Adam Read
Intro
Adam has an uncanny knack for delving into anything mechanical and coming out the other end with an amazing level of expertise and knowledge. One of those delves just so happened to lead to the creation of Tartybikes, the go to shop for trials parts and knowledge and a yardstick by which all online bike stores should be measured.
Grab a brew, this one is long and fascinating.
Firstly, I'd like to say a huge thanks to Duncan for both contacting me to do this piece and also writing a load of questions to get the ball rolling. I have always been a bit nervous about 'talking about myself' so a few topics to get going on has been invaluable. I'd also like to apologise for taking so long to respond! I think it's been 6 months or more now, ha. (Edit: That has now increased to 15 months, oops.)
The main reason for that has been a busy period at work (the run up to Christmas) and then a pretty busy period of life - which has actually seen me hand over ownership of TartyBikes, the company at which may of the questions are aimed. This change is huge for me, and now the deal has been done it feels like the pressure is off a little, and brain space has returned. I really enjoy writing stuff like this, I find it pretty cathartic providing it is done when I'm in a relaxed frame of mind.
Having been a follower of Gnarrative for a while and enjoyed it so much to date, I also wanted to write the article in the most open and honest way I could and I felt that having 'taken a step back' would allow this a little better.
I am also a little unsure as to how well I'll fit in with the other dudes who have features on the site... I feel like I'm punching way above my weight here, but hopefully some interesting bits will jump out. Cheers!
Describe yourself in one line?
Nerdy lover of learning, mechanical things and real food.
Explain TartyBikes to someone who’s never come across it.
The simplest description would be an online mountain bike shop. Delving into the details, it's focused mostly on trials bikes (those ones with tiny frames, no suspension, no gears and often no seat – think Danny MacAskill, though he does have a seat), sells internationally, and tries to keep a wide range of bikes and parts available at all times. Being rider-run, it's easy to identify the issues faced by customers, enabling needs to be met. Bit of a daft example, but the most expensive bike in the world can be rendered useless without a £1 part (for example, an olive from the front brake hose!), so I think it's really important to have all of this sort of stuff easily available. Bikes are a lifeline (in various ways – more on that later) for so many people, and being without can be frustrating.
There must be a story behind your nickname and the TartyBikes name?
Haha, yes. I must have been about 17, so this was what... 2000. I'd bought a Muddy Fox hardtail from the owner of the local bike shop, with quite a lot of nice kit on it – Judy SL forks, Hayes disc brakes, XTR rear mech (which I still have and it still works perfectly!), Hugi hubs, etc, and the bike was quite 'tarted up'. A nickname of 'The Tart' cropped up and it just stuck... hence TartyBikes.
How did you find trials yourself and what led you into doing Sports Engineering at university?
My first 'introduction' to trials was at school. I went to boarding school from the age of 11 to 18, and it was normal for new people to arrive just for 6th form (the last 2 years). A lad called Andy, who I'm still very much in touch with and ride with every now and then, was a new 'recruit' and it turned out he'd brought his bike with him too. We arranged to go for a pootle about, and I saw him straight bunnyhop up an 18” wall – I was absolutely amazed at the time! One thing led to another, with my bikes becoming more and more specific to trials over the next few years (many destroyed home made bashrings and FSA PowerPro cranks, ha), and eventually I called myself a trials rider.
I guess this ties in quite nicely with uni – engineering of sports products. I've always had an interest in making stuff (I'm sure my hoarding nutter of a mother still has the snooker cue and various cricket bats I constructed as a kid) and the thought of improving performance through more suitable equipment – not just in sport – is appealing. The Sports Engineering course at Loughborough was actually my 2nd degree, having spent about half a year at Nottingham doing Mechanical Engineering, hating it, then binning it off to come back home and work at a 'regular' bike shop for the rest of the year.
How did TartyBikes come to be in the first place?
I'd been active in various trials forums for a few years – Trialskings and Trials-Forum, mostly – and become known as a bit of a 'tech head', spending a lot of time giving out advice about bike setup, fixing things, etc. As far as I know, I was one of the first people in the UK to start using a Chris King rear hub for trials, and at that time there wasn't much knowledge (even within Chris King) about how to set them up for the different demands. Obviously here in the UK it gets pretty cold during winter, so the stabby on-off nature of power application in trials combined with the ratively thick and sticky Ringdrive grease meant that the hub would skip quite often.
For those who haven't been inside one, the system is absolutely excellent WHEN it works. There are two serrated rings which are pulled together by effectively a very coarse thread on the freehub body – meaning as you pedal harder, the hub engages even more securely. This does, however, only happen after the hub has started to engage. If the opposing teeth on the drive rings don't find each other successfully when you apply power, the hub will completely 'miss' and make an awful cracking sound. This literally gives you no drive at all, unlike a regular pawl and ratchet hub which will either catch on the next set of teeth or another set of pawls. The other effect is that it drags the teeth against their usual operating direction, blunting them and meaning this skipping is more likely to happen again in future. But anyway, you can imagine what sort of crashes come about when you're balancing on top of a wall or rail, trying to kick across to another obstacle 6+ft away and suddenly find you have no drive...
