Norris Lockley was born in Huddersfield in June 1936 and died in Settle in the Yorkshire Dales in October 2023 where he had lived since 1968.

His passion for France and cycling began in his teens when he joined the Colne Valley Cycle Club (CVCC). Members of the club would meet at the premises of Hilton Wrigley, a local frame builder in Marsden, who began making a name for himself in the early Fifties and whose frames became the frame to have.

In 1953, between July 19 and 1 August, with his own 1950 Hilton Wrigley Superbe, Norris took off for his first cycling trip in France with his brother Bernard and three other friends from the Colne Valley CC. They travelled down to London by train, rode from there to Lympne in Kent and flew to Le Touquet, staying in Youth Hostels during the trip. This was to be the first of number of cycling trips to France and the start of a love affair with the country.

He soon met his future wife June as a teenager in Huddersfield, whom he married in 1961. Once they had moved to Derbyshire in the early Sixties, they took advantage of the opportunities youth hostelling offered them in the nearby Derbyshire Dales. They spent their honeymoon in Malham in the Yorkshire Dales, just 5 miles up the road from Upper Settle which was to become their home in 1968 when they moved there with their young sons Simon and Damian.

France was later to become a feature of their lives once they had settled in the Dales, first when working together in education when they organised a trip to Paris in the early Seventies through the Paris Travel Service, then later as a family on camping holidays in Normandy, Brittany, the Loire, the Auvergne and Annecy - and finally, pre- and post-retirement, spending weeks of their summers camping in the Drôme.

While Norris's profession was in adult education, his ambition was always to open a bicycle shop and to build bicycles himself. He opened Dales Cycles in upper settle in 1976 while still working in education. This became the Bespoke Bicycle Company in the early 80s when he started to build bicycle frames and bikes. The business grew to encompass importing and representing other French brands. Norris had retired from education at the age of 55.

He became very well known in the French market and, as his passion grew, he visited, and was welcomed by, many French cycle businesses. Then, with the advent of the internet, he found a new audience with whom to share his knowledge, enthusiasm, passion and skills globally, where he was a regular – even a legend - on multiple online forums such as Classic Rendez-Vous and Classic Lightweights.

Here's one article about Hilton Wrigley which he wrote in June 2002 during the Covid crisis : www.classiclightweights.co.uk/classic_builders/wrigley-hi...

His passion for France and bicycles continued to the end. His passing left a huge hole in the cycle collecting world. He left behind a digital legacy and the physical legacy of a catalogue of Bespoke bicycles he built over the decades in his workshop on Albert Hill Settle, some of which you will see on this site. We have added a folder 'France' which includes a few photographs we wish to share of his time spent in France. The rest is in own his own words.

''Retired Government officer who also owned a cycle company - The Bespoke Bicycle Company - that I set up in 1976. I was the proprietor but also the frame-builder. Photos of a number of the original and bespoke ie custom frames - that I built can be found on this site.

I also imported and distributed frames and equipment from a number of French manufacturers such as TVT, CORIMA, Duret/Geliano, GUIMARD, JKF.

The firm sponsored many amateur riders including the national champion Marie Purvis who one several stages of Le Tour Feminin - the women's Tour de France - on Bespoke frames.

In 1993 Bespoke Cycles acted on behalf of Chris Boardman to arrange the contract for him to ride a CORIMA frame and wheels during his successful attempt on the World Hour Record at the Bordeaux track on 13 July 1993.''