Brompton Bicycle

In mid June 2002 Lucent moved office from Anderlecht to Grand Begard. The office in Anderlecht was a not unpleasent 20 minute tram ride away or just 25 minutes direct on foot. The new office is right on the western edge of the outer ring road in a very inaccessable industrial estate (except by car of course). By tram it's well over an hour with two changes. Even by car it's quite a slog. Obviously as a non car driver I had to sort out some alternative transport.

I'd seen Brompton folders in action on Thames Trains services when I was commuting from Reading to Slough in the UK. After a couple of glasses of wine I came up with a hair-brained scheme to ride part of the way and use the tram for the rest. The Brompton folds up to such a small portable size that it seemed like a possibility. After a quick test run I found the trip could be done and done in a much faster time than walking with the tram and in fact not in a bad time compared to a car. The tram service is rather sporadic but since I've sussed out some alternative routes things have got a lot easier, I basically have two tram options the 82 or the 83 (see pictures below and left). Both use the same route, the 82 goes further but runs less often and the 83 runs more frequently but often stops only halfway to the final destination of Berchem. The only downside is that this has so far been a un-characteristicly rain-free summer. A turbulent Belgian autum may force me to alter my plans. Of course I could have taken the Vespa and solved all my problems in one go but the scooter still has a UK number plate and the process of Belgo-fying it so complicated that I'd rather use a push bike and get fit at the same time.

After two weeks of commuting I'm doing ok. Today (the 8th of July 2002) I made it all the way up the last hill to our house. We live in "Altitude Cent" named for the fact that it's 100 meters above sea level and is the highest point in Brussels. Not a good location for an un-fit born-again cyclist like me to be living in. Making it to the top was a big thing for me as I'd been slowly getting further and further up the hill each day ("ok this time it's to the green lamp post","past the green lampost now on to the corp diplomatic parking","there goes the corp diplomatic parking, the lamp post with the red graffiti is in sight"). Until today when I passed all three of my land marks and was within 20 meters of the summit, how could I stop? If you've seen the movie "The Hill" with Sean Connery and Roy Kinnear you'll know what I'm talking about.

The model of Brompton I bought is slightly different to the one shown above. For a start mine has a white rear frame, front forks and stem. It also has 6 gears in an arrangement unique (I think) to the Brompton. It has a Sturmey Archer style 3-speed hub and a 2 ring rear derailliuer. An odd system but it works very well. The system of folding the bike takes a bit of practice but once you've got the swing of it it looks rather impressive. There's nothing like jumping off the tram at a busy Gare du Midi, unfolding the bike and pedalling off down the street to the amusment and bewilderment of more conventional passengers. I'm having a little trouble ajusting to the Bromptons small wheels and narrow high pressure tires. All of my previous steeds have been either BMX's or mountain bikes, perfect for the rubbish-strewn chewed up cobbled streets of Brussels but impossible to get onto a tram. Unfortunatly I sometimes forget that the Brompton, whilst sturdy is not quite as robust.

Brussels is a rather bike-unfriendly city. There is a strict order of hate between road users here. Truck drivers hate bus drivers, bus drivers hate car drivers and car drivers hate cyclists and pedestrians in equal measure (tram drivers must be smoking something as they love everyone! seriously they are just too mellow!). Belgium seems to have got through the seventies and eighties without advising it's citizens about road safety in any way (and I'm sure has never even asked them not to drop litter or told them that letting their dogs shit on the pavement is "a bad thing"). Remember all of those ad campaigns about road safety in the UK? "Don't mix cross-ply and radial tires!", "Will your tires pass the 10p test?", "Clunk-Click every trip" have all passed Belgium by. The statistics regarding the number of drivers using their vehicles without insurance is frightening and don't get me started on the state of peoples parking habits. In my home of South Wales in the UK the police regard traffic law enforcement as a big money spinner, here in quasi-capitalist Belgium it's way down the list of priorities (but with the defendants in a "recent" prominent murder case not getting a trial until seven years after being arrested I'm not suprised). Plus they have guns over here, I think that what the late great Douglas Adams said about "the people who really want to be politicians are the last people you should let become them" applies equally well to policemen.

Even though Brussels has yet to pick up the pro-cycling habit's of it's Dutch speaking rivals Antwerp in the north or the cyclist mecca of Leuven in the east of the country it's trying hard to shake off it's grimey pro-car image. Before I left the old office in Anderlecht there were some heavy duty construction efforts in full swing to narrow roads, widen pavements, plant trees and generally make the streets more suitable for human use. In many ways I love this city because it's so grimey with a natural, built-in sense of recycling. There are several times where I've found very interesting items of computer equipment dumped in the street. The last example of this was a Hewlett Packard VT-100 terminal I found abandoned outside a school, just when I needed one!

It's just such a shame that they let car drivers off the hook so easily.

For more information on this remarkable machine visit the un-official home of Bromptons on the web. it's by far the best resource for all aspects of buying and using these bikes. For the real low-down try the Brompton-Talk mailing list at Yahoo Groups. If you're in Brussels and thinking of buying one then I can't recommend VELODROOM Rue Van Arteveldestraat 41, Bruxelles 1000 Brussels enough. Excellent friendly (almost) impartial advice (hey I'd be evangalising them too!) with a good follow up service.

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