Button itFrom Hebden Bridge to Wuppertal on an electric cargo bike
As he leaves on a 700-mile cargo bike round trip to Germany to collect 55kg of special trouser fasteners, Ed Oxley hears the naysayers and doubters and tells them to button it.
An Edventure is something that you might not want to do. It journeys into that kind of ‘type two fun’, that’s only really fun when the event becomes the story. Ride an e-cargo bike, the sort you’d normally see in a big city delivering stuff, 700 miles in winter. Go from Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire (it’s near Manchester) to Wuppertal in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany (it’s near Dusseldorf). Collect 20,000 solid brass buttons for jeans, that weigh 55kg, from a button factory, then ride back. UPS could transport this cargo for about £250.
It was tactfully suggested at work that we might part-ship the order just in case I was delayed by accident, natural disaster or having the EU goods impounded at customs. Fuck that, I’m off!
I have the need to get away on single-mindedly awkward journeys. There’s a destination, but really the going is just for the sake of it. These various trips get called holidays by some and while I claim to be having fun, you won’t see anything like it advertised by travel agents. I’m supposed to say I’m lucky that my job allows me to take in such selfish pursuits, but I’d find a way to do it regardless. Probably means I’m a narcissist.
These buttons will hold together approximately one year’s production of HebTroCo jeans. The first pairs are already on the machines in a workshop in London and if I don’t get back in time, it will really hold things up. As it says on the message, handwritten and taped by my business partner to the inside of my cargo box, ‘Don’t fuck it up’.
It’s Only Pain
That’s two fucks given already and here comes the third. The puddle that I entered to avoid a car coming towards me concealed a kerb. My eight-foot-long cargo bike took a dive to the left and I pulled up hard on the handlebars to the right. The car and the crash was avoided but something tore in my arm. Fuck. The fear that I’ve blown it on day one, having hardly gone anywhere, spreads from my head, through my arm to my guts. Ignore it, carry on, pretend it’s fine, keep pedalling and never trust a puddle again.
The riding position is OK most of the time. I just can’t wave, pick my nose or reach down for my water bottle, and when off the bike and walking around I have to hold my arm like Napoleon. Putting the bike on its stand is a delicate manoeuvre. I can’t lie on my back and the pain catches every time I move in my sleep, waking me up night after night. Oh well, it’ll be good for the story.
A bicycle is a freedom machine. You’re part of the real world, not just a passenger behind a windscreen or a consumer behind an electronic screen. Feel the rain, smell the chip shops, hear the birds. You stop anywhere without worrying about where to park, and because you’re not going fast, it doesn’t feel like you’re interrupting your journey.
It’s a Western European winter, so of course there’s weather to deal with. The worst kind is strong wind rather than rain. A headwind, that I wouldn’t notice in a car, slows the clock and saps my strength. Sidewinds move me on the road and need constant steering correction. The good bits really do outweigh all of this, but I’m not going to try to convince you that you’d like it, because it’s certainly not for everyone.
95 miles is the most I ride in a day, there are 50, 70 and 80 milers and I’m gone for 11 days. ‘Yes, lots of people cycle that route… in the summer,’ someone in a hotel tells me.
Heavy Duty
The bike model is the Bullitt, named after the Steve McQueen film and its sleek, curved design adds style to its functionality. It’s an e-bike, and when you pedal the battery-powered motor gives some assistance. It makes the ride possible rather than transforming it into a motorbike. Without accessories it weighs 30kg, but I’ve added a cargo deck, big aluminium box and a steering damper. I also have four batteries at 2.6kg each, chargers, tools, luggage and two heavy locks.
Coffee is my gasoline and I’m a Hipster TwatTM, so there’s the extravagance of a double-sized AeroPress coffee filter, meths stove, coffee beans and a hand grinder.
My route follows water. Leaving home along the Rochdale Canal leads me to the Rivers Calder and Ouse, before opening out to the North Sea coast along the Humber Estuary. After the ferry crossing to Rotterdam, where I’m the only passenger on two wheels, I head up the River Maas (as in Maastricht). Time is for taking not saving on this journey. In a car the temptation would be to make the journey as quick as possible and get it over. Sometimes I ride past the highways and see crowded lanes of vehicles trying to do this.
