Видео

Hello! thanks for watching! ah well first of all I had a black Brompton that I bought second hand, an old 5 speed, 20 odd years old. That was my first folding bike. I got it mainly to try and make life easier when I had to travel by bike and train from London to Manchester a lot when my Mum was poorly. I discovered Bromptons were actually really nifty, decent bikes. So I bought a new one, the lime green P bar, and I discovered I could tour on it. I used the lime green Brompton for years. Brilliant. BUT it was stolen when I was on chemo. Grr. I was super upset. Then I bought the pink one.

Wow I love the idea of a freezer of ice creams and an honesty box! Yeh I agree, that being self contained is a brilliant feeling, having my own stove and food with me. If I dont cook up a little meal in the evening, I feel sort of incomplete... The little stove humming away makes me kind of content, and makes tent properly feel like home.

Oh that is smart, to mark the stations with hearts so you can see them. Oh that is disappointing, about folding bikes on buses in Germany. Argh. I see more and how how public transport and bikes are a brilliant combination helping reduce pollution and congestion and noise and the need to park cars all over the place and great for health and mental health etc etc....

Aw thanks for writing Lynn! Glad you liked it! I love this film too actually, makes me happy to watch it every time I watch it haha

Thanks Tony! glad you enjoy the films! thanks for writing! yeh I plan to keep going on and on as long as I can

Hello David! aw thank you for watching. Glad you enjoyed the film. Yeh Komoot and Google Maps were about to change everything! this journey was done in the last days of the old ways... Kind of glad about that in way.

Thanks aronevans! glad you like them!

Hello!! thank you for watching!!

Hello! glad you enjoy the films! best wishes!

oh I hope you enjoyed it and hope your dog had a great time too!

@@susannathornton Thank you, have a lovely weekend.

Aw thank you, for writing such a thoughtful comment x

@@PeteMartin-r6l Hi Peter, so sorry to hear that you're another one of us on a cancer journey. Argh. Thank you for the lovely message. You just hang in there! best wishes! XX

hello! I had the old P bars on my old lime green bike and liked them, nice to ride on the tops and bottoms for variation. But then that bike got stolen. I chose to then try a low flat-bar, and added bar ends, and I LOVE this set up. I find it a very comfy riding position, fairly low, with my hands in handshake position similar to riding "on the tops" on a road bike (I am an old road racing cyclist). The other thing I like about this set up is it is great for climbing out of the saddle. Since I made this film, I have tried putting my old SPDs onto my Brompton, and wow I love it, feels so great, like in my young racing and training days, well, sort of! obviously the clip pedals are a big help when climbing out of the saddle, and generally make the bike feel kind of snug. About gears, yeah, I am one of the people that like the simplicity of 3 gears - less to go wrong, easier to fix on the road. I lowered all three gears by putting on a 39 ring. Hope that helps!

@susannathornton Thanks for such a great detailed response! Shame they don't make a 3 speed c line anymore. If you could have the 2 speed c line or 6 speed, which would you choose? Also how tall are you? Thanks for the fantastic adventures 😊

Hello again, yeh I also thought it was a shame about that, no 3 speed C line any more... About a 2 speed or 6 speed, well I guess it depends what sort of riding you are planning to do, what kind of terrain, luggage or no luggage etc. For what I do - ie all sorts of terrain including quite a lot of hills, carrying luggage - I'd definitely choose the 6 speed over the 2 speed, and then reduce the gears with a small chainring. And I think if you then decided you wanted to remove the derailleur on the 6 speed and have just 3 gears, you could do that - Brilliant Bikes did a video on it see here ruclips.net/video/t5Xd3R-_fzI/видео.html About my height, I am 5'3" which is the average height of UK woman. Glad you enjoy the films, and hope that helps!

@susannathornton Thanks so much and love the idea of removing the derailleur👌

So sorry to hear that you had such a terrible experience. I am thankful you were not injured and glad you did not lose your bike or any other possession. Yes about violent theft of bikes in London, the first time I heard of it was about 10 years ago, ie ages ago, when woman work colleague was swarmed by men when she was cycling home from work, and they lifted her off the bike and stole her bike, an expensive road bike. We were all shocked. These days there are quite a lot of reports about it in London, with thieves targeting specific brands including as you say Brompton and expensive road bikes. So yeah in London I do take some precautions to be safer eg for little trips round town I use an old bike that doesnt attract attention, and if I am on my Brompton in London I keep extra alert all the time and keep my eyes and ears peeled re people around me etc. But I try to also keep it in perspective, and not let it spoil me do what I want to do, and enjoy it. I saw a report saying that two of these kind of attacks happen per day in London, which is awful but I try to remind myself that it is a relatively unlikely thing and millions of people ride bikes every day without anything happening. I am so sorry that this happened to you. I hope you have masses of good experiences now, and wish you a super rest of the time in the UK!

Hello! yes I take a Helinox Zero chair with me on trips. It is super light. Super comfy. I love it. Luxury!

@@susannathornton I just recently got one. Yes! It very light and comfy! Hope all is well!

Sounds great! glad you are enjoying cycling and glad you enjoy the films! yeh I do love maps

Thanks for watching Steve!

