Christmas gifts for discerning cyclists — what to buy for the awkward cyclist in your life

There is no shortage of cycling-related bottle openers out there: there’s the ones that look like they’re part of your workshop tool kit (because alcohol and heavy blunt tools are a good mix), there are those that are made from bits of old bike parts, there are those that you can bolt onto your bike, there are generic catalogue bought bottle openers with a bike logo etched on... and rising to soar gracefully above all of them is this.

The Bird Of Prey Bottle Opener is 3D-printed in aerospace grade 6/4 titanium and weighs a nothing 11 grams. Is it very expensive, yes. Is it horrendously over engineered for the job it has to do? Completely. Will you almost faint with giddy excitement whenever anyone asks if someone has a bottle-opener? Certainly. Will it bring you a little tumescence of joy every time you use it? Absolutely.

Designed for wearing when the temperature is skulking about zero, the Prestige Deep Winter Jacket is a no excuses bit of kit. For a single piece of clothing it comes in two halves with a soft internal thermal body covered by a DWR waterproofed three-layer membrane outer fabric armour, which can be unzipped yet leaving the inner layer zipped up should you require some ventilation.

To protect you further from the worst of the season's sleetings, the inner extends well up the neck and can cover the entire lower half of the head, ears and neck if needs be. The double inner cuff extends all the way down to the hands with thumb loops keeping it in place, totally removing the threat of annoying and chilly wrist gap.

Boxing Day is the traditional time to work off some of the previous day’s excess and play with any toys you might have received, and you will feel like a million dollars (or 295 euros) wearing this while doing the former. If that's too spendy, then there's always the less heavy duty Prestige jacket for milder days which is currently on sale. 

The cycling musette seems to have drifted back into fashion amongst certain types over recent years, but this modern take on it by London cycle clothing brand Albion takes it to the next level making it less fashion accessory and something intelligently designed and genuinely useful.

The ultra-lightweight musette is made from a 100% recycled micro ripstop fabric. It also rolls up amusingly tiny so it can be stowed in a rear pocket without you even noticing until it’s needed. Leave it there until the end of the ride when you might need to pop to the shops for some milk and other bits for immediate tea and cakes sustenance and then supper, or even mid-long ride filled with petrol station snacks to see you through the next 200km or so.

You could get away with a grubby tyre when they were all black, but now the tan wall tyre is very much back on trend and it’s something the tasteful cyclist approves of. It just makes a bike just look right, the eye shadow of the machine if you will.

Unfortunately tan walls can suffer from fading, discolouration from road grime and that particularly horrible brake pad sputum if you’re running rim brakes, so need sprucing up regularly if you want to avoid them looking dejected with the air of an unloved commuter bike. This is a chore significantly eased by the Like Pneu Tyre Cleaner. Even if it sounds like they came up with the name and then had to hurriedly make the product, it promises to lift dirt and grime and bring your tyres back to box-fresh iridescence...

You can never have enough cycling caps, and the discerning cyclist knows this. Whatever N+1 is, it’s +2 for caps.

There’s the one that matches that bike, the one that matches that top, the one that matches the other bike, the one that you got doing that event, the one you picked up on holiday, the tatty one that you just can’t throw away... I could go on, but to some they can attain a status and love well beyond their humble calling.

While there is the unwritten rule that it’s poor form to wear a trade team top unless you ride for that team, there is also a sub-section to this rule that states certain trade team tops from a certain vintage are perfectly fine to wear, and could even be considered dapper if done with conviction. There is also an addendum to the rule that states you can wear a current trade top if it’s an obscure third division Italian team with 27 sponsors on, but that’s a different topic to dissect over a long bike ride.

Anyway, nothing but nothing beats the humble cotton cycling cap (call it a casquette if you must) for value and usability. It keeps the sweat and the sun out of your eyes, fends the rain off a bit too, and cycling folklore would have you believe that you can even do a poo in one.

Prendas Ciclismo have probably the most comprehensive collection of cotton cycling caps around, so you’ll have no trouble finding a cap that matches the discerning cyclist’s bike/top/socks/cycling hero.

Whilst it is slightly vulgar to brag about how far you’ve ridden, the discerning cyclist prefers to measure a ride in the experiences and people met along the way. It’s sometimes nice to have a permanent reminder of a particular standout ride or completed personal challenge, and it doesn’t have to be showoffy.

Simply download the GPX of your chosen ride (there’s no need for it to be Epic, it could just be the ride to your favourite cafe and back, or that one you did with your bestest riding companions and had a laugh), and on the English Cyclist website, spend some time adjusting it to suit. You can have an A3 or A2 map of your particular ride. The abstract minimalism of a squiggle on a map is far more of a conversation starter than a ream of Strava stats.