Using the excellent cycle.travel navigation app, it’s easy to plot a route on quiet lanes and cycleways and as the journey goes deeper the sat nav voice becomes my pal. His phrasing charms me with the sing-song instruction to go ‘straight-on-along’. In Holland and Germany he pronounces the road names in their native tongue. I repeat them, savouring the sounds in the places they belong. On the worst rain day he inexplicably doesn’t say a word, as if it’s just too grim to make an appearance.
He returns the next day and I call him a pussy out loud as if I’m joshing with a mate. Maybe he’s the spirit of Peter, who lived in the biscuit tin, my imaginary friend from 50 years ago. Only child and self-selecting solo traveller I might be, but I still need friends.
Double sized Aeropress, meths stove, coffee beans and grinder
Speciality Bossche bol creampuff from Jan de Groot bakery
We all need calories, but I've since given up eating processed sugar.
Creampuff
When planning this trip, my Dutch friend Rogier told me about a pastry, the speciality of the Jan de Groot bakery in Hertogenbosch, which is called a Bossche bol. This creampuff is like an eclair that’s been inflated with ten times the amount of cream and fully covered with chocolate. I track one down. It’s ridiculous and I feel a bit sick, but none gets left. These delightful moments are the gold dust of travel.
My good friend René lives in the south of Holland, and I arrive at his motorcycle workshop cold and wet through. Last time I visited I was riding an old Harley-Davidson chopper, wet with sweat from a heatwave. Now, surrounded by old bikes in different states of construction,
I strip off by the log burner. I laugh out loud when I pull off my soaking wet jeans and the fresh denim has dyed my knees and thighs blue. There are tide marks at my ankles. There’s an Easy Rider film poster on the wall and I’m reminded of one of my favourite scenes, where the characters played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper push their bikes to a horse ranch to fix a puncture. The bikers work next to some cowboys who are shoeing a horse. Does my aluminium horse with its electric motor have a place in this Wild West freedom fantasy? Or am I just going doolally? We go out and I eat all the food in a restaurant, then René tattoos a rain cloud on my arm as a memento.
You know you've been wearing raw denim in the rain when....
René in his motorcycle workshop.
A souvenir raincloud.
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs
Tiredness comes in the rain on the long flat roads as Holland turns into Germany. I never stop pedalling and the horizon never gets nearer. I pedal harder to get there quicker, but I just get angry. All I have for company is my aching arse, numbing fingers and flagging legs. Dark thoughts rise like bad dreams, small worries appearing as existential threats and the hungry wolf circles. This journey is pointless, I must be stupid. Another stink from a pig farm hits me. I never see a pig and they probably never see daylight.
It’s hideous and I might turn vegetarian right now. In the next moment I fantasise about feasting on suckling pig.
Wild things always raise my spirits: red squirrel, kingfisher, deer, one million wildfowl including newly hatched goslings, storks, including one on a massive nest, hares madly bolting across fields, reed bunting, coots and curlew, rabbits and woodpeckers, buzzards and kites. An old couple holding hands, a young girl crossing the road with all her life ahead of her, the first gardeners mowing their grass, many people riding bicycles to work and school and even for fun. Spring blossom, bulbs forcing their way out of the ground, buds swelling on the trees and all the while I’m part of it, eyes roving, lungs, heart and legs cycling.
On a big trip you learn that everything passes and the sun will always shine again. There’s a feeling of resilience; I’m making the journey happen and am loving both highs and lows. Writing this, now weeks later, my fingertips are still numb from gripping the handlebars, but I feel lean and glow with the memories.
It isn’t difficult to do a journey like this. I’m not an athlete and didn’t do any special training other than being fit from walking to work.
I hadn’t ridden a bicycle for four months until the week before I left. I just decided I was going to do it. As with any project, the hardest part is committing yourself to the bad idea and getting started.
Just Pants
You don’t need special clothing to ride a bike. There’s rampant consumerism in the outdoor industries and everything from special underpants to eyewear is marketed at us, with the message that we’ll perish without the latest technical kit to go outside in. For my tour I’m wearing underpants instead of padded cycling shorts and the same pair of jeans that I go to work in and I’m not suffering from any chafing. Wool socks and walking boots are on my feet. Vest, thin long-sleeve top and a jumper also made of wool. After wearing that jumper every day it still didn’t smell at journey’s end. Put that in your polyester pipe and smoke it! I took my walking waterproofs, made from recycled plastics. Clearly this is still plastic bollocks and no solution to the huge problem we face. I felt better for buying these at the time but am aware of the hypocrisy. It’s a dirty choice most of us make when faced with rain. With my position as a director of a clothing brand I’ve got skin in the game and am already exploring making some rain gear made from ‘natural performance’ fabric.