Long story short, the hub went back and forth to Chris King in the USA a few times for new parts and a stiffer 'trials' spring – all under warranty, they provided some great service. The stiffer spring was designed to apply more preload to the drive rings, in theory making it more likely that the teeth would engage. This did work to a point, but there were still niggles. The quick engagement of the hub (and the cool sound, ha) was totally miles ahead of anything else available at the time – 72 pickups compared with 16 of Shimano, 21 of Hope and 18 of DT Swiss was a complete game-changer for trials, so I wanted to persevere with it. So, I shelled out £140 for a Chris King hub tool set, and decided to pull it apart and see if I could make some improvements... Now this was back in the days of being a student, around 2001-2002, and with hindsight that was a stupid amount of money to throw at an already expensive and slightly temperamental rear hub. But I enjoyed, and still enjoy, the challenge of trying to make mechanical things better for the user, so I pulled the hub apart and changed the lube to a thin oil and stretched the spring even further to give more preload. This made the hub quite a lot louder, as the grease wasn't dampening the sound, and the drive ring teeth were being mashed together with more force, but it did the trick. No more skipping!
Suddenly Chris King hubs were 'a thing' for trials, and I ended up with loads of requests to carry out the same service for others. I also bought hubs from eBay in the USA, had them shipped over here, inspected / serviced / tweaked them as above, then sold them on – often built into complete wheels as an additional service. I'd buy the spokes from Chain Reaction Cycles and get 'customers' to send rims directly to me for building. At a tenner for a wheelbuild this was really cheap, but ding a couple a week pretty much paid my food bills at uni, as well as building trust with a bunch of riders - many of whom have gone on to be long term customers of TartyBikes.
Is there a link from that to those early Chris King service videos in what looks to be your bedroom?
I've just been trying to find it... drew a blank for ages but then realised it's on YouTube – wahey!
That was indeed 'filmed' (loose term given that oldskool video quality!) in my bedroom while at uni. That will have been 109 Storer Road, Loughborough, LE11 5EH, and it was the front room facing the road... Yeah, I have a weird memory for addresses.
How has TartyBikes changed and developed over the years?
Hmm. I think the best way I can describe it is 'organically'. It pretty much changed to suit whatever the demand was at the time – be that product fashions, size of the market, or anything else. I always ran it without targets and goals, which I am sure all the textbooks say is wrong, but it felt the right way to me.
Obviously it started from a bedroom, but it quickly became a 'runaway train' and within 8 years had 5 staff and was turning over 7 figures. This is a pretty scary thing looking back – in my late 20s, no previous business experience or formal training, no plan, basically a deer in the headlights. But through hard work and determination things kept going fairly smoothly, even through the tougher and quieter years which followed. I actually think it is really important for a business to have lean years, as it forces you to become more efficient and really think about how the company is run. Quite a lot of other trials shops have come and gone over time, but Tarty has remained strong.
What do you think has been key to TartyBikes success as a leader all these years?
I would say it's a combination of... wide product range, excellent product photos / information (we all know that buying online can be a lottery sometimes, even today), deep product knowledge and understanding, lots of hard work / sleepless nights / bitten fingernails, amazing support from customers and the trials community.
Have you had any unexpected curveballs to navigate with TartyBikes?
Pretty much every day something crops up. I can 'just pop into work' for an hour and end up buried for most of the day, it's something you have to just deal with as a business owner (who actually cares, anyway). Most of the examples I can give are pretty mundane, like the networked printer having a paddy, or DPD delivering a parcel to the wrong address, but they are always there. I liken the role of an involved company owner to the cement between the bricks – keeping the big lumps stuck together to prevent the house from falling down around you.
In terms of less mundane curveballs... I suppose the general economic downturn of 2008 followed by a certain Mr MacAskill going internet-stratospheric in April 2009 offered challenges in both directions.
Oh, and Brexit. Fucking Brexit. I don't want my blood pressure to rise too much today, so I'll leave it there and you can probably guess most of what I'd have written.
What are the different geographical trends for markets you serve?
We see a lot of orders from the USA and Canada, which I guess makes sense with the amazing shipping links (FedEx can get stuff there next day, it's unreal) and the lack of language barrier, but also Japan (they love Hope stuff) is weirdly large. Pre-brexit we sold a lot to Europe too – Germany and Austria, mostly. Then there are various 'outliers' all over the world, even really tiny and remote places like Reunion Island. I think the total country count is up over 85 now. It's pretty wild and I am blown away at how much trust is placed in us. We have a world map pinboard in the office , which we log where orders have been sent to (https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17897224900203903/?hl=en) it is a reminder of just how powerful the internet is.
What’s been your ethos or USP? For me at least it always appeared to be the wealth of knowledge and reliability of service.
