I am rather saddened by this. I bought it in the village of La Bourboule in the Auvergne in 2005 (a region that knows a lot about rain) on my first big foreign bike trip and it has accompanied me on almost all of my subsequent adventures.
Here it is in Brittany in 2005, with some miserable, wet people who ten minutes earlier had claimed that real bikers don't carry umbrellas:
In the Black Forest in 2007, modelled by Howard:
And at 2,500 metres on top of the Großglockner Pass in 2008:
Its jolly red colour and cunning opening mechanism could cheer me up on the grottiest day. I hope Bromley's high street can supply me with a worthy successor.
