What I Learned Riding a Brompton from London to Brighton 2023

[@BODYMINDFITMUSLIMAH]

This video gave me some courage for the ride coming up in July 2024. I have decided to take my Raleigh folding bike. This is my first such a long ride and I am very wobbly on bigger bikes. Thank you for this video with useful information.

[@staskucherenko]

Sure, happy to help, glad it was helpful! My experience with doing sportives on a folding bike is quite positive overall. It is a bit trickier purely from the speed / fatigues / conquering hills perspective, but still perfectly doable. People around are also usually positive & supportive, and there most likely will be at least few other riders on other folding bikes. All the best with you ride in July :)

[@finncarlbomholtsrensen1188]

I own a Brompton, of course, a now much less than 2019 SuperlightM6LXBrompton, which at present weighs 8,5 kilo, with mudguards. And it is a horrible bike on the small, heavy rolling wheels, which only purpose is the fold. So I honestly can't imagine why anybody starts a long distance ride on one? I have brought mine on vacations for local rides around our place to stay. Finn. Denmark

[@staskucherenko]

That’s a very valid point to start with. In most of the cases if smbd is serious enough about cycling to do sportives and long distance bike rides - probably having a solid body bike with full-sized wheels makes perfect sense. To me it is basically a trade off between comfort and flexibility / utility. Like I live in a flat and storing non-foldable bike for me is quite a challenge. Plus I travel quite a lot, and opportunity to easily bring the bike with you in a plane or toss it into the trunk of a car is a big plus. Lastly, multimodal aspect is great as well, where you can hop into a bus, tube or train as a part of your journey together with your bike. You sacrifice some speed and comfort, but for me both are fine - as Brompton is comfortable enough for me and I am anyway not very comfortable going faster than 30 mph on a bike so far. One bit where Brompton struggles is conquering hills, but I guess it is what it is. So overall, if your goal is to have a jack-of-all trades kind of bike, with utility and flexibility as a core feature to optimise for - foldable bike is a great solution, and Brompton is probably one of the best foldable options out there. And sportives and long distance rides are basically just some of the many things you can do with Brompton, probably in a bit less optimal way vs regular road bike, but I would argue it is not that painful to complete and still a great fun after all.

[@redundantmonkey]

There are no hills on this route apart from the big one at the end. I you live and yrain in Devon like I do, I find it weird to ride such a flat route

[@staskucherenko]

That’s very true, though the hill in the end is quite a spectacular one! I remember seeing the hill for the first time in front of me and it was a pretty intimidating sight tbh :)

[@OLLO_TV]

I find your channel randomly. We both like to ride with a Brompton! I like your Videos. Best reagards from Germany.

[@staskucherenko]

Thanks a lot :) Brompton is great indeed :) more to come, so stay tuned for new videos ))

[@viktorzadvornov]

Well done! Keep going🎉

[@staskucherenko]

Thank you very much, appreciate your support :)

[@NeilAlexanderStewart]

Well done Stas, great effort. I have done the off-road version of this ride several times, one of my friends had seven punctures on one of them....agree that there is no limit on inner tubes you can carry :-)

[@staskucherenko]

Thanks for your feedback, Neil :)

[@staskucherenko]

I also saw a plenty of people with mechanical issues along the road, so this route claimed a lot of tyres and tubes on the day :)

[@olgalykholobova988]

Well done, Stas! :)

[@staskucherenko]

Thanks :)