Maillot Jaune Notebook

Because inspiration doesn’t wait for you to be at your desk.

All The Handmade Cyclist’s designs start life as a sketch in a notebook. A shape, a line, a story. Pen, pencil, or whatever was to hand. Thoughts, ideas, plans. A great notebook is a companion, a colleague and a confidante.

Our beautiful notebooks feel as good as they look, with a luxurious and durable soft-touch cover (don’t be surprised if you can’t stop stroking them) and with 96 pages there’s month's worth of doodling to be done. The ideal size to fit in a jacket pocket or bag, with an elastic closure to keep things tidy. A great gift for the cycling fan if your life, or a perfect treat for you.

From the earliest days of the Tour de France the riders have been mere pawns in the enormity of the challenge of the Tour, set ever-tougher challenges by organisers set on furthering the legend of the race.

In 1924 a French journalist, Albert Londres, was assigned to follow the Tour for the first time. He was struck by the similarity of the mood and morale of the riders to the subjects of his previous report - the convicts subjected to hard labour in France’s brutal penal colonies. Overcome by sympathy for the riders and awed by their courage he wrote ‘truly these are the convicts of the road’.

We’ve created new, wide-screen versions of our Convicts of the Road collection exclusively for our notebooks, for a beautiful wraparound cover.

To win the Tour you need the precision of an accountant, the courage of the bullfighter and the flair of the dancer.

Three weeks, thousands of kilometres, decided by mere seconds. Weeks of concentration, focus, plotting and paranoia.  Little wonder the riders feel like prisoners of the race, breaking rocks daily just to stay alive.

Those riding for the win suffer most of all.  Constantly chasing the uncatchable horizon, never afforded a moment’s rest.  Trapped in the race and in the unquenchable pursuit of glory.