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TECH NEWS

Borough Briefcase — the ultimate Boris Bike accessory?

Made-in-England leather bag to posh up the ride to the office

Need to get your laptop and papers from your penthouse on the Isle of Dogs to your office in the City? New brand Borough has just the thing for the Boris Bike ride into town in your pinstripe suit and brogues with their new made-in-England leather briefcase.

Designed to fit into the luggage holder on the handlebar of a London hire bike, the Borough Briefcase is hand-made in East London from Scottish leather.

The Borough Briefcase is the brainchild of designer Graham McLoughlin, who says he got into luggage while working with cycling bag maker Carradice of Nelson.

He told road.cc: "The Borough project itself started out as an experiment into designing and manufacturing quality items in London. Updating the quintessentially British briefcase for 'every-day' travel, the idea came with the introduction of the cycle-hire bicycles along with knowledge of local bicycle culture."

The Briefcase may be the first item we've seen from Borough, but it won't be the last. "We are currently developing a smaller briefcase and range collaboration, in supporting the journey well travelled."

Because Boris Bikes are identical to New York's Citi bikes and San Francisco's Bay Area Bike Share bikes, the briefcase fits those bikes too, and bikes in any other city where the hire bike network is based on the Montreal Bixi system.

The Borough Briefcase comes with a shoulder strap, and a pair of straps to turn it into a rucksack is available as an optional extra. It's available in red, black or brown and each one is individually made to order.

McLoughlin and two friends recently gave the bag a thorough try-out when they used it as their luggage on a Boris bike ride from London to Paris.

You're waiting for the punchline aren't you? Unsurprisingly, it's the price. If English craftsman construction and Scottish leather sounds expensive, the Borough Briefcase's £420 tag is undeniably high for a piece of bike kit.

But posh briefcases are expensive, and the Borough case looks like a positive bargain against, say, a Pickett Traditional Bridlehide Briefcase or a Tusting Grafton.

"We make to order," says McLoughlin. "Selling direct enables Borough to offer a better deal to the people who share and support our values, our passion for crafting timeless items of everyday utility, made in England and designed for London."

You can find out more at borough.cc.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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2 comments

Avatar
congokid | 9 years ago
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Shortly after the hire bikes were launched I foresaw a bag design that would accommodate the carrier geometry.

This one looks nice, if a bit bulky (though large enough to take a good sized lunch), but way too expensive.

It actually reminds me of a large bespoke leather schoolbag my mum commissioned for me for grammar school. Fully loaded it weighed a ton.

Avatar
congokid | 9 years ago
0 likes

Shortly after the hire bikes were launched I foresaw a bag design that would accommodate the carrier geometry.

This one looks nice, if a bit bulky (though large enough to take a good sized lunch), but way too expensive.

It actually reminds me of a large bespoke leather schoolbag my mum commissioned for me for grammar school. Fully loaded it weighed a ton.

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