Pick ’n’ Mix
The wonder of cycling is its wonders
1 VELOPAC RIDEPAC
£32, velopac.cc Regardless of what happens with Brexit you can be sure of three things. Velopac will keep turning out its inimitable Ridepac – now slimmer, more waterproof and, being made in the UK, more Brexitproof than ever; we will keep riding our bicycles as much as is humanly possible, even across Continental Europe; and Boris Johnson won’t be the messiah, he’ll be a very naughty boy.
2 ACTIV5 ISOMETRIC TRAINER
£119.95, activ5.com Activ5 is effectively a pressure sensor that syncs to an app, which in turn provides instructions on various ‘isometric workouts’ that involve squeezing the Activ5 between hands, feet, elbows and knees. It’s ingenious, especially if you need to secretly strengthen your glutes during an important client meeting.
3 SILCA SICURO TITANIUM CAGE
£70, saddleback.co.uk Titanium comes from igneous rocks, which come from lava, which comes from volcanoes. Therefore the Sicuro bottle cages are made of volcanoes. Which is enough on its own to make us want them, but we are doubly smitten by how elegantly functional they are, and triply so by the fact that they are welded with lasers from just two pieces. And being titanium, they’ll outlast a cockroach’s grandkids.
4 F3 CYCLING MOUNTS
£49 each, f3cycling.com Just like a paediatrician, we have little patience… for badly designed computer mounts, that is. Luckily F3 has got our backs, or rather the fronts of our stems with these, which screw to top caps or stem face plates using the existing bolt holes, and with a series of adaptors can mount every type of computer, phone and camera under the sun. Or under the stem, in the case of the latter.
5 WOLF TOOTH PACK HANGER ALIGNMENT TOOL
£130, saddleback.co.uk When God made the world He made three types of tool: those that will last, those that come out of a cracker, and Piers Morgan. At £130 you can guess which camp the Pack Hanger sits in, and while it might look like a snooker cue extension, it is actually rather adept at straightening bent hangers. One half screws through the rear dropouts like an axle, then out slides a square-on rod for reference; the other half screws to the hanger and acts as a lever to bend the hanger until the lever lines up with the reference rod.