Thanks dude. That is pretty much it, I think. Expectation vs reality is a really important part of human psychology – for me at least – so if you meet expectations, customers are generally happy. In order to figure out what those expectations will be, I've always tried to look at every interaction from the other side. I've been a bike shop customer at some point in the past, so I know what I'd like to experience!
Random tangent, I once went to some business seminar thing once and the guy said that the best thing you can do is be average – because then expectations are always met. I saw his point, especially when considering the example he used, but that's just not who I am. Who not strive to be better than the current benchmark?
The example he used was McDonalds – it does so well because you know exactly what to expect when you see the golden arches, no matter where you are in the world. The fact that it is bang average doesn't matter, because customer expectations are met. It's a weird world, which I will never really understand.
You’ve had some great riders and characters form part of the staff at TartyBikes, what are your thoughts and feelings for everyone you’ve had involved and any story highlights along the way?
Wow, this is a pretty big one. It's a little tough for me since I've been quite 'focused' until recently, and honestly not really enjoyed the experience a lot of the time. Because my blood stream has been flooded with cortisol for such long periods, this has led to a significant part of my life to date being completely lost. I am sure I could chip in to stories if they were relayed to me, but I am drawing a blank right now. I'm sorry that's a pretty naff answer.
I do remember the morning after one of the Tarty Days events we ran at Barrow Farm though – things were generally pretty tough for me at the time and I had to really dig deep to get through the weekend, but seeing the number of happy riders saying a heart-felt thanks as they left gave a huge boost. I was just sat in the field, smiling, thinking to myself that it was all worth it.
Have there been any stand out riders out there for yourself personally?
I often split trials into two areas – street and natural. I know it's probably a crime to divide an already-small sport, but the skills and techniques required for these two ends of the trials spectrum are fairly different. Massive kudos to anyone who can do both to a high level and actually make it look good - Joacim Lundgren (Nymann) and Ali C spring to mind.
Obviously Danny Mac has been a huge influence in driving street trials forward, but the first riders who really blew my mind were the Coustellier brothers, Giaco and Gilles. They came over here from France in 2003, and I had the pleasure of pointing a camera at them during a dark and cold night in Nottingham. It's still the case that a lot of competition / natural riders just do their own thing out of sight, so back then – way before technology made it easy to showcase yourself, unlike nowadays - it was a real treat to see what they got up to. Some of the moves they were doing we hadn't even seen before, and the size of them was unreal. Giaco riding over this massive concrete lion statue in the square in the middle of Nottingham town centre, and having onlookers clapping and whistling, was mental.
I found the video on YouTube actually – despite it being filmed on the same potato as the King service video, I could do with downloading this and keeping it for posterity:
The part above was completed in April 2022... Some stuff happened and here we are
You must have seen a whole raft of trials trends and ‘fashions’ come and go, what’s your take on them or a breakdown of what the trials world has bared witness too?
This is a pretty wide topic... I'll have to try and be at least a little concise! I think, like with almost anything, you have those at 'the top' who influence everyone else.
Way back, for me at least, it was Martin and Martyn - with Hans Rey before that - and hoppy hoppy trials wearing brightly-coloured logo-ed up team jerseys was the thing. Competition trials was also big and it wasn't unusual for 100+ riders to turn up at a round of the British Champs. We'd get our fix from MBUK and the odd VHS video that either came free with the mag, or you'd stick a check in the post and wait a couple of weeks for your shiny new copy of Evolve or Contact to arrive with the postie. These are still killer videos and dudes like Jeff Lenosky and Ryan Leech were (and still are!) massive influences for me.
Around the time we were all shitting ourselves about the millenium bug, the internet came along and we started seeing videos from guys like the Trials Kings. That changed everything – more street riding, more group rides with your mates in town of an evening / weekend, more filming taking place and more videos being produced. And more time listening to a small white box making beeping noises and downloading clips at 3kb/s.
After that, we had riders like Neil Tunnicliffe and Craig Lee Scott taking it to the next level – some seriously massive and scary riding, being filmed on increasingly-better cameras, and with decent editing software being more readily available production values went up too. These were shared via internet forums so that gave rise to a whole new community, which could also be used to organise meet-ups and group rides. I think we used to get 30-40 riders out in Nottingham of a weekend!
Coming forward another 6, 8 years or so, 'that' video from Danny Mac set about another swing in the general direction of trials, with more BMX type tricks being blended in with traditional trials; street trials. The fact that so many 'regular' people (non riders) saw this video brought the sport to a new and much broader audience as well. The fact that everything was done on standard street furniture just made it more relateable too I think – everyone knows how big a post box is, etc.
Nowadays things aren't all that different from what I can tell, just that the method of communication has moved to social media rather than forums / message boards, and perhaps short clips rather than 'feature length' videos are more popular. A ton of other riders have come through – Ali Clarkson, Fabio Wibmer, etc – but the 'formula' is still very similar. The tricks, locations, budgets, production values etc are ever-increasing though, in order to try and get as many clicks / plays / likes as possible, which is obviously how you build your brand and make a living nowadays.
So, summing up, I think trials has been led over the years by a combination of those who are doing the most exciting things, and the medium by which that has been 'transported' to our eyes and ears.
