Letter From Athens

Athens 22.1.74

Dear Mr. Bickerton,

We have been travelling for nearly four months now by car, with two of your bikes onboard. France and Spain, then across through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, with two excursions down into the Sahara. Up Italy to the Alps, then down through the snows in Yugoslavia to Greece, where we are now preparing to explore some of the islands by steamer and bicycle before heading further east.

We use the bikes very often, to explore the cities and villages and countryside. Main roads and tiny roads, rough tracks and even rougher tracks, the traffic of Rome or Athens, Spanish cobble-stones and Algerian potholes: the bikes go on performing marvellously in just about any conditions. It takes a real Saharan sand-drift to stop them.

In cities they are ideal for exploration and sightseeing. At each stop we simply lock them to a lamp-post or fold them and leave them as hand luggage in the cloakroom. They are also practical for taking by bus or train. My wife has no trouble folding or unfolding her bike and also finds the folded bikes very easy to pack into the car.

In use your bike is both practical and great fun to ride. We do congratulate you on building a bicycle that is rugged and practical in use, yet folds simply to form a light, compact package. Indeed it is a magnificent new form of personal transport!

Good luck with your expansion to volume production: you certainly deserve it.

Yours faithfully, (sgd.) G.D. Cumming
(Dr. G.D. CUMMING)

Dr. G.D. Cumming and Mrs. Cumming are scientists who have been working for several years at Oxford University. They recently sold their house in Oxford and are now travelling over most of the world, during a period of about one year, on their way back to their home in Australia. They have a specially modified and equipped Morris Traveller and two Bickerton bicycles.