The Right Trousers - Go Cycling in Spencers Trousers

Design Your Own Cycle Ride

If organised traditionally-clad cycle rides such as the Tweed Run seem too much of a commitment - clashing with a leisurely breakfast or an afternoon nap, perhaps - why not set yourself up for a solo effort? Your time, your place, your pace.

All you need is a bike and a pair of trousers.

Design Your Own Cycling Trousers with Spencers

If you're designing a cycle ride with a traditional feel, you'll need the right trousers. This means eschewing anything in day-glo colours and lycra, which should always be eschewed, incidentally, and plumping for a  pair of the 'pluses'. Plus fours and twos offer a suitably sporting length of trouser.

You'll want them in a good strong cloth, it would be silly pounding up and down on your saddle in a pair made from Scabal's Diamond Chip cloth.

The pair of plus twos you see here are made by our dear friends at Spencers Trousers. Mightily impressed with them. With plus twos the leg band fits into the dip below the knee, sitting on top of the socks for a guaranteed comfortable ride as the air whistles round your calves. (We mentioned the ordering process in an earlier post.) These have brace buttons and moleskin pockets. Plenty of room for a hip flask, another cycle ride essential, in those pockets.

Wonderfully constructed with a fabulous thick and robust herringbone tweed that I'd feel safe to climb Everest in. I have to get a full-length pair of trousers in this cloth.

Tweedy's Excuse: Ahem, as you can see, we chose a very moodily lit and teasingly blurred series of photos for the trousers. (It might be time to get young Mrs Tweed signed up for a photography primer at night school.)

Mad About the Tweed - Jan Urban

The herringbone tweed is by Jan Urban of Meltham, Huddersfield. Jan was a textile designer and started his own business as a fabric converter about 20 years ago. As a converter, he designed and commissioned the weaving and finishing of fabrics at mills in Huddersfield, England. Jan retired last year, but his business has been left in the capable hands of Jason Boyd - an experienced textile producer, previously of Mallalieu's of Delph - who is now trading as Urban Fabrics Limited.