Learning to ride a bicycle is one of those unique, but totally identical experiences. Falling off countless times, crying, convinced you’re never going to be able to do it – until finally, you can. That moment when you keep pedalling, thinking a parent’s hands are still on your hips, only to hear them cheering from 15 metres away and instantly realising they’re not, is forever etched into our collective consciousness.
From the point of learning to ride, bicycles for many of us became a two-wheeled, one-way ticket to freedom. To the park, to mates’ houses, to some makeshift mountain bike jumps where someone would inevitably end up face down in the dirt. Until one day, we grew up, learnt to drive, and left our bikes behind.
But after a long hiatus, it feels like there’s been a collective awakening. More people than ever are returning to bicycles, spurred on by adrenaline-fuelled Instagram edits of riders flying down gravel singletrack at 40 km/h. People are rediscovering just how much fun bikes are to ride, and spending the equivalent of a month’s salary on the best kit they can find – at least some of which, if not all of it, will have Rapha stamped across the front.
Established in 2004, Rapha’s apparel has played no small part in cycling’s modern resurgence. For a lot of people, an interest in cycling can spawn from the gear. Someone spots a cool-looking cycling jersey, decides they need one, then realises they also need a bicycle to justify wearing it. Before long, they’ve bought the bike, remembered how much fun cycling actually is, convinced themselves they’re faster because of the outfit, and fallen headfirst into the sport.
And from there, they keep falling. Padded bib shorts come first. Then a wildly expensive bike computer follows. After that, they begin shaving their legs. Next, an indoor trainer, with a television positioned in front of it, showing Tour de France highlights. On repeat.
For some reason, cycling seems to get serious, quickly. New riders immediately become obsessed with performance, doing anything to shave seconds, shed weight and become marginally quicker than they were a month ago. And in the process of this hunt for numerical gains, they forget why they started riding the bike in the first place.
And really, who can blame them? Cycling in the media is overwhelmingly presented as a performance-first pursuit, with little attention paid to the journey, the route, or the simple joy of riding a bike. That is, with one exception: the Brevet.
Brevets are long-distance cycling events in which riders carry a card and collect stamps at each checkpoint to prove they’ve completed the route. Participants are entirely self-sufficient, carrying everything they need to get them over the finish line, whether that’s water, gels, toilet roll, jelly babies, wine or cigarettes.
Brevet is unquestionably cycling’s most rock & roll format. So it should come as no surprise that Rapha recently paid homage to it with their aptly titled ‘Brevet‘ collection. Better yet, they asked us to photograph it…
We wanted to create our own kind of Brevet event – a type of slog that would put Rapha’s gear to the test in the same kind of environments that made us fall in love with cycling all those years ago. We settled on the location of Betws-y-Coed – a Welsh mountain village on the edge of Snowdonia National Park that promised to offer beautiful scenery and bone-shaking descents in equal measure.
After suiting head to toe in Rapha’s Brevet Collection, we mounted our steeds – which were by far the fanciest bicycles any of us had ever had the pleasure of pedalling – and set off into the Welsh hills. Immediately realising that climbing remains incredibly hard work, even with electronic shifting and a featherlight frame beneath you.
Once we’d climbed several hundred metres and shed what felt like a similar number of layers, the descent began. And immediately, that euphoric, nostalgic buzz hit us like a sledgehammer. We were whizzing downhill, kicking up dust, overtaking each other, and flying into corners as if we were kids again. Slightly terrified, but loving every second of it all the same.
Unlike traditional brevets, we didn’t actually have any checkpoints on our ride. We didn’t really even have a route – just following whatever path spoke to us the most. We chatted on the way up the hills. Screamed all the way down them, and made sure to stop whenever the trees opened up to a dramatic view, or just to eat another fistful of Welsh Cake.
And in the midst of all our chatting, screaming, stopping, eating and exploring, we realised something. Life gets more serious as you get older. You lose freedom, gain more responsibilities, and seemingly have less time than ever. But taking some time to reacquaint yourself with something that made you smile as a child will probably still make you smile as an adult. Especially if it’s riding bicycles with your friends.
As you roll down roads you’ve never ridden before, a little bit of that freedom you lost along the way manages to find its way back.
We concluded our ride by cooling off in a nearby river (evidently still buzzing with child-like adrenaline), and a question arose: ‘How far did we actually ride?‘ To which no one knew the answer. We’d spent the entire day riding without thinking about numbers. We’d simply packed what we needed, chucked on full Rapha outfits and pointed our bikes towards the mountains. We’d managed to tap into the essence of brevet without collecting a single stamp.
Which, in part, we can thank to the magic of cycling – a feeling that never fades, no matter how wrinkly you get. The moment you roll a bike out of your driveway, you feel a little like the child who’d just learnt to ride all over again. But we also have to give great credit to Rapha’s Brevet range – the lightweight gear simply let us get on with the ride – which, when you’re trying to take in every single ounce of scenery, sound, and smell around you, is pretty important.
It was only when we flicked back through the photos the following day that we stopped to fully appreciate it. Mud-splattered, dust-covered and somehow still looking remarkably good. The Brevet collection became a part of our story without trying to steal it.
Find out more about Rapha’s Brevet Range at Rapha
