www.Oldbike.eu
HISTORY of the ONLINE BICYCLE MUSEUM
www.OldBike.eu is the easiest way for fellow enthusiasts to find information on vintage bicycles and the time when Britain led the world in the manufacture of top quality bicycles. Of course, it’s free.
The idea of an Online Bicycle Museum was revolutionary when I created it in 2007. Over the past ten years the world of vintage bicycles is catching up. Other museums have added websites, and enthusiasts have learned to blog. A website is essential as a static reference for data, and www.OldBike.eu continues to serve as the world’s leading place to get a real feel for riding a bicycle in the early years of the hobby. But websites alone are two-dimensional in terms of interaction …and interaction is the essential ingredient to bring any museum to life…
FACEBOOK
1. So in 2017 I added a new dimension – FACEBOOK GROUPS. I don’t have time to answer individual questions myself about your bicycle, but in the groups you can ask questions and meet fellow enthusiasts.
In my Facebook page ‘RIDE VINTAGE TV CHANNEL‘ I display photos of the latest bicycles in the museum. You can ‘follow’ or ‘like’ that page to receive regular updates.
RIDE VINTAGE YOUTUBE CHANNEL
2. My Youtube Channel provides a variety of short videos exploring various bicycles in the museum and aspects of bicycle history.
TO ACCESS THE
RIDE VINTAGE YOUTUBE CHANNEL
PLEASE CLICK HERE
‘BAD TEETH NO BAR: A HISTORY OF MILITARY BICYCLES IN THE GREAT WAR’
3. At last, after five years in the making, my Book hit the shops! It’s much more than just a book on military bicycles. It’s full of bicycle history. Like the website itself and my Facebook page and groups, it crams in information so that you can dip in and out of its 380 pages for years to come and still find something new.
Its premise is simple. You are a cycling enthusiast in 1914. When the war starts, the national cycling clubs encourage everyone to join the Army Cyclist Corps. All your friends enlist, with single men heading overseas and family men patrolling the coasts.
It’s billed as a great adventure, and we’ll all be home for Christmas.
What would you do?
TO READ MORE ABOUT
COLIN’S NEW BOOK
PLEASE CLICK HERE
EXCLUSIVE VINTAGE BICYCLES FOR SALE
4. So… you can spend days, weeks, months visiting the Museum in the comfort of your own home. There’s Facebook, videos, the Book. What else could you possibly need? Oh yes. Perhaps the final ‘extra dimension’ is a vintage bicycle from the time when Britain led the world in bicycle engineering! Riding a 100-year-old bicycle is ‘time travel’ in its simplest form.
There’s no museum committee or public funding here. I support this museum in exactly the same way that cycle companies did in the old days …by buying, restoring and selling top quality bicycles. I run every aspect of my bicycle business personally. I select suitable machines, oversee any work required, research their history, photograph them in great detail, write up a report, and create a page on the Museum website. I do not buy and sell just for the sake of it. I only sell bicycles that I like myself. The majority are from my own collection (subsequently replaced by similar ones).
This is a bespoke service. You can phone or email me and discuss your needs, and I’ll do my best to provide a bicycle to suit your preferred size, style and budget. A top quality 100-year-old vintage bicycle is an excellent investment. But please bear in mind that original good quality early vintage bicycles are in short supply!
When you’re ready to buy a new vintage bicycle,
please visit the sales page to see which museum bikes are available for you to purchase…
VINTAGE BICYCLES FOR SALE PLEASE CLICK HERE
Whoop la, out of the way
We come with lightning speed
There’s nothing like a rattling gait
Of the flying velocipede.
It never runs away
And it doesn’t take much to feed
It’s thoroughly reliable
The new velocipede.
Upon the way you work your legs
And feet depends its speed
And that’s about the total off
The new velocipede…
In these pages you can get a feel for life in the 1890s, when bicycles ruled the road. Magazines of the era, from America, France and Great Britain, tell the tale of cycling’s evolution in linguistic styles of the day. The main focus is roadster bicycles from 1886 to the 1930s, photographed around Brighton and its environs, to illustrate the type of machines folks rode in the early days, plus a selection of iconic machines from each decade of the 21st century to see how the bicycle developed. Read about many new innovations, some that took off, such as flying bicycles, and some that didn’t, like river bicycles and railway bicycles.
There’s cycling music, period humour, scrapbooks, adverts and photos, and reports on various cycle runs. It’s arranged more or less chronologically, so you can read from start to finish, or just stab randomly at the page links at the top of each page. Perhaps I’ve modeled it on a backstreet antique shop, with ephemeral bits and bobs waiting to be discovered in the nooks and crannies of cyberspace? I’m constantly adding more, so I hope there’s enough here to keep you occupied for weeks to come. Enjoy 🙂
