Nick's Story

My name is Nick. I have been working in a bike shop for the last 6 years doing various things from the retail side of things to working the spanners. I decided to go overseas and wanted to expand my horizons. I found the OCW website and got in contact with Dom via email. He was unreal in organising me some work as soon as I arrived in Oxford.

OCW is an absolute gold mine for a bike mechanic who really wants to get into the nitty gritty of a bike. These days it seems most mechanics are really, as another mechanic said back home “new part fitters”. This is where OCW is different. The refurbishment of old bikes means that a lot of the time nothing is straightforward. It requires you to think outside the square, actually put your brain to good use. You are required to take a little bit of time to work around a problem, trying and testing different methods and strategies , and once sorted, it results give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

You never stop learning. It is amazing how many little tricks of the trade you learn in a place like this. By constantly trying different things you are always discovering nifty little tricks that you wouldn’t otherwise learn just fitting brake pads to a MTB. Communication in the shop is great. Everyone is always sharing ideas. It makes work so much more enjoyable and makes and day fly by!

Oxford is a compact city that’s constantly full of life. The city centre is quite small, but extremely busy. Only an hour from London on the bus, Oxford is crammed with students doing whatever it is they do. It’s a very busy city with plenty of pubs and clubs to keep you amused all within walking distance of one another. You can go to the bridge night club an get amongst the “beautiful” people or get up the Cowley road to the Zodiac and watch live gigs, then there’s everywhere else in between Good nights to be had any night of the week! The shop is situated just out of the city centre of Oxford. It is down a modest street with plenty of students and other passers-by. It’s an active street and you get to meet a lot of ‘real’ British people, not (just) the typically posh, ‘well spoken’ types synonymous with Oxford, but also the chavs, and dodgy blokes dealing furniture across the road. You meet loads of students and other people from all walks of life. Its fantastic fun!

To any mechanic who gets bored of constantly doing the same tasks everyday and wants to feel like a proper mechanic, live and work in an interesting place, with options of travel all over Europe, then this is the place for you!

Nick