Vintage bike shop opens in Bristol city centre

Blackbeard Cycles, a vintage bike shop, has recently moved to the centre of Bristol and is a fantastic addition to the thriving south-west cycling scene.

The shop is just off the Broadmead shopping centre (not far from Marks & Spencers, if you know your central Bristol) and while it is a pretty basic set up - wooden pallets and the smell of oil is a strong feature - there are plenty of vintage frames and fully built bikes to tempt the average buyer.

The front of Blackbeard Cyles Bristol.

Sourcing their suppliers from auctions and clearance sales in France and Italy, the two founders (one of whom is Italian) bring back a range of distressed bikes and frames from the continent and then do them up for sale. They specialise in bikes from the 1950s to the 1990s and we largely saw bicycles from the 1970s and 1980s.

I found a fantastic Gitane Super Vitus from the early 1970s with its original groupset for sale for £380 and while stocks were low when Sportive.com visited they promised they would be restocking with an additional 80 vintage bikes within the next month. They definitely have a good eye for a beautiful vintage bike and they seem to do a great job of cleaning up the bikes they buy and finding authentic parts to make sure that the retro feel is complete.

A collection of vintage bikes at Blackbeard Cycles Bristol.

Prices start pretty low - around £120 for a very basic model - to the high hundreds for their more unusual finds. From what we could see, Blackbeard Bicycles was pretty good value and is a huge addition to Bristol's range of bike shops.