What’s been your favourite era?
For me, it was the time while I was at uni. I think I started at Nottingham in... 2001, then went to Loughborough after that, but there was a really strong scene in the Midlands back then. Long days out with mates, faffing about with bikes having shoehorned them into the back of a Peugeot 106, spending ages making stupid videos while eating pizza, then repeating the same thing the next day at a different location.
Removing the rose-tinted specs, I think the 'boom' of 2009-11 following Danny's breakthrough was pretty exciting too. It certainly gave trials visibility to loads more people than I could have ever imagines, and also cemented TartyBikes as a business. Without this happening, my life would have been totally different – weird to think.
Where do you envision trials going in the future?
I'm struggling to think of a sequence of events which will shift it drastically from where it is now. You have the 'hidden' sport of competition trials, where we have a 10 times World Champ in Jack Carthy who British Cycling seem not to want to recognise (rolls eyes), which will always be too 'techy' for the average Joe to understand. It's bloody hard, but doesn't look cool and impressive like backflipping off a bus shelter, so I can't see it ever growing much sadly. The dedication is also off the scale – especially from parents taking youngsters to events.
The street trials scene I think will just gradually evolve slightly bigger and more complicated tricks, and popularity / number of riders come and go with how many hits the big names are racking up on social media.
All of the above said, I am absolutely not someone with creativity in this area so I am waiting to be proven wrong by the next big star!
Technology-wise, we seem to be inching along with marginal gains. A new carbon component here, a very small tweak of geometry there. The bikes are pretty wild now, even compared to 5 or 6 years ago. I can't really figure out what's next – with no gears, suspension, pivots, etc to play with, it's hard to drive technology forward.
The biggest thing that has helped over the last few years though has been an increase in quality of full builds. Inspired are to thank for this. Dave & Jon do such an amazing job and this literally drags all the other brands along with them.
On another note, there has been a death of the entry level bike with the demise of Onza – I'm hoping bikes of this ilk will make a comeback to help new riders get into the sport, but the way global manufacturing is going, it's going to be really tricky.
Is there anyone in particular you’re proud of that has achieved great things with some influence from your support?
I have to be honest and say that I always feel a bit weird about this. I don't really feel like either me personally or TartyBikes has really 'supported' anyone to a great extent (apart from maybe Ali Clarkson – more on that in a sec). I really wish I could have given more of my time, energy and assistance to all of Tarty's supported riders, but when running a business that leaves you mentally exhausted at the end of every day, you are running on empty all the damn time. That said, I do hope that discounted or occassionally free bits have been of use to all of our riders over the years. The progress that we've seen from Adam Morewood for example is so cool, though – from a foetus (meant in a playful and friendly way!) to an actual fully grown adult, picking up all sorts of accolades along the way. I think a lot of that is down to Robin and Gill, his parents, who both understand what it takes to succeed in trials (albeit with an engine) – if there is a more supportive (in all the right ways) parental unit in UK trials I can't think of it right now. That said, David and Kellie Rolls have turned their lives (and farm!) upside down to help Charlie on his way to stardom (it's coming dude, I know it!), so I may have to call that one a draw...
Back on topic... The way Ali Clarkson has 'grown' is truly inspiring though, it's amazing really given his background. I can empathise in so many ways – only child, living in a remote location, Asperger's-y / autistic-y traits which make you feel like a weirdo (but are in fact super-powers now I've come to re-frame them!) - the fact he has become so comfortable at putting forward the real him and filming all of that on a weekly basis is remarkable. I think, perhaps due to the similarities we possess, I have given him a bit more of a 'leg up' than others, both when he was working at Tarty and afterwards helping out with content for the channel. But it's been worth it!
With your engineering technical know how you’ve constructed your own bikes recently too. Talk to us about them and how they’re uniquely yours.
Eesh. How long have you got? Whistle stop tour... frame number 1 was 26” singlespeed, made from 1.2mm thick mild steel tubing, with BB and headtube sourced from the excellent Bear Frame Supplies. It was a tank, rode like a lump of lead, and I think it broke in 3 or 4 places within 6 months, but it gave me a flavour of how to build a bike frame and I learned a lot. I donated the complete bike to a mate and he's now using it as a dirt jumper, sending it round Chicksands on a fairly regular basis! I hope it doesn't kill him one day, ha.
Frame 2 was also a 26” hardtail and singlespeed – I was far too focused on making a very light bike and I thought 26” wasn't dead (spoiler alert, 29” wheels are far more suitable for riding over lumpy shit). I bought some nice Columbus tubing from Ceeway for this one, and also decided to TIG braze it.
So you've probably heard of TIG welding – nearly all modern metal frames are made in this way - and brazing (those cool gold-y coloured swoopy and very pretty filleted joints), but TIG brazing is a combination of the two.
