Posties on Pashleys

If you, like me, keep your eyes peeled for cycling related stuff going on around you, you'll have noticed some new additions to the streets of suburban Manchester in recent months.
TNT, the Dutch based courier service, has rolled out a fleet - not sure how many you actually need to constitute a fleet but they have more than two so a fleet it is - of postal delivery bikes as they continue to undercut Royal Mail.
This is the first time - to my knowledge - that a company other than Royal Mail has delivered to the door in the UK - the 'final mile' as it's known.
You may recall that Royal Mail dropped its own bike fleet a few years ago which was very bad news for Brompton which was its exclusive supplier. I seem to recall than heath & safety was spuriously trotted out as the reason to ditch the bikes in favour of those idiotic red chariot things the posties push around these days.
Anyhoo, the TNT bikes are orange - as you would expect - Pashley Pronto cargo bikes and very nice they are too.

Is that a 7 or a 9?

If there is a more suitable vehicle for the delivery of those 'sorry it wouldn't fit through your letterbox' notices than the bicycle, then I'll eat one of the 300 punctured tubes I have knocking around.
Good to see.

Sturmey-Archer gallery

Another evocative British cycling brand of yesteryear is Sturmey Archer.  Those of you who had a Raleigh Grifter or Chopper  will be used to the wonders of their 3-speed hub gear systems.
In a similar vein to the Reynolds post of yesterday, Sturmey-Archer has a wonderful gallery of old marketing materials to feast your eyes on.  You can read all about it here.

The Sturmey Archer brand survives to this day even though it has been owned by Taiwanese company Sunrace since the year 2000.
The new hub gears are really good stuff too and they've retained the wonderful thumb-shift selector design which I had on my Grifter - my better half now has one on her beautiful Pashley Princess.