I was starting to think it was taking a bit of time and effort to slow down and ultimately stop.  I initially blamed the rain and the wet roads seeing as most rides this year had taken place only when it was raining like no tomorrow.   A bit scary when you are zooming down a hill and notice your brakes have minimal if any effect.  Even more scary when you are not zooming down a hill and notice your brakes have minimal if any effect!

Maybe I would check the state of the brakes to see if I could adjust them now that the pads had been bedded in,  I had done he same on the Highway a while back.   When I checked it was quite hard to find any actual rubber on either!

A bit of a worry, only 200 or 300 miles in and I’ve got through the brakes,  I didn’t think I had done that much braking either.   To think on the Highway the brakes are worn but worn out and at 50 miles a week plus any extras (through town) the brakes are very much used.  At the same time, all bikes and their brakes have always come from Halfords and the Royal is the first not to.  For some reason I would expect the Royal to have good brake shoes seeing as it is a “professional” bike, but possibly not.

 

A bike trip out to Halfords with Tom on a Sunday afternoon, the new saddle was good after some minor tweaks.  I thought that such items in Halfords would be cheap (in fact it was the only bike shop open on a Sunday) but in fact £20 later I was the lucky owner of new brake shoes.   It seemed a bit steep and I later found out it was a bit on the expensive side after checking out Amazon later that day, but hey.

Having been used to V-brakes for years it was quite nice changing shoes on the cantilever brake on the Royal, no adjustment of releasing cables, just swap them over.    The bike now stops, and I hope it will continue to do so for some time to come – but when that time does come I will be off to Amazon.