Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Bicycle Museums Part III

The Musée de l’Aventure Peugeot (Peugeot Museum of Adventure) in Sochaux in the Doubs Valley near Montbelliard obviously shows a lot of motor cars, but also has 300 bicycles, scooters, mopeds and motorcycles in the museum's collection of which about 130 are shown at any one time. It also has a good collection of pepper mills and coffee grinders. Peugeot built pepper mills, coffee grinders and bicycles before branching out into motorcycles and cars

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Bicycle Museums Part II

From what I can gather the only bicycle museum in the Netherlands is the Velorama in Nijmegen. It has 250 bicycles including a hobby horse from 1817 or a replica of it. The museum is well worth visiting if only see the photograph of Queen Wilhelmina on her bicycle with the royal bicycle on display. What impressed me as well was the realisation that many of the features of the modern bicycle: gearing, springing and folding appeared very early on, but were not taken up.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Bicycle Museums Part I

A bicycle collector friend of ours, (A bicycle collector is defined as someone who has more bicycles than me.) sent me a link recently to
http://bsamuseum.wordpress.com/1911-bianchi-military-folding-bicycle/
which is not a museum in the usual sense of the word but an archive. We received this when we returned from a cycling holiday in Tournus, Burgundy. The town has a bicycle museum. We did not know this before we went and unfortunately found out about the place after it closed for the winter(http://www.enviesdevelo.com in French). It is open for individuals from Easter until All Saints Day (November 1st), but groups can visit the whole year round by appointment. Obviously we did not visit the museum but the next time we are travelling through the area we will try to stop in or near Tournus and visit it. It struck us that we could well try to set up a list of bicycle museums and or museums with bicycles to add interest to cycle tours and or provide suggestions for somewhere to shelter when the weather is wet rather than the usual bus shelter. So watch this space.

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