Hello from France

Hi I'm Tom and I live down in the communist part of the south of france in Catalonia. For the last year I have made the conscious decision to work with my hands rather than fingers on a keyboard and have been reconditioning - old road, randonneurs and track bikes from 1910 - 1980.
I am going to be doing up a 1912 Peugeot Track bike this month and hopefully will be able to find some words of wisdom here to aid me on the way - and if anyone has any tyres I'd be over the bloody moon!
My current ride is a Le Jeune Special Tour de france - (colombus framed c1974 super Lj mechs universal super 68 brakes, TI crank, Campag front and rear drops, ideale 90 saddle with Zeus seatpost) I was told by the guy I bought it from that his father claimed only 30 were made but who knows - certainly I can find no other reference to them or evidence of them online so perhaps there is an element of truth in it. I'd like to get a couple of the photos up to see if anyone has seen another one. I also have a cinelli lugged Didier Louis frame which was raced in the Tour de france from 79-82 (with a bendy seatpost) by Dominic Leboeuf (amateur) which I'm trying to find a home for...

Bonjour!!!


Welcome and have fun.

Hello! So do you consider yourself French or Catalan?

Nice bike, BTW.

I shall be over in your part of the world (just over the border) in April of next year, the closest i will get to you is Figueres, a beautiful place to be (Catalonia, that is, not necessarily Figueres!!)

Le Jeune with friend

Merci,

I hope to and not having to write in french - should make communication hopefully slightly more fluid than on the french forums... J'espere..

Tom

That's a striking looking bike.

I really like the frame colour and the clean lines.

Catalan

Figueres will be rather different to how remember it - there was a massive forest fire a couple of months back and the countryside all around figueres is but a cinder now. The locals certainly consider themselves catalan and half my children are in catalan speaking classes - much to my consternation as originally I thought it would be just an hour a day a week not the majority of every day.... It is superb biking country down here be it route or VTT.

Welcome to the site! I live just outside Montpellier, so not that far, not that Communist either...! You might find lots of information about very old French bikes on www.tontonvelo.com - it's a good site, plenty of good advice and banter. Bit like this one...

Any pictures of the Didier Louis?

Bendy Didier

Salut,

Montpellier is not that far at all - I drove to Rennes to pick this one up.... which was quite a round trip but stopped off in Bordeaux and spent the day with a collector there who has the most extraordinary collection of bikes I have ever seen under one persons roof - or should I say 4 Garden Huts!

If you want the specs they are in brief and roughly working from front to back - Techtron levers (a later addition) Modolo equipe callipers, cinelli stem (early logo) cinelli bars, spidel shifters (super LJ in all but name) and mechs nuovo record, Hubs are Spidel Pros , rims Mavic GP4 with D L embossed, Spidel Crank, Selle Italia Turbo. Size wise I think it is 56cm C2C top tube. I am taking it out with the local velo club on Sunday which I'm looking forward to.

I have been on Tonton quite often particularly helpful for identifying small artisinal builders who are pretty much unknown outside of the towns they used to work from.

I hope the wind has not been as savage for you as it has been down here for the past couple of days....

Cdlt Tom.

Hello from windy Denmark.

Careful we all don't start wanting to stay at yours for " only a couple of days/weeks"

Nice bikes too. I like that wiggly frame.

Tom - that bike is beautiful... :shock: And the photo of it in the street near dusk is great too. Nice part of the world. Good to hear you know about Tontonvelo, a very useful site.

I'm away from home at the moment so I'm not sure about the wind. My wife says it's cooling down a bit which is a relief after the summer...

I wish I lived nearer the Pyrenees, but my plan over the next few months is to explore the Cevennes when I get the opportunity - they're only about 30 minutes away and are great to ride in. I've been trying to trace the route described in "The Rider"...