{"id":3928,"date":"2013-10-27T13:07:16","date_gmt":"2013-10-27T12:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=3928"},"modified":"2013-10-27T13:07:16","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T12:07:16","slug":"brompton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=3928","title":{"rendered":"Brompton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brompton2\"<\/a>I started a new job at the start of September \u2013 I now work for BIM Academy \u2013 a Building Information Modelling and Project Technologies consultancy based in Newcastle (upon Tyne).<\/p>\n

In my new role, although I am travelling a fair bit, I am based from home and the train links from Stafford and Derby on the West and East Coast main lines are great to get to nearly everywhere I need to go. One of the drivers for a career crossroads was my old bonkers commute which was only sensible by road. Well I am glad to report that although I have, in my first 6 weeks been to Switzerland and Hong Kong, Manchester, Newcastle, London and …. Uttoxeter… my annual car mileage looks to have reduced by at least 16,000 a year!<\/p>\n

With so much train travel it seems a little mad to be driving the 4 miles to the station and then catching taxi\u2019s, tubes or leaving extra early for long walks at my destination so I looked into folding bikes.<\/p>\n

After looking at Dahon\u2019s and other makes I kept coming back to the British Brompton \u2013 practical yet very cool. I kept an eye on ebay and luckily I got one for a snip and on delivery realised I had bought one that had obviously hardly been used. Its a 2 speed apple green with brooks saddle and grips and the flat bar. Not for the shy!<\/p>\n

I could talk about the fact that its light and folds down small, has 4 ickle wheels to push it about at stations but that’s boring! whats it like to ride?<\/p>\n

\"brompton1\"<\/a>Well small wheels are definitely twitchy and getting back onto a 26 inch wheel afterwards , you can really feel the heaviness of the handling. With only two highish gears it needs some grunt up the hills and steep slopes are a real challenge but the higher of the two means you can really fly on the flats and downs. Ill put a GPS on at some point and get some stats but it feels really fast. At those speeds its not for the faint hearted but great fun.<\/p>\n

The rim brakes are excellent, and as long as the rear bushes are done tight the frame quite stiff and responsive.<\/p>\n

I am keeping a log on the number of car miles I am saving and how much I am saving in car parking fees for the year but I have to balance it a little with safety and comfort and the practicalities of turning up at a client site soaked to the skin as the winter quickly approaches.<\/p>\n

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I started a new job at the start of September \u2013 I now work for BIM Academy \u2013 a Building Information Modelling and Project Technologies consultancy based in Newcastle (upon Tyne). In my new role, although I am travelling a fair bit, I am based from home and the train links from Stafford and Derby … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Brompton”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-kit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3928"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3936,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions\/3936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}