Inside East Bikes London. Credit: Matt Grayson

Inside East Bikes London. Credit: Matt Grayson

The bikes, mainly sourced on Ebay from sellers “looking to find a bit more space in the shed”, range from between £200 and £250 in price.

“We try to offer affordable bikes,” said Tim, who cycles every day to and from work but wouldn’t label himself a cycle enthusiast.

“For most of our customers it’s their first bike in London so we’ve managed to get our bikes to a price point where people can justify the spend on it by not taking the tube to work for six weeks or two months.”

Tim, who will work on a bike for anything between three hours and one day, describes the process of restoring bikes as “very calming”.

“Every bike will get the same treatment,” he said.

“We put the bike up on one of our stands and we strip it down entirely to just the frames.

“Everything comes off, the wheels, the forks, the bottom bracket, and we just rebuild it.

“We rebuild as much to the original condition as possible but as we go along we notice where things need to be replaced.

“Most of the time we’ll put new tyres on because if they’re anything like the age of the bike then there’s no way they’re going to still be good.

“Sometimes we’ll change the wheels if they’re in a bad state and we’ll always change things like the brakes.”

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