Brazing is effectively sticking stuff together without melting the parent metal, so it basically deposits material on top of the frame tubes. This, therefore, has to be carried out at a temperature which is below the melting point of the tubing. The filler rod (brazing material) is mostly bronze in this case, so it melts around 900 degrees Celcius, whereas the steel tubing needs 1400. You use the TIG torch as a heat source, which is the tricky bit... you need to heat the tubing and filler rod to above 900 degrees, but keep it below 1400, or else the filler either won't flow at all, or it turns into a turdy molten pile of junk. Literally. If you screw up and run too hot, this will melt the frame tubing, introducing bronze into the puddle as well – and you can't just grind it off and start again like you can if it's all one material! This joining technique is much more tricky than the standard 'flame brazing', which uses an oxy-acetylene torch for the heat - much more subtle and less 'direct' than the TIG. Anyway, the Internetz said that it wasn't possible to build a frame with this joining method unless I wanted to die, so I just had to try it.
The frame rode absolutely awesome with so much feel and compliance, but didn't last all that long – I used a head tube that was too short and didn't space the downtube and top tube away from each other enough, so there was a lot of leverage from the forks in this area. I didn't die and the head tube didn't fall off, but I was chasing / repairing cracks for a while. This was not easy to do given the issues with dissimilar metals described above! I remember repairing it one night before a 6 hour XC race and just thinking 'please hold out for the day...'. So there's me on a rigid, 26” singlespeed bike with a home built frame ready to fall in bits, and my mate Danny (the other rider in our pair – no way I could have done the whole 6 hours by myself at this point) on a 160mm travel enduro bike, with a full face lid, getting some funny looks from the lycra brigade at the start of the race. Fun times. The frame held out and we somehow got fourth place!
Frame number 3 ended up a bit more conventional, sort of. It's a 29er, singlespeed, Reynolds front end, Columbus back end, TIG welded. I used a road / gravel top tube and super skinny curved seatstays in an attempt to give it plenty of compliance, which worked really nicely.
What hadn't been working really nicely on the other frames was bottom bracket bearings. I'd been going through them every 2-3 months in the winter slop, and the whole idea of such tiny bearings taking all this load just didn't sit well with me. Now, I'd read somewhere that angular contact bearings last longer than 'regular' bearings because all of the balls are always in contact due to the preload required (think headset). With a normal bearing, only a couple of the individual balls are actually in contact with anything (depending on the direction of load), so this obviously increases wear.
So... The BB shell on the frame is actually a bit of 44mm road bike headtube, cut to around 90mm width / length. The non drive side 'bottom bracket' is a complete Hope lower internal headset cup (for 1 1/8” steerer – 30.0mm crown race, same size as a lot of moden crank axles), and the drive side is a Hope headset cup for a 41mm bearing, which was then reamed out to 42mm while in situ. I figured this gave the best chance of the bearing surface being round and true. Then I plonked a Chris King headset bearing in that side, added a steel crown race with a split in it so it would compress down and grip the crank axle, and the whole lot is preloaded by the collar on the crankset. It was a bit of a stab in the dark but it's worked amazingly. The frame has had a year of use now – probably about 1500 miles - in all weathers, and the original set of bearings are still running smooth!
The frame came in at 1983g total weight (the year of my birth which is clearly fate) after adding 16g paint (surprised at how little this weighed considering its 3-part) which I was well chuffed with, and it has that lovely springly steel feel to it too. Perhaps a lot of that is down to the spokes, which are made of fancy string – that's another story which is way too long given how much I've already written. However, if you do want to burn more of your life learning about nerdy stuff that's pretty much irrelevant in the real world, have a search for 'Rope Spokes' on YouTube and you'll find a long video on Ali Clarkson's channel all about the process.
Other than those what does ‘The Tarts’ current fleet of bikes look like?
I've still got my Monty M5, which is a 20” wheel 'mod' trials bike. This was the first carbon trials bike to be released, around 10 years ago now, and it still feels really special when I swing a leg over it. It's mega light and responsive, exactly as I think a trials bike should be.
Also in the MTB stable I've relatively recently picked up a 2018 Santa Cruz Tallboy, which is ideal for pretty much any of the trails around here, especially with a Slack-R fitted to make the geo a bit more up to date. If it was released now, you'd slide the seat forward on the rails (as I have done) and call it a 'downcountry' bike (which I haven't done). Aaah, the bike industry...
I also have an OnOne Inbred which I picked up off eBay for about £200 – Hope hubs, XT brakes, carbon forks, really nice spec! This is set up singlespeed with a set of slicks on for a bit of commuting, nipping into town, and the odd cruise out when I can't be arsed getting a proper bike dirty.
A mate of mine also lent me a carbon Ribble road bike about 4 years ago so I could do a triathlon. I've mentioned a few times that I am probably taking the piss a bit by now, but he still doesn't want it back! That is also set up singlespeed (50:18) and I absolutely love the simplicity of it. All I've done this year is pump on the tyres and lube the chain once (Smoove really is excellent, btw). It's also really fun to go out with the local road club in my baggies and get some odd looks, especially on the climbs where MTB Thighs are usually the winner.
