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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6 comments
Nah just get them to build it up and then check the alignment of everything and tightness of all the bolts yerself...15 minute job, save yerself an hour!
The Halfords special is a great deal, for sure, but if you're competent, build it up yourself. If you aren't, at least get someone competent to check it over. This is advice borne of experience - some of their mechanics (not all, I'm sure) seem to be dangerously incompetent from what I've seen.
You might even be able to negotiate a small discount if you build it yourself, but at this price that seems unlikely!
n/m misunderstood the person I was quoting.
Perfectly decent bike for the money. Not widely available though. I live in Edinburgh and the nearest shop that has stock in the 54cm size is Brighton!
£229
That is an amazing deal for a spot on winter bike.
It certainly is! Now we wait for all the Halfords haters to come along and slag it off...