Manchester tweed ride: what's that then?

One of the wonderful things about cycling, and there are many, is that it is a great leveller.  Barriers such as age, gender and class which percolate through other sports are swept away under the mass of chain-driven machines. Among the dedicated commuters, BMX yoofs and club riders, there exist a whole load of other dedicated sub-cultures which have their own version of what you might call cycling - I don't mean this in any negative way, rather that some groups of cyclists wont think of themselves as cyclists at all - they're just people on bikes.
One group, to which cycling seems to be very important, is having its latest meet up this weekend in Manchester.  

Tweed Ride: youth membership manager

Meet the tweeds.  I'm no cultural anthropologist but it seems to me that the tweed ride is a very welcome  two-wheeled extension of chapism which made a medium sized cultural ripple a couple of years back. I think it was centred on  a magazine called The Chap which had features on cardigans, shoe polish and stuff.  It was a bit of antidote to the fag end of ladism which was being inhaled deeply by Pete Doherty and various other self-destructive types with too many haircuts.
Chapism was all together more civilised and concerned with, well, cardigans and shoe polish.  I don't know that much about it but there's definitely a family resemblance between those chaps and the tweed ride.
The Tweed Ride then, meets at the White Lion in Castlefield - that's the one on Liverpool Road opposite the Museum of Science and Industry - at 2pm on Saturday and rides around town at a suitably gentlemanly pace no doubt.  The think the idea is that aficionados will be kitted out in tweed and be on vintage bikes but everyone's welcome. Final destination is the Victoria Baths in Longsight for a real ale festival. You have to say it all sounds rather splendid and I for one wish them the very best of luck.
Ride safe