I know you’ve had to ‘live with a black dog’ for at least some period of time, how have bikes played a role in navigating that for yourself?
Yeah man. I feel like that is written through me like a stick of rock, y'know? It's always there waiting to come out, you just have to keep treating the dog nicely and remember it needs pampering every now and then. I've spent a lot of time and energy recently, especially post-TartyBikes, trying to understand this part of me and that helps a huge amount.
Bikes and the community they give you access to have definitely been a huge help, though for me it has been a little bit of a double-edged sword. There have been countless times where the concentration, focus and flow required during a bike ride have an amazing meditative quality, however when I've mentioned this theory to a few people in similar situations over the years they've agreed with me – turning a hobby into a job can quite easily take away the fun of your hobby. When you're spending 8, 10, 12, 14 hours a day having your ass kicked by bikes and customers buying bikes, there are times when you aren't exactly raring to go riding afterwards. For many years riding felt like a compulsion; that I 'had' to ride bikes in my spare time because I was a bike shop guy - otherwise I was living a lie. And that really took the sheen off. I hated bikes for at least half a dozen years, and didn't ride at all during that time. That was hard. I felt like I'd cornered myself through the whole process, and there was no way out. Which ties in with the above – even though on the surface everything can look brilliant and amazing and rosy, it's still written through you like a stick of rock.
Is there anything you’d like to say to anyone else who could be facing what you’ve had to in the past?
TL:DR – There's a reason, find it via therapy. The sooner, the better.
Bikes - and everything they stand for - are brilliant wallpaper, but without fixing the root cause of the cracks you spend a lot of time and energy trying to constantly paper over, you'll always end up hitting the bottom again sometime. If you spend time with any decent therapist (highly recommended, btw), they will likely ascertain that your 'issues' either stem from childhood or a specific life event. Both of these can be explored and worked on, with the right approach.
I liken it to having a box file of paperwork. There's some crappy old stuff somewhere in there that you didn't deal with at the time, but the sheets of A4 just keep piling in and burying what's at the bottom. Upending that box all over the floor and sifting through the wreckage is both really hard work and time consuming, but to go through it all and file it away properly feels amazing.
A really powerful technique I was introduced to this year is called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which has been specifically developed to deal with trauma or PTSD. This may sound familiar to some readers - I have virtually no memory of the majority of my life. It's a classic symptom of childhood trauma, you 'shut down' to protect yourself and the brain doesn't let you have access to those events.
So, given the above, it stands to reason that traditional talking therapies won't work; how can you talk about stuff if you can't remember it? This is where the EMDR comes in, using left-right-left-right eye movements (or other specific sensory inputs such as sound) to stimulate the brain bi-laterally. I'm not quite sure of the exact mechanisms, but this releases 'trapped' memories so you can work on them. Clearly this can be quite scary and upsetting – I found the process extremely draining, like... 2-3 days to recover from a 90 minute session – but the ability to tap into the subconscious like this is so useful.
I could go on about this for ages, as you can probably tell... I'm really keen that people talk more about mental health because I feel so strongly that the brain is very much our control centre. Without it being in good order, everything else fails – including the physical body. And we need that for riding bikes ;-)
Oh, forgot to mention, I have a feeling that things like 'autism' etc (I believe we are all on the spectrum to some degree – another chat for another day though!) are strongly linked to the above. If you 'shut down' then where do your thoughts go? Internally. And how does that present externally?
What this internal focus does give you, however, is an insane ability to concentrate, and often a drive for perfection. Often I remind myself that many of the most brilliant people in our history – I'm talking Einstein, Mozart, Newton, Picasso, etc. - would have been shoved into 'special school' had they been around nowadays. If you can identify with any of the above, then I would bet that you have a super-power, and the concentration it gifts you is used frequently in all aspects of life.
Outside of trials bikes what are your other hobbies and passions?
I have a spent a lot of time researching and implementing proper nutrition these last few years, to the point where it is definitely a passion and I think I could call it a hobby too! The old 'you are what you eat' phrase is so simple but true. I got really out of shape around my late 20s / early 30s, and decided enough was enough. Again I could bang on about this for hours, but what I've found (both in theory and practice) is that a holistic approach to health and wellbeing is vital to get all the benefits. It improves every single aspect of your life.
The above has tied in quite nicely with my latest hobby of doing a bit of endurance MTB racing. This year I've completed 7 hour and 8 hour singlespeed events, winning the class both times, and a 100 miler with gears (which was cut to ~83 because of ridiculous heat and a course deemed too difficult). I also got 4th at the UK SingleSpeed Champs, on my home made bike – I had no idea I was that far up the field so it was a real surprise, but such a cool feeling!
At the start of the year I was just a regular dude who rode once or twice a week with mates, but through research into proper training / nutrition and hard work putting it into practice (there's that super-power focus again...) have ended up a pretty reasonable endurance cyclist. I'm glad that I can still go out with mates and have a laugh though – that's something I had to work pretty hard on mentally, as when I was properly 'training', a group ride with breaks for a chat felt like a wasted ride.
