ( with No brakes ? ). Hopefully will be racking up the miles with some brakes on. This picture and others of the bike sent in by Piam
Gary was good enough to send this shot in the other day showing off his Mercian.
Hardly an action shot, but here is a picture of me and my 1997 Strada Special in Southwark park, London. Thanks for the wonderful job you did some months ago of removing the stuck seat pin and giving it a thorough servi
Yet another picture from Ireland ( there must be something in the air ) . This picture was sent to me by Chris who is one of our most dedicated Mercian riders. And below is the letter which was sent in by Chris.
Thank you Simon for your picture its the only one we have had since the call for action shots so lets hope it spurs people on.
His email simple said
Please find picci of Canyon and me - 2008 Dyfi Enduro.... enough said
We do not get many pictures of bikes in action so above is one sent in by Phil from Ireland .
Here's an old photo's scanned recently which I like. It's me on my Custom Superlight ( my third Mercian ) in the 1984 All Ireland Triathlon. I doubt you built many Superlights shorter and tighter than this
Neal sent this picture of his track bike and I must say it looks very nice. Below is a few words from his letter.
I finally have my Super Vigorelli all put together. I think it looks marvelous and though I'd share (note the saddle height is a bit high in the pic, but my lighting was poor by the tim
Just a quick note. We are in the final stages of our new web site build. The photos and letters you send for this blog will also now be saved for posting in the all new web site gallery.
Here's a picture of my recently built-up Audax Special. I received it
about 4 weeks ago, and it has quickly become my favorite bike. It's
light, nimble, rides incredibly smoothly, and is gorgeous to boot. I
couldn't be happier with it.