It’s a contentious choice not to wear a helmet, but I was dressing for the ride and not the crash. My route avoided main roads and in Holland and Germany it was almost always on cycle lanes, separate from car traffic. Cycling isn’t dangerous, cycling with cars can be. I feel at more risk doing this journey at high speeds on congested roads in a car than I would on a bicycle on the quiet paths. And anyway, this is an Edventure not a Youventure.
The river Rhine was full after a period of high rainfall.
There was only me and the skipper on board and he invited me to join him in the cab.
Crossing the Rhine on a small ferry was a milestone. There was only me and the skipper on board and he invited me to join him in the cab. The river was full after a period of high rainfall and the current was strong. There’s no way I’d go for a swim in there and I appreciate what a place in history this waterway has. In our conversation I explained my journey and got talking about the jeans we sell. ‘So they must be expensive these jeans of yours, what are they, €50?’ Telling him that they’re more like €200 got him sucking his teeth! I couldn’t help noticing the Pierre Cardin patch on the back of his jeans and wondered where they make those, at what scale and with what materials to give him that benchmark of value.
Crank It Up
Most of my journey has been on the flat but now the hills begin as I winch up to the city of Wuppertal. It’s a bit like the Pennines back home. Felix Berning is the fifth-generation boss of the button factory. He’s in his early 40s and is dressed in a magnificent British-made Gloverall duffle coat. He explains that the least he can do for me, the eccentric Englishman who has arrived by bicycle, is take me out for a splendid German dinner. We get on well with our shared love of well-made things. I look him in the eye and feel we can do business, enjoying the triumphs and sorting out the problems as we go.
The factory tour is impressive. There are 70 people working with precision engineering machinery, producing high-quality and consistent products, all the way from molten metal to polished fasteners. To be still going as a business which started in the late 19th century takes a series of steady hands. Berning’s first product was a hook and clasp fastener for high boots. The innovation was the tooling that allowed fitting without sewing, making the system stronger and quicker to attach.
The buttons I’m collecting come in two pieces: a twin-pronged nail and a cap. The two prongs bend and lock as they’re pressed into the cap using the tooling which is also made here. Berning developed the first ever type of button like this, Felix tells me. The double-pronged part pushes its way through the denim, rather than a bigger single spike which would make a hole in the cloth.
We chose solid metal buttons, some equivalents from other manufacturers use plastic inserts.
All materials are sourced within Germany and high environmental standards are strictly adhered to. There are cheaper buttons on the market, but they’re not the same quality and the true cost of buttons that fall apart is paid for with your reputation.
Loaded up, the bike is a lot heavier but when we get rolling it handles fine. The Bullitt is the king of bikes for carrying big loads. The cargo deck sits low between the 20in front and 26in rear wheels, giving stability and precise steering. The pull of home is strong and I let the Rhine take me as it flows downwards to the Hook of Holland.
Village Magic
Back over the sea and the Suffolk downs are more hilly than I remember. My body is feeling it, I can’t close my right hand now, all my fingers are numb and the bike feels heavier still. My route bypasses nothing though and I’m charmed by the pretty villages with their timber frames and thatch. In one village, a couple come up to me and the man says, ‘You’re that bloke from HebTroCo, I’ve got a pair of your jeans.’ Magic.
At last, the water brings me to my end. Down the Lee Valley and into the Walthamstow wetlands, a green artery into the heart of the city. I’m met by Han and his team at Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, where the jeans are nearly all made. We open the boxes and a handful of buttons, like golden treasure, go straight onto a pair of our jeans. Everyone has played their part, from the spinners and weavers of the denim, our pattern designer, the skilled cutter, machinists and of course the buttons makers. I’ve done the relatively unskilled job of riding a bike, but I’m proud to be a spoke in the wheel of this creation. I’m so glad I bothered.
Photos: Sjors van Gils, Ed Oxley, Ilya Sobtchak
First published in Issue 1 of Bother Magazine, August 2024.
BOTHER is the HebTroCo print magazine. The antidote to the algorithm with a coupon in every issue.