Having played guitar for 20-odd years I decided it was time to do something with that, so recently started singing lessons and have done the odd open mic night since. I find it pretty scary, but as they say “the magic happens outside of your comfort zone”! The learning and improvement aspect of it also really appeals to me, plus it has a meditative quality, both from the concentration required and the vibrations it sends through the body.
On that note I also spend a fair bit of time at the moment doing yoga, mindfulness and meditation. These tie in really well with the mental health stuff mentioned above, helping the body and mind to work in harmony. All the stress over the years left me pretty disconnected from what's happening in my body, so finally being able to sense what's going on and react appropriately – rather than going into auto-pilot, usually burying myself in more and more stressful activities to try and shut out the discomfort – has given a real sense of achievement.
Having had a couple of trips away that I would class as 'travelling', I thoroughly enjoyed this and would like to do more. Heading off to weird and remote destinations and integrating (as well as you can!) with the locals both feels authentic and rewarding. I always make the effort to learn a few basic words and it's amazing how well of a footing that gets you off on.
A solo trip to Thailand in 2017 was a bit of a watershed moment for me, I'd come out of a long-term relationship / marriage that wasn't healthy for either of us in the end, and decided to just 'fuck it'. With just a couple of weeks notice, I booked flights for a 3 week trip to Bangkok and then put the feelers out about what to do. I was met with enormous generosity from Thailand's trials community – with Boy picking me up from the airport (judicious use of Whatsapp and various photos helped with the language barrier), Praphan asking me to smuggle over a pair of Hope hubs so he could buy them (and furnish me with some Baht in the process), and Palm basically taking me under his wing for a week in Chiang Mai. I had been at a pretty low ebb for some time, and this whole experience gave me such a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. There are a lot of genuine people in this world, you just have to be open enough to let them in.
Another slightly more wacky holiday destination was Senegal, with my partner Jane. She has done quite a lot of travelling before to various continents, but Senegal came up as a good place to visit in January when we both had relatively quiet work schedules. I'm struggling to cut down the amount of funny stories, ha, but we arrived about 2am, hadn't booked any accommodation, and the nearest town was 12 miles away. So, sleeping on the floor of the airport when we arrived was the only option.
A bunch of scary-looking locals kept circling to tell us in pigeon French that we'd never find any CFA (West African Francs) if we didn't do a deal with them, so we didn't get much sleep, but eventually found a working cash point on our way out of the airport – the other one I'd seen was in situ, but wasn't plugged into the power socket. Facepalm.
Now this airport was a brand new facility, with a huge 6 lane motorway running to it from the 'main road'. Which was basically a dirt track. Delusions of grandeur, indeed. On leaving the airport, we had a pair of taxi drivers actually fight each other to try and determine who was going to give us a lift. So we ended up walking the 12 miles to the nearest town in searing heat, seeing monkeys and chameleons on the way. Yin and yang in spades, setting the tone for the rest of the holiday. Jerejef, Senegal! Again, it's when you head out of your comfort zone that the magic happens...
The planet we are currently making a mess of is something of a concern and therefore a passion, too. I sometimes feel pretty powerless in this regard - especially since there are now 8 billion of us as of a few weeks ago – but reminding myself that every small thing does make a difference, and if I can influence others to follow suit then that can add up to a reasonable change. I still have pangs of guilt about TartyBikes ending up as a business that sold 'stuff' which would rack up huge amounts of air miles from production to end user, but this is tempered by considering worst-case scenarios and how I try to offset this with my own personal behaviours.
A couple of phrases that encompass other passions are “There aren't many women or black people in the bible” and “The difference between religion and science is that religion is focused on trying to prove itself right, and science constantly tries to prove itself wrong”. That's not meant in a religion-bashing kind of way - acceptance of individual beliefs is really important - but more that we need to keep striving for equality and understanding of our world (and beyond), rather than staying static.
I'm going to add some bonus info here because this blew my mind when I found it out the other day, and I think it will become a hobby in the near future: The sun is 93 million miles from us. That's a hell of a long way, right? Yet, light takes 'just' 499 seconds to get from the sun to us. The furthest away star we can see with the naked eye is 175 million times further away from us than the sun! It takes 16,300 years for the light from this star to reach us – so that star may have burned out 16,200 years ago and we'll still have no idea when we're all dead. Absolutely mind-blowing. These numbers are sometimes used to give me some perspective on my own life – it's easy to get wrapped up in our own thoughts and feelings, but in reality we are each pretty insignificant. As long as our actions aren't harming others, there's no need to take things so seriously.
How did you get into taking cars on track and how did that develop to where you are today with it?
I always loved cars as a kid – in fact two of the few memories I do have of childhood are with my dad: watching Nigel Mansell on TV in that iconic blue, white and yellow Williams with a red number 5 on the front, and the other relates to using a winch to drag broken cars in and out of our garage for my dad to fix, ha.
