Just catching up (our B&B for the weekend had no wifi and no 3G signal, in 2014, I ask you! :-) )
We went on the Friday, was a bit surprised the Specialized showing was so small (basically Body Fit with some bits for show on racks) and also missed some of the big manufacturers being there. Coming from motorbiking we were quite taken with the KTM stand (hadn't realised they'd been making bicycles for 50 years and both saw something we liked, she's now lusting after 2.5k of cyclocross bike and me a the cyclesheme value 1k KTM 1964 hardtail mountain bike. We'll see...
We took food with us, so snacked on that rather than mining the energy bars, we chatted to a number of the holiday companies as my wife is liking the idea of some sort of cycle holiday next year, listened to the Seminar with Ned Boulting and Malcolm Elliot which was quite fun, generally meandered around. I have to admit to kind of liking some of the Electras and sort of wished I'd given the city cycling bit a go and tried one or two out. We decided not to goad the CTC stand about the compulsory helmet use in the test zones. We finished in the retail zone which was where people were truly trying to sell you stuff, having been a bit surprised at the number of stalls showing off fairly mundane shiny but only as distributers, not retailers and not even having an attached retailer in the appropriate bit of the show, feels like a dropped ball that. We ended up grabbing show deals on a basic action cam for my commuting, a couple of flare knock offs and a decent looking front light as a 'see stuff' option to add to her 'be seen' one for the commute home. She also got talking to a custom shirt guy and the Fat Lad at the Back people, with a view to contacted both after the show for kit.
As a coda to it all we headed across to see our friends on the
Security for Bikes stand and chatted with them about how the show was going etc. until chucking out time.
We enjoyed it, it wasn't quite what we were expecting, motorbike and diving equivalents tend to be much more retail combined with the look at our shiny, but it was a good day out. Compared to the cost of getting there from Kent it wasn't an expensive day (helped by pre-ordering tickets on a deal, so £11.50 each) and if we wanted to save a tenner on parking next time we could park a couple of miles off site and cycle in. Of course, I only realised this morning that I completely failed to seek out a Parachute 2 to try on, which was one of my reasons for going. Ah well...
