Le vélo jurassien

12/01/2022

Just a couple of pictures from our public début. Thanks to all who stopped in and a very happy new year to everyone.

16/12/2021

Super initiative par des gens super sympas

[Atelier vélo] Excellente nouvelle : Nous avons un local pour notre atelier d'auto-réparation de vélos !!! 🚲🔧🥳
➡ L'atelier ouvrira début 2022 à Ferney-Voltaire, à la maison Saint-Pierre
➡ Un grand MERCI à la Ville de Ferney-Voltaire, à Pierre-Marie Philipps, à Fleur Broutin et à La Boussole EVS - Ferney-Voltaire pour leur soutien, leur confiance et leur temps !!!😊
📌 Nous vous tiendrons au courant de l'ouverture de l'atelier très rapidement !
A très bientôt ! 😉

14/12/2021

Here we are finally live and in person in Gex. All the info for the exhibition is on www.levelojurassien.fr

08/12/2021

03/12/2021

In France at any rate Motobécane needs no introduction, even though it’s probably better known for its Mobylette than for its push bikes. The Mobylette was the moped that filled the same ecological niche in France as the Vespa in Italy, carrying generations of French teenagers away from the stern gaze of their Gaullist parents to fumble with each others’ underwear at a safe distance from the family home.

Anyway, this bike does not have a 2 stroke engine, but it does have an appealing mash-up of vintage and new components. It’s based on a road racing frame from the early 1970s that would originally have been set up with drop bars and 10 speed gears. The combination of components that makes this bike a bit unusual is the riser handlebars and 33mm cyclocross tyres. It’s not quite a tracklocross bike, but it’s more versatile than your standard fixie and will take gravel paths in its stride. It's got what's known as a flip-flop rear hub, which means you can run it as a singlespeed with a freewheel or as a fixed wheeler depending on which way round the wheel is. Since you can run it with a freewheel I've put front and back brakes on it. I don't want anyone getting into trouble. Your tallish teenager will have more trouble taking their preferred fumbling partner along with them than if this was a Mobylette, but it's still cool.

02/12/2021

www.levelojurassien.fr Website up and running with exciting bilingual text and a bunch of photos of around here.

At Le vélo jurassien we put vintage steel bikes back on the road better than they were before.

02/12/2021

Le vélo jurassien is just me. The cover picture explains the name, given that it contains a bike ('un vélo' as we say here in France) and those are the Jura mountains in the background. This is where I have lived for almost twenty years.

​The point of the exercise is to put old steel bikes back on the road, whether that means rebuilding something close to the original or using the frame as a basis for a new kind of bike. If you squint a bit you can see that the strapline on the logo reads 'L'acier immortel'. This is French for 'immortal steel', which is kind of my point. These frames don't deteriorate with age. They just get better. It takes a bit of fiddling about to get them to play nicely with new components, but when it works it is glorious.