That lay dormant for many years, until my late 20s when my ex-wife bought me a driving experience day for a present. I got to have a ~15 minute blast in a BMW M3 and the same again in a Formula Ford type single seater, on a proper race circuit (Oulton Park) – both were very different but great experiences. The bug grew, via various faster and more expensive cars, combined with loads of track days, to the point where I ended up spending a handful of seasons racing Mazda MX-5s and spent 2 years working part time as an instructor.
I stopped racing seriously about 6 years ago as it all got too much. The stress and energy it was taking from me was way more than I was getting back, so it was time to call it a day. In the end I donated nearly all of my 30 odd trophies to a local charity shop (you can peel the plaques off and re-use them, ha). I have kept a couple from the most memorable races, one of which was a double win at Snetterton when the race weekend was shown live on 'Men and Motors' on Sky TV.
As with many of these things, once it's in your blood it never leaves – so I have done the odd one-off race since, mostly endurance stuff as cheaply as possible. You wouldn't believe how much fun it can be racing a Citroen C1 with close to 100 other nutters in a 24 hour race. It doesn't matter how fast you're going, as long as you're close to other cars you get that buzz. And 4:30am, over 2 hours into my stint, with the sun starting to rise over the grandstand at Silverstone, door mirror to door mirror with someone else all the way down the Wellington Straight, I got that buzz. A moment of clarity.
More recently I decided to just do more track days, have some fun with mates, and do more of the bit I always secretly enjoyed the most – tinkering. I took on a full rebuild of a 1988 Westfield (steel spaceframe chassis, fibreglass bodywork – think Caterham), but using the engine from a 2012 Honda Fireblade motorbike. This combination had been done before so there was a reasonable amount of knowledge knocking about, but I wanted to do it 'my' way so there was a lot of learning and figuring out involved along the way. I also believe machines like this should be as light and simple as possible to embellish the user experience.
The whole car ended up coming in at 385kg, so with over 200bhp to play with it's quite a toy. 100mph comes up in barely over 5 seconds, so combined with the soundtrack from the 13,500rpm engine and the sequential clutchless-shifting gearbox straight from the motorbike, you can imagine why I absolutely love driving this thing. It's basically a super light, rigid, singlespeed mountain bike in car form, ha. All the controls are set up exactly for me, including daft things like an 8 degree lean on the gear shifter stick to match my left wrist angle (bad break as a kid – never healed straight) and a hand clutch instead of the usual pedal clutch you'd see in a car.
I've calmed down a bit with the car thing for now, again it took a lot of energy. With hindsight, it was basically very fancy and expensive wallpaper for the cracks I mentioned previously, but there have been some very fond memories and great relationships created from this time.
What projects or creations are you particularly proud of?
I think the Westfield (lovingly called the 'Lobster' as the red fibreglass bodywork has faded somewhat from 20+ years sat in a barn before my ownership) and my latest bike frame are the coolest things I've built. I really enjoy the feeling of man and machine in harmony, so I get a huge sense of pleasure and 'this is truly mine – built by me, for me' every time I use them.
That said, the off-grid wood-fired hot tub I built last year out of an old propane bottle, a length of copper pipe, some salvaged loft insulation and an IBC is also really fun. It filled from the house gutter, heated up in a quarter of the time of a commercial hot tub, stayed hot just as long and used no chemicals or electricity. We could even cook tea on the burner while waiting for the water to heat! Sadly that is no longer in service as there's not enough space where we're currently living, but I can't wait to fire it back up again at some point.
What’s the story behind CleaR Motorsport?
I'd been doing stuff on my own car for a while and a couple of local mates couldn't find decent, reliable places to carry out work on their own cars. So they asked me. As a people-pleasing guy who couldn't say no, both to requests and a few extra quid, CleaR Motorsport was born. I ended up doing quite a lot of suspension and geometry setup work, as vehicle dynamics is something I got really interested in and learned a lot about – both theory and practice. There was also a bit of engine building going on, and a full MX5 race car strip down and rebuild. Adam Bessell (trials rider and also very talented racer!) went on to win his first race immediately after said work, in a much more competitive series than I'd been toying around in, ha. That was a cool day, seeing one of my best mates on the top step of the podium having driven the wheels off a car I'd spent so much time lovingly optimising.
Following that high, I had a realisation - it was basically heading towards being 'TartyBikes V2', in the sense that I never really intended it to happen, and it became another distraction to keep myself busy to hide from the reality of my life. Luckily I realised this fairly early on and stopped it spiralling out of control.
In some ways it's a blessing that following a house move / downsize around 18 months ago, all of my car work space is now taken up with house-related artefacts, so I can't take any bookings even if I'm tempted to. I still really enjoy doing this stuff but it takes a lot out of me mentally, so I need to be in the right place. I'm not sure I'll do it commercially again – I have found that (and this is the same with bikes) as soon as you add payment into the equation, something you normally enjoy greatly can suddenly feel quite different.
Final words of wisdom?
This will probably sound cheesy, but be true to yourself. I've found that – generally – more bad things come about than good when you pretend to be someone else, even if the reason is well-intentioned. I still struggle with that, but when I manage it, the world feels like a better place.