The story so far. Cycling historian Claude B Dawes has been summoned to meet the mysterious Dr Rudolph Moeller at M7’s underground bike testing facility in the Netherlands after a very important bike part goes missing. Dawes and M7’s top bike designer, Lucyna Langlijne head for CycleQuest, The World’s Largest Bike Fair. More shock news has just come from 2Fast2FuriousXtremeAuto show in Birmingham, England.

Dawes parked the Oke Ja outside the Swiss Bike Patrol’s port-a-cabin. He’d taken around 50 minutes to cover the fietspad network from M7 to Zandvoort and he was now feeling tired and in need of a bathroom stop. On the whole Dawes had found the Flevo recumbent experience not too bad. The bike even had a kick stand and the SRAM 7 gear set was very handy. Now if bikes back home had this...

‘Votre ID, your identification, Monsieur, s’il vous plait.’

The Swiss Bike Patrol spoke French first and seemed not to bother that they were in charge of security in the Netherlands and maybe should speak Dutch. Maybe there wasn’t time for them to learn. Even so, it struck Dawes as odd. Dawes reached into another pocket of his Harris Tweed Endura All Weather cycle jacket and pulled out his dog-eared lifetime CTC membership card.

‘Monsieur, place all metal objects, monet etcetera dans le plate ici. Would you care to step through le détecteur de métaux. Merci pour votre co-operation monsieur’

As he stepped through, loud alarm bells went off and two guards levelled their fire arms at Dawes. ‘Damn - I’ve left my cycle clips on. Here they are.’ He bent down causing a rapid clicking of firearms as the guards took aim.

‘Don’t shoot! They even have my name on them. They’re pearlised titanium you know? Moeller and Lucyna will vouch for me. You know, the folks from M7?’ Dawes held his cycle clips high above his head, one in each hand. The guards lowered their guns.

‘They are very nice cleeps, monsieur. Pas de problem, Entrez.’