We were excited at the prospect of meeting Ian Cleverly. After all he’s the managing editor of what many regard as the best cycling magazine on the planet. Yes, excited and not just a little bit intrigued because, from what we understood, he doesn’t immediately fit the bill of a typical Rouleur reader: a punk who played in a 1980’s band called King Trigger; a self confessed technophobe who turns his nose up at Garmin computers and Strava data; a Cyclo Cross fanatic and lover of the aesthetics of steel framed bikes. 

Rouleur started up in 2006 when founder, Guy Andrews, came up with the idea of a cycling magazine that offered a bit more than “fitness specials, pictures of bunch sprints and road tests of £1000 bikes.” The vision was to produce a beautiful magazine with serious writing in it for the discerning cyclist. It fitted in perfectly with Rapha’s philosophy at the time and Simon Mottram (Rapha’s CEO) put his backing behind it.