Grafham Cycling - About Us

In the beginning, the tiny shop at the end of the car park had been the toilet facilities for the east side of the reservoir. With a new visitor centre and cafe built next door, (which is still there) Anglian Water approached the then owner of Rutland Cycling, David Archer, to do something similar at Grafham. With that offer duly accepted, the new shop was opened with solely hire bikes and our 9-mile off-road track as the structure of the business. Within the first year, bikes for sale were available from the shop with a few accessories to furnish what little was sold. Slowly but surely the 5 new bikes on display turned round faster and faster along with the bottles and cages to go with them. Cycle hire was also growing exponentially with the season gradually growing longer and longer. Even after five years it was still not enough to remain open all year long, so the shop closed from December to March, with it’s manager going abroad to teach snow boarding until spring came around once again.With sales growing and the quality of service that we were providing being spread amongst the locals, working winters soon became possible albeit with a short week. With increased custom from winter and Christmas sales, the first extension was added after year 7. This allowed for more display space and additional storage space for hire bikes. The added room enabled us to display about 25 bikes and about 60 different bolt on accessories; still a long way from the current 200 plus bikes on display and countless items of quality clothing and accessory that we now carry in stock at all times, but a vast improvement nonetheless!The summers were good and more and more people were travelling out to us for their general servicing, parts and hire. Sales too had grown with the display in the extension, even though it was only an extra 18 square metres on what we previously had. With every aspect of the shop growing, this prompted another, much larger extension that doubled the size of the shop. Not only had the shop changed but also the staff. I still remained, having worked up from just cleaning bikes at weekends to hiring, selling and assisting in the workshop. We tore through a couple of new managers, but none stuck it for long. Help was received when we were particularly short staffed from one of Rutland’s finest, Matt Blake. This enabled us to start staying open all winter long.  There soon followed additions with Andrew Livingstone in the workshop, who brought 12 years of bike experience with him, and Richard Nicholls, the new manager. This became the team at Grafham for its biggest growth period.With staffing levels the highest they had ever been and the size of the shop having doubled, business was booming. The new showroom now housing a whopping 24 bikes on its own and a workshop allowed us to stock far more bikes and display more bikes than ever before. Over the next couple of years everything ran very smoothly. Richard Nicholls stepped into a director’s role and progressed on to spending more time at Rutland. I in turn had become manager and we took on Michael Johnston to help out. Still the shop went from strength to strength even with some typically wet Easters and summers. We still only had 40 or so bikes on display and about 40 square meters of wall displays to sell from, so the aim was to get into a bigger purpose built building as Rutland had done a few years previously. As is often the case in business however, we were about o come face to face with a situation entirely beyond our control;  Foot and Mouth. Anglian Water had to close the site and we were forced to sell solely over the telephone and at the roadside. It was a very difficult time and almost saw the shop lose everything but we got through it. Mike Johnston left soon after and we employed an old friend of mine in Rob Bambury to replace him.With foot and mouth over and a new member of staff, the shop took on a new look. Rob’s artistic skills, Richard’s enthusiasm, Andy running the workshop and me selling my socks off meant we soon picked up where foot and mouth had forced us to leave off. Simon Taylor, Tom Parnham, Alby Steward and Jon Sheasby joined us over the next 2 years with the new premises on the horizon.It wasn’t long before the foundations were being layed for the new building. The builders started in December of 2004 and after a very long and arduous 6 months, especially for owner and project manager Paul Archer, we found ourselves moving stock from one premises to another. This all occurred at the end of May 2005 as we were desperate to have everything in place for the bank holiday. After what felt like a 48-hour day, we were in. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but we were in. Now we had expanded into a double storied building comprising almost 7500sq feet, we had some stock to get in! Now after three summers in the new building and not a sunny summer amongst them, we are still going strong. We currently have the most prestigious hire fleet in Europe, a huge range of accessories and parts for any brand bike, clothing from major sporting and casual brands and the best bike brands on the market all under our roof. With a workshop stuffed with rider and technical knowledge all with Cytech accreditation we can work on any brand with confidence and usually at a speed that can’t be touched by other bike shops.So now after nearly 17 years Grafham Cycling is now a store not just a shop. Somewhere you cannot only purchase your cycling goods but come for technical advice whenever you want. We still offer the same service we did as a small local shop and we do our very best to keep that small shop mentality. The one thing that has gotten us to where we are now is our customer, and that is never forgotten. So whether you have spent £1000’s on bikes or a couple of quid on a tube, Grafham Cycling would like to say thank you for your valued custom and we hope to see you again soon.