How the medallion came about — and the one promise that goes on every bike leaving our workshop.
I wasn’t looking to design a logo. I was looking through an old shoebox of photographs — the sort of shoebox that lives on top of a wardrobe until someone dies and it becomes the family archive. Most of the pictures were of barbecues on the sandy beaches of the west-coast islands: a driftwood fire, cousins, wet dogs, someone always holding a sausage on a fork.
And then I turned a photograph over and there it was. Ben Lomond, big and quiet at the back of the frame, doing what a Ben does. You can’t help but be in awe. It’s the same feeling you get looking down any glen, or standing at the head of a loch on a still morning, or listening to a burn coming down off the hill after a night’s rain. Bonnie Scotland doesn’t need to try; the beauty is just there, as far as the eye can see.
So I sketched what I saw — the Ben’s profile, the way the light sat on the shoulder of it — and framed the whole thing in a length of rope. The rope was important. A rope is what a hill-walker carries, what a boat ties off with, what binds a bothy door shut against the weather. It’s a symbol of connection, and of preparation. In the top of the rope frame we set a small cameo of the family name — Bain — to acknowledge the shotgun in my grandfather’s cabinet, and the generations of us that have been on the hill in one form or another.
That’s the medallion. Simple, personal, drawn one wet Tuesday afternoon in Perthshire from a shoebox of family photographs. It goes on every Juliet 2 in polished brass.
But I want to say something else, and this matters more than the badge.
Awe should never be confused with confidence. The hills and the lochs are to be respected. That’s not a marketing line; it’s the one rule of the countryside that keeps us all coming home. A Ben that looks perfectly kind in July can turn the temperature dial in twenty minutes; a loch that looks like glass on Monday has claimed a strong swimmer on Tuesday. Every one of us knows someone this happened to.
So here’s the small kit of habits we’d ask anyone riding our bikes to carry, alongside the panniers:
Tell a loved one your route and your ETA before you leave. Not vaguely — write it down. Where you’re starting, where you’re going, which way, what time you expect to be back. If you’re late, someone knows where to send help.
Follow the Scottish Outdoor Access Code. It’s short, it’s sensible, and it protects the ground you’re riding on as much as you.
Never go near a loch alone. Water is the humblest and the most patient hazard in Scotland. There’s no version of “just a quick dip” that’s worth it if there’s nobody within shouting distance.
Check the weather twice — once the night before, once at the door — and change your plan if it’s asking you to. The hill will still be there next weekend.
That’s our best-service policy, as much as the bike itself is. Every order that leaves us goes out with a small Coming Home card carrying a QR code to our current list of regional-park ranger contacts, mountain-rescue numbers, and the local guiding partners we’re building relationships with across Cairngorms, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs, and beyond. If you’re heading somewhere new, ring the ranger first. If you’re heading somewhere serious, hire a guide. It’s cheap insurance and a shortcut to the best local knowledge on the ground.
The medallion is our promise that the bike passed under our eye before it left. The Coming Home card is our promise that we care what happens to it after that.
There’s beauty as far as the eye can see. Respect it, prepare for it, and come back to tell the tale.