Curiosycles...

Spotted at Tescos early this bank holiday Monday after a beautifully car-free morning ride (but, my, was it cold!)...

This bike certainly wasn't built for speed, with its big road-hugging motor cycle tyres and its absence of gears, and neither was it built for doing the shopping - no baskets or pannier racks - yet shopping is what its owner appears to have been doing.  I particularly like its straight-V handlebars.

Though they have been making odd-looking bikes for quite some time.  Here's one with an early suspension system that I have had lying around on my hard drive for a while

The outer rim is sprung, and it would apparently have worked like serial shock absorbers as the wheels went round.  I was surprised to see a penny-farthing with drop handlebars.

(I would say where I found this photo but I can't remember apart from the fact that it was in a bike museum somewhere in the Netherlands.  Or was it Denmark?)

And when it comes to complicated-looking engineering, how about the bike park at Silkmills?  I still haven't quite worked out how this thing works - how do you get your bike onto the upper level? Note that the resident cyclists don't seem to be using the 2nd tier. But it's got to be the  most fiendish bike park I've ever seen.

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Just because I happened to be passing with a camera, here's the Ladywell ghost sign.  There is a better photo of it on the ghostsigns.co.uk site, taken I believe by Caroline of Caroline's Miscellany.  Bolton Corner, where Ladywell Road reached the north end of Rushey Green.  Bolton & Co also had a shop on The Pavement, Ladywell.  And I don't know where that might be, or have been - presumably down by the station.