Thanks for watching Jennifer! and for the lovely comment. Glad you enjoyed the film

Hi Lynn! glad you enjoy the films! oh that is great that you are planning to tour on your Brompton. About the frame for using an Ortlieb on the front of a Brompton, I'm afraid my husband doesnt make these commercially, but happy for people to copy his design - there is an image of the frame with notes on dimensions etc here, so that you could ask someone local to you to make one ruclips.net/video/ar8D-TVgdxg/видео.htmlsi=uZpNWePnHtE3ql2k&t=227

Susanna, thank you so much for kindly offering the details of the frame/ rack.🙏 - much appreciated. I’m looking forward to your next trip. Take care.,

Hi Ant! Yeh Dad has used a bike since he retired, for short local journeys, and for the sheer pleasure of it. About helmets yes in the UK it is personal choice. I googled about Australia etc as I was curious, and I see that Australia is one of only 2 countries that have national mandatory bicycle helmet laws. Israel experimented with a helmet law apparently but repealed it after 4 years, because it discouraged people from cycling, and cos head injuries is far smaller issue than the huge problems linked to lack of physical activity, eg obesity, illness, depression etc etc. I thought this was interesting about it, at Parliament of Australia website www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=173283f8-7b1c-4cb7-9e9f-52ee031627a2&subId=354928#:~:text=Importantly%2C%20helmet%20laws%20severely%20reduce,helmets%20have%20also%20discouraged%20cycling. Anyway! there you go. Thanks for writing!

Hi Kathryn! thank you for the lovely comment! The song is Feeling Free by Jesse Lawrence. Yeh I really like it too! So I used it twice! For the end of the ride, and also for the beginning here. Makes me happy! ruclips.net/video/xFlzvf2Hlgk/видео.html

Hi Susanna , thank you 😊. We love cycling too, my husband and I both have bromptons, dawes touring bikes and mountain bikes. We've been touring on the bikes and love it. Like yourself we're self sufficient, also have a trangia stove, it's a good little stove. Thank you for the RUclips videos, your a great inspiration.

@@mikeainsworth4504 Hello! Brilliant to meet you Mike! Thank you for welcoming us! So interesting to chat!

Oh I am sorry about that Alex. Sounds like a very stressful thing you went through

Hello caffeine jogger! I like the old P bars, but then that bike was stolen 😪 and then I got another bike and chose to try a different set up, low flat bar plus bar ends, and it is brilliant. Nice comfy riding positions . Can ride with hands in handshake-style position similar to riding "on the hoods" on a road bike, and the bar ends are brilliant for climbing out of the saddle. Got the idea from seeing what Gianni @bromptontraveler uses and tried it and love it

@@susannathornton . perhaps if your P Bar bike didn't get nicked you'd still love that even more? Do you think people adapt to whatever they have? The only reason I ask is there's a great P Bar second-hand older bike, a 2013 mod hardly used. I like the look but wondering how they perform. Thx Susan. I know you work hard on these videos. Love it.

Bus Atlas is brilliant. I wrote to the guy who does it Brendan Fox to thank him and say how useful his maps are for planning this sort of thing

Hi Sharon, one is a Helinox Zero, which I use myself for bikepacking etc super light and neat, fantastic bit of gear. The other chair is from Decathlon and it is heavier and clumsier but much cheaper, fine for day rides, bought it for when going on day rides w family and friends

Thanks for watching Alex! glad you like the films. Well in this film we were using one "Brompton Hire" bike. Hired it for the holiday. 3 speed. I rode that. Overgeared, imho. But £5 a day is a brilliant deal when in need of a bike! The other Brompton is my husband's and it is an unusual 5 speed, very old, made in the 1990s I think. Nice actually, the low gear is actually low. Dad rode that. But anyway, that's not much help to you prob..! in case helpful, my usual Brompton these days is a 3 speed steel ie C line (which I wasnt using on this holiday with Dad, because I had ridden the bike to Sweden, and it was still there! I later flew back to Sweden and then rode that bike home to UK. Its fire coral ie sort of orange pink) Anyway, long answer! happy cycling!

@@susannathornton thank you for that answer. I have the chance of a good deal on a oreowned, but lightly used brompton m3l, 3 speed. Im used to gears as I'm a road biker, but I'm drawn to the slower pace and the character of the brompton, something I don't get with my specialized road bike, I don't know, maybe fun is what I'm looking for and convenience, just racking up the miles on a road bike can become stale at times. Do you think this brompton sounds good, I have no idea what the difference is between the. Models, I just know it's a m3l and looks great

hi Alex, one thing I would think about is what bars you want. I am an old roadie, raced road race and TT and cyclo cross actually for years, so prob come at it from the same sort of thinking as you. The M bars are the slightly sit up and beg. I prefer the low flat bars plus (additional bought separatelly) short bar ends, which give me a super comfy lowish riding position with handshake-type hold just like riding on the hoods on a road bike. And for climbing, I can climb out of the saddle just like on a road bike, holding the brake hoods too. Brilliant. (I have added clipless pedals to make it even better). About M bars, I have ridden M bars and it's OK but for me I hugely prefer the set up I have now, simple flat bars plus bar ends to more or less recreate the riding position that I had when younger and training 10 zillion miles a year on the road. Anyway just a thought!

@@susannathornton thank you, I think this bike I'm, looking at tomorrow has m bars, hmm something to think about, thank you for all the info

Thanks Mark!

Hello! thanks for writing! yeh it is a pity isnt it that Google Maps doesnt show the trains more clearly, and pity that when you click "public transport" layer you don't see the bus lines. GM do have the bus info, cos it is used in the GM public transport "Directions" thing so I dont understand why they dont show the bus routes. They show the underground lines in London really nicely in the "public transport" layer, so you can see where the lines actually go. I wonder why they dont show "interurban" buses like that.