There aren’t many things in life that are free, are there? As the adage says, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ One thing that is free though is the great outdoors. With the clocks going back this weekend and nights being lighter for longer, it means after work and after school activities will blossom. Whatever your pursuit in the sunshine is, one sport that is super popular is mountain biking.
The hippo-thingy-me-bob…
It’s an incontrovertible (someone’s been searching thesaurus.com) fact that mountain biking has so many great health benefits. Not only does it provide a great cardiovascular workout, it also provides a full body, low-impact workout. It’s good for the oldies knees and it’s good for the old grey matter too. According to Giant Mountain Bikes – who just happen to be the largest manufacturer of mountain bikes in the world – it improves your memory and reflexes. Research has shown that cardio-respiratory fitness from cycling can lead to an improvement in mental thinking. This is because cycling helps build new brain cells in the hippocampus — the region responsible for memory. It boosts blood flow and oxygen to the brain, which fires and regenerates receptors.
Who’s in then?
At Jackyards HQ we love cycling, whether it be on a hot summer’s day over Studland Beach in Dorset or riding through the beautiful New Forest. Bird’s singing in the trees. Laughing with friends. A pint or two or three in the pub. All idyllic. But let’s not forget we live in Britain and that means one thing… grey clouds and rain are always lurking, which means a sun tan cream ride can soon turn into a cold, mud bath extravaganza.
When we were first designing Jackyards seat covers, our goals were to create the best-looking and most durable seat covers. Scores of patterns later - and scores of testing various fabrics - we finally came up with the first designs that would form the backbone of the current range.
R&D
Literally hundreds of hours went into perfecting the style, shape and manufacturing techniques to ensure that not only do they look good, they can be removed and easily washed. It’s great for us when we get a message from a customer that bought a set of our covers years ago and they tell us how they still look like new, still make their camper van look great and are as comfy as a set of slippers.
‘NOOOOOOOO!’
For mountain bikers who get caught in the rain or actively go puddle-chasing, Jackyards seat covers offers the perfect way to protect their cherished VW camper vans. As all mountain bikers will know, we’ve all gone for a ride that was supposed to have been for two hours and ended up being five… and started sunny only to end with the clouds opening. We’ve all rode back to the van, lashing rain beating us, kids crying, begging the last arduous mile to go as quickly as possible. Then, we get to the van and abandon any strategic van preservation. The bikes get quickly lobbed into the back (almost), we open the doors, climb into the bosom of the seats and sigh, ‘Aaaagh!’ If you haven’t got seat covers, there’s inevitably a moment of relief before the parents cry, ‘NOOOOOO!’ and the kids sob, ‘My seats wet.’ Then, the adults peal their mud and cow poo-soaked shorts off their seats and see the new, dirty, arse shaped patterns indelibly soaked into the seats’ fabric for ever and a day.
Of course, for those of us with Jackyards seat covers, there’s no such panic. For we all know, after a long bath and steaming cuppa, we simply wipe the seat covers clean and they’re back to looking like new again. And if we do sell our van, we also know the original seat covers are going to be preserved, thereby also preserving the value of our van.
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