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Flexible Finance options
We offer a series of flexible finance options for orders of £600 and above subject to age and status. To do this we have partnered with both Klarna Finance (for their Pay in 3 Instalments product) and V12 Retail Finance for both their interest free and interest bearing finance products of 6 months and longer. Klarna…
Hummingbird Cake
Words: Madeline Bowker I’m going to confess that one of the great joys of cycling, for me, is the justification for replacing the calories worked off by pedalling up endless hills (I sometimes dream of living in the Netherlands). Richard (or Grand Poobah as we sometimes call him…though not to his face) thought I could…
Trek Marlin – the best value hardtail you can buy?
Trek’s Marlin range has been with us for a while now but the latest iteration, the new 2022 models, are without doubt the best yet. This is one of Trek’s most popular bikes, indeed one of the world’s most popular bikes, for good reason. It’s great value but also an extremely versatile range from commuting…
New Bike Deliveries – June update
Summer is well and truly here – the weather is brilliant and the number of folks looking to get out on their bikes seems to be increasing exponentially. And whilst the news on overseas summer holidays is a bit depressing thanks to the ongoing pandemic, we are delighted to say that all new bikes from…
Home Delivery Service
Thanks to the bike boom of the last 12 months (a boom that shows no sign of levelling off) Criterium Cycles has been inundated with requests to ship bikes to customers in England, Wales and the rest of Scotland. So we are delighted to have launched the Criterium Cycles Home Delivery Service for bikes, covering…
New bike deliveries – May update
The Spring season has got off to a cracking start with plenty of new bikes having arrived at Criterium Cycles during April such as Trek Marlin, Domane and Emonda. Now though we turn the dial up to 11 with our biggest number of new bikes arriving in one month. During May, we will be receiving…
Contact Us, Find Us and Opening Hours
Where to find Criterium Cycles We are located at Dobbies Garden World, Edinburgh. One of the best known Garden Centres in the whole of Scotland, Dobbies Garden World is located in Lasswade. It is just minutes off the City Bypass road, and is easily reached from either the Gilmerton or Sheriffhall junctions. On entering the…
New Bike deliveries – April update
The cycle industry is experiencing unprecedented demand with all the signs that it will continue for the foreseeable future. It’s particularly exciting because a large part of the upsurge in demand has been caused by more people turning to cycling, partly thanks to Lockdown but also because more and more of us can see the…
Covid-19 – Special Arrangements
The Covid-19 pandemic has meant a whole series of temporary changes in the way we live, work and exercise. Retailers too have had to adapt in order to respond to this and to ensure that customers are still getting a great service but at the same time, we are all doing everything we can to…
Bianchi Specialissima. An epic bike for an epic challenge.
“It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.” Attrib. Thomas Fuller (Theologian), A Pisgah-Sight Of Palestine And The Confines Thereof, 1650 In case you were wondering, a Pisgah-Sight is a distant view of a, perhaps, unattainable object. No, I wasn’t aware of that either, but it turns out that it’s rather appropriate for my…
2021. Criterium’s biggest year yet.
It’s remarkable to think that Criterium Cycles has been established for 8 years. We had no idea when we set the business up just how successful it would become nor how important it would become to a growing and loyal network of customers. Many of those customers have become friends as well. Now as we…
An extraordinary end to an extraordinary season
In a remarkable year for cycling, the last Grand Tour of them all, La Vuelta a Espana, served up perhaps the most remarkable highlights of the lot (albeit putting to one side the final stage of the Tour De France for a brief moment!) First of course, it was Chris Froome’s final outing as…
Criterium Cycles at the Marmotte 2019
Cycling is cruel. Indeed, some would argue it is the cruellest sport out there citing plenty of circumstantial evidence to support this fairly dramatic claim. Take a 3 week Grand Tour for instance. Where else would the competitors undergo 20 ‘full day’ stages of mental and physical anguish, where even just the slightest loss in…
The Tour on the Telly. Will Imlach, Boulting and Millar nail it again?
All pictures with kind permission of Vsquared TV With the Tour de France finally upon us, it’s appropriate to reflect on that most crucial element of a 3 week Grand Tour; the Highlights show on the telly. It’s one of life’s genuine pleasures. They are a great way to catch up and condense what…
In Search of Nessie (Etape Loch Ness)
Let’s clear something up straight away. What actually is an Etape? And why is it different to a Sportive? And does it actually matter? Well, whether it matters or not is probably rather subjective but let’s have a go at explain what they are. A sportive (or Cyclosportive) is a generic description that covers a…
A Trip Down Under
You’re probably thinking ‘that’s a pretty nice picture of a beach but what does it have to do with bikes?’ Not an unreasonable question to be fair. However, Madeline, one of the owners of Criterium and ‘completer of the Vatterundan 300 in 2018‘ grew up in Perth, Western Australia. So every once in a while,…
The Marmotte – Redefining the Envelope
We’ve probably all played that favourite pub game of “name your top 5 ”X’s” of all time”. Favourite lists include the best 5 albums ever (Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” is clearly Number 1), the best 5 films, the 5 best sportspeople, the 5 toughest races and so on. Part of the charm…
3 Peaks Cyclo Cross
By Sarah Rowell, former Olympic Marathon Runner and British & English Fell running Champion, 1995 and 1996 For one group of slightly mad devotees, the end of September means only one thing; the 3 Peaks Cyclo Cross. The history of the event dates back to 1959, when a 14 year old schoolboy, Kevin Watson was…
Project 3:20
Many of us can look to a moment in our lives when we reflect and say ‘that was a real wake-up call’. On balance, wake up calls are a good thing, as long as we actually listen to the call and do something about it. My own personal epiphany came in 2011 when our daughter,…
UCI World Championships Preview
First, a quick apology for the fact that the Criterium Cycles blog has been a little quiet these last three weeks. Paul says he has had a serious bout of Man Flu, a condition so serious that it was apparently close to being life threatening. Rosie, his long suffering wife, suggested that if she found…