As I sit on a slightly rattly, two-carriage train, the steel, glass, and concrete of Bristol quickly give way to brown-green dappled fields, many still flooded from a tremendously wet February. The March sun is doing its level best to burn through the heavy clouds, but it’s still a little too anaemic, despite what the daffodils would have you believe.
I’ve passed through many postcard-named stations on my way to Bradford on Avon, a stone’s throw in relative terms from the Cyclingnews office. Here is where Moulton bikes are still produced, and though you may well have never laid eyes on one either in person or digitally, the brand has a storied history.
I’m met at the station by Steve, the company’s head of sales, armed with two Moultons, and we immediately glide through town and onto the Kennet and Avon canal path. If, in your mind’s eye, picture ‘English postcard town’ you’ve got a fair idea of what Bradford on Avon and its attendant canal is like; extremely pretty, despite the fact it was, until rather recently, underwater.
Glide is the operative word, as the Moulton betwixt my legs, is blessed with both front and rear suspension. It’s far more pillowy than similarly travelled modern suspension forks, the likes of which you’d find on a YT Szepter for example. The ride over a rutted canal towpath is slightly lolloping, reminiscent of the train carriage I had only recently alighted.
They say a picture tells a thousand words (though my editor still refuses to pay a word rate on this basis…), and so below I’ll walk through my journey into Moulton’s factory, and the endearing history of a cult British cycling brand, in images.
In at the deep end; straight off the train and onto a Moulton, and along a mucky canal towpath.
We waited here a while, talked about a pub that sady wasn’t open, and watched a train go by. Extremely bucolic.
Into the estate/factory, which made me feel a bit like I was breaking and entering.
The signage has had very few updates over the years; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Parked up outside one of the workshops are our two bikes from the test fleet. More basic models to give riders and would-be purchasers a flavour, without getting the really fancy bikes filthy.
I challenge you to find a bike factory anywhere else with buildings like this.
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