Britain's best cycling cafés

Forget asthma medicine delivered in a mystery package, amateur cyclists are more likely to dose up on caffeine. As cycling has boomed in recent years, so has a new breed of bike shop with cafés inside to ply customers with espresso while they shop for the latest carbon wonder-bike, writes David Motton.

Cycling – and road cycling in particular – may have surged in popularity following 2012's London Olympics, but the concept of a combined bike shop and coffee house goes back further than you might think.

Mud Dock in Bristol opened as a bike shop and a café in 1994.  The shop and café have expanded hugely over the past 20 plus years. With its views over the harbour and a menu offering proper meals as well as coffee and cake, Mud Dock is broadly popular – not just with Lycra-wearing locals. 

It's a model which other bike shop/cafés have adopted, with roadies talking gear ratios and Strava segments sat next to non-cyclists simply looking for good cake and coffee. These cafés may be aimed at cyclists, but they're very definitely not for cyclists only.

Take Maison du Vélo in Reigate, Surrey, and now with a second shop in nearby Cranleigh. Selling bikes may be the core business, but the coffee shops are busy on a mid-week morning as well as at the weekend.  And there's just as likely to be a parent with a pushchair grabbing a latte as a cyclist fresh from a training ride.

While Mud Dock and Maison du Vélo are bike shops as well as cafés, bike-themed coffee shops are popular, too, offering riders a mid-ride coffee and a chocolate brownie to replace all those lost calories.

Pedalling Squares in Swalwell, Gateshead, has cycling memorabilia hanging from the walls and shows major cycling races on a big screen. It's close to the coast-to-coast long-distance cycle route, but welcomes non-cyclists as well as roadies, mountain bikers and tourists on their way from one side of the country to the other. You can't miss the cycling theme, but you don't need to be bike-mad to enjoy a slice of cake there.

The Velocity Café and Bicycle Workshop in Inverness follows a different model again. This social enterprise combines home-baked cakes and coffee (fans of Italian bike componentry will appreciate the 'campagcinno') with a workshop that's open to all. Riders can work on their bikes with help from professional mechanics using the workshop's tools. There are courses in the evening for customers wanting to learn how to maintain their own bike.

Other cycling cafés have the selling point of fantastic cycling country on their doorstep. Take the Bank View Café in Langsett. Painted in king-of-the-mountains polka dots in 2014 to celebrate the Tour de France coming past the front door, the Bank View Café is on the edge of the Peak District, with some of the Britain's bucket-list climbs close by. If you need to fettle your bike, the café sells spares and loans out tools free of charge.

A caffeine fix while fixing your machine? Sounds good to us.