And finally the Bromptons arrive!

Our Brompton folding bikes finally turned up after 20 weeks. Yes, TWENTY FU^&*£$ weeks. And Inga's is the wrong colour! Ha ha ha ha ha ha... hang on... what the f*$%???

We (read: Matt) wanted 8 speed Bromptons, but they don't come with 8 gears (max is 6, basic is 1), so we got them modified by a really nice one man-band called Ben from Kinetics in Glasgow in Scotland. It's a bit sad that his business skills didn't match the awesome bikes. Gonna have to swap Inga's bike for the correct colour when it finally turns up. What a fakken eidjeet.

ANYways. Bromptons are made in London and pretty much the best (thing since sliced bread?) you can get when it comes to folding bikes - they've got a 3 hinge, 4 fold action going on to get 'em nice and small. They're made out of steel as opposed to the lighter alloys, so they're a good bit heavier, but they make up with that in their higher tensile strength and therefore the ability to have a longer frame (making it a lot more stable).

We got the superlight option, so the front forks, back wheel tri-frame and seat post are all titanium. Makes for a 12.3kg bike. Not too bad really, and we're getting used to carrying them up to the 3rd floor. Pretty good being able to take 'em into the office and chuck them beside your desk as well! It's opened up a whole new side of London for us...

The Sturmey Archer 8 speed gear system is inside the rear hub, so there's no worries about the chain coming off or anything like that - Sturmey Archer hubs are supposed to be pretty robust when it comes to life as well. The front and rear lighting system is all pedal powered green energy provided by our legs and the front in-hub dynamo. Yay - no more flat batteries!

Will give an update how we're going later on...