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Life has moved up a gear for the new kid on the block at Les Quennevais Precinct with a bespoke shop opening to restore vintage bikes.
Andy Horsfall pedalled his shop into St Brelade’s last month and has been flat out restoring old bikes ever since – offering cyclists anything from a general safety check to a whole new set of wheels.
He said: “It’s my passion and my dream. I’ve been thinking about it for years. I wanted to find some sort of niche, a gap in the market that wouldn’t be affected by bigger companies coming in. With second hand and vintage bikes, people in Jersey don’t buy them online – my niche is good quality, used second hand bikes that are fully serviced and ready to go.
“I’ve got traditional 1950’s, 1960’s sit-up-and-beg type bikes with the old basket on the front. I’ve got a Mark one – the first Chopper ever made, completely original and unrestored and a Mark 2 Chopper from 1978, the last of the mark 2’s.
“I have vintage steel road bikes, that’s my big thing steel road bikes, they died out when aluminium and carbon came in, they’ve had a bit of a come back, it’s a really good material to make frames from, it’s fixable, it’s a lot more of a comfortable ride, hard-wearing, it’s got a bike for life feel around it.”
Andy, who is a qualified cycle mechanic, has even done up and sold an old postie bike for one Islander looking to make an entrance at a black tie do and says he’s got no regrets about giving up a career as a landscape gardener to follow his dream of running his own bike shop.
He said: “I studied art for years. I did a degree in sculpture about 17 years ago and got into cycling because of all the hills around Cheltenham and a lot of my stuff on my course involved a lot of wheels, I was obsessed about anything to do with wheels.
“It’s my passion, I’ve been tinkering away in the garage for years, I’ve always been an avid bike collector and it was time to clean out my garage.”
The Bicycle Workshop at No. 10 Quennevais Parade is closed on Sundays and Mondays when Andy is off clocking up some miles on his own bikes.
To see more about the shop, visit their Facebook page.
Picture credit: Paul Wright Photography
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