The History of the Brompton Experiences Cycling Club

Every Saturday morning, a group of riders gathers outside our office at Coliwoo Lutheran for our Weekly Club Rides. Some have been with us for years. Some are on their very first group ride and quietly hoping they can keep up. By the time everyone rolls back in, that worry has usually gone.

This is the story of how these mornings came to exist, and why it matters to the way we run our overseas tours.

January 2020, and the world got smaller

Covid arrived and Singapore went quiet. Travel stopped. Offices emptied. For most of us, the world shrank to the size of our own neighbourhood.

The rules left us with very little. Walking was allowed. Running was allowed. Cycling was allowed, so long as you kept your distance. That was the whole list. We think Covid turned out to be the great influencer for cycling, and not because everyone suddenly fell in love with bicycles. It was simpler than that. Plenty of people do not enjoy running.

Plenty more grew tired of walking the same loop around the block. Cycling was what remained, and it turned out to be the most rewarding of the three. Singapore's park connectors became the natural home for all this new activity. They are safe, they are green, and they let you get a proper workout without touching heavy traffic. What they are not is wide. Anyone who rode them in 2020 will remember weaving around families, joggers, prams and other cyclists, sometimes all within the same twenty metres.

That is where a small set of wheels earns its keep. Folding bikes handle those narrow paths beautifully. They start and stop quickly, they turn in almost no space, and they let you thread through a busy stretch without drama. And among the folding bikes, one stood out.

The Brompton years

We all remember what happened next. Between early 2020 and 2021 the Brompton went from a niche British curiosity to the bike everyone wanted. Waiting lists stretched out for months. Second-hand prices climbed above retail. Getting hold of one felt like a small victory in itself.

The appeal was not hard to understand. The fold is genuinely clever. It rides far better than its wheel size suggests. It looks good parked outside a coffee shop. And it takes you places a bigger bike simply cannot follow, because it packs down and comes along on the bus, the train, the boot of a car.

So a lot of people bought their first Brompton, rode it alone through a very strange couple of years, and enjoyed it.

Riding alone is fine. Riding with others is better. You cover more ground. You discover routes you would never have found on your own. Someone always knows a better coffee stop. And on the mornings you would rather stay in bed, knowing that a group is waiting for you is often the only thing that gets you out of the door.

From local tours to a Saturday habit

Through 2021 and 2022 we were busy running local Brompton tours around Singapore. It was a strange time to be in the travel business, so we did what we could with what was open to us, and we learned a great deal about how to move a group of riders around comfortably.

As the measures eased, we turned that experience into something regular. Our first club rides began in June 2023 from a private estate in Bukit Timah. We chose the spot deliberately. It sits close to some genuinely good cycling routes that most riders in Singapore have never heard of, let alone ridden.

The idea was straightforward. Bring together people who enjoy riding, show them routes they would not find alone, and finish the morning having actually worked for it.

Five riders became ten. Ten became twenty. It kept going from there.

Nobody was recruited. People came because a friend mentioned it, or because they saw a photograph and wanted to know where that road was.

Why our routes have hills in them

Here is the part that makes our club different from most Saturday groups.

We design our routes to reflect the riding conditions you would actually meet overseas.

That means yes to flat stretches, because a good ride needs them. But it also means slopes. Winding paths. Surfaces that change under your wheels. Corners where you cannot see what comes next.

We do this on purpose. A rider whose entire experience is flat park connectors will have a hard week in Japan. A rider who has climbed a few of our slopes on a Saturday morning arrives at the Shimanami Kaido already knowing what her legs can do.

Nobody enjoys a slope while they are on it. We are not going to pretend otherwise. But the feeling at the top is the reason people come back. You get your breath back, you look around, and there is almost always a view waiting for you that the flat route would never have offered.

That is the whole argument for the hill, and it is the same argument for the tour.

The quiet business of looking at other people's bikes

Let us be honest about something. At every stop, people look at each other's bikes.

We all do it. You notice a different handlebar, a lighter wheelset, a gear ratio you have not tried. You wonder, briefly, whether that particular component is the secret ingredient. Whether it is quietly handing its owner some extra riding power that you have been missing all along.

It never is. What actually makes the difference is showing up. Doing the distance. Putting in the grind, as the riders call it. Being a little stronger and a little more confident than you were the month before.

We use original Brompton bicycles and original Brompton parts on our tours, and there is a practical reason for that beyond preference. When every bike in the group is the same, one spare inner tube fits every rider. Our support vehicle carries the right part, every time. We know the bike inside out. Things still go wrong occasionally, because they always do, but a problem never turns into a ruined holiday.

That said, we do not discriminate against anyone who rides something else. Everyone is welcome at our club rides, whatever they ride. We simply think the Brompton is the most efficient travel bike there is, and we are happy to let people work that out for themselves.

Where we are today

We now run ten unique routes around our current office at Coliwoo Lutheran. Each one has its own character, its own climbs and its own reward at the end.

Holding it all together is a dedicated team of twelve road marshals. They are the backbone of the club. They watch the junctions, keep the group together, ride at the back with whoever is having a hard morning, and make sure the person who joined for the first time does not get dropped. The club works because they do.

The rides are free. They always have been. We do not run them to sell anything. We run them because a strong Saturday morning group is worth having in its own right, and because it lets people answer their own questions about us without a sales pitch. You ride with us for a few weeks. You see how we organise things, how we treat people, how carefully the marshals do their job. Then you decide what you think.

Some riders stay with the Saturday group and never go further, and that is a perfectly good outcome. Others find that after a few months of slopes and winding paths, forty kilometres no longer sounds frightening, and they start asking about riding in Taiwan.

That is the springboard we hoped the club would become.

Come and ride

If you own a Brompton and have been riding alone, come and join us on a Saturday morning. If you are not yet confident in a group, Eugene runs one-hour confidence rides where you can learn the handling from scratch at your own pace, with nobody watching.

All you need is a free Saturday morning and a willingness to be a bit out of breath.

WhatsApp us on +65 8925 7912 and we will tell you where to meet.

Learn more about our Club Rides.