A World In Your Hands

Last month, we profiled local adventurer athlete Bruce Duncan’s amazing exploits in the last two Wenger Patagonian Expedition Races.

Reading Bruce’s account of his last race, where a single compass and map was all the team had to navigate its perilous route, brought home to us the enduring significance of maps. We’ve always had a passion for maps and made sure that, when we were designing Dave, we had a special internal pocket included just for such a trusty companion.

So, great to hear from Mike Parker, author of Map Addict, on Radio 4 days later. Mike, a stand-up comic and self-professed map nut, waxes lyrical about the glories of cartography, truly whetting one’s appetite for a day out in the hills with an Ordnance Survey map as one’s companion.

His programme naturally described the origins of the Ordnance Survey map, largely taking off with a 1790’s survey of southern England in at a time of widespread fear about Napoleonic Invasion. But even more delightful were his conversations with other map addicts, including some who have turned map-walking into a whole new art form.

Bill Drummond - for example – is a former member of pop group KLF, an art terrorist, and clearly a man on a mission. Throughout 2010, Bill is walking ‘the London Cake Circle’, a 21 kilometre circle that he has drawn on a London ordnance survey map. More than that, he is delivering home-baked cakes to houses that sit on the circle.

Bill’s eccentric, lateral approach to maps has extended in the past to writing his own name on the map and then following this signature route. In this, he is engaging in what has been called ‘psychogeography’.

What for you and me might sound a somewhat nutty exercise becomes elevated into something strangely compelling when you hear it discussed by its most ardent practitioners. Much of the current trend for psychogeography began with novelist Iain Sinclair, whose book and film London Orbital describes his circuit of London’s hinterland, 40 miles out alongside the M25.

Photo courtesy of Tom T

Appalled by the impending horrors of New Labour’s Millenium Dome project as 2000 approached, Sinclair decided to escape the collective nightmare by walking this circuit. For Sinclair,

“Walking is the best way to explore and exploit the city; the changes, shifts, breaks in the cloud helmet, movement of light on water. Drifting purposefully is the recommended mode, tramping asphalted earth in alert reverie, allowing the fiction of an underlying pattern to reveal itself”.

Psychogeography began as an invitation for pedestrains to escape economic and social alienation. So we are urged to forsake the predictable paths to and from our workplaces or the shops. The result is that we’re hopefully jolted into a new awareness of the urban landscape and a greater sympathy with its inhabitants.

It may be a little different from Bruce Duncan’s rigorous hike and cycle across the Patagonian landscape but no less worthy for that. Instead of Bruce’s high-adrenaline athletics, map-nuts and ardent walkers like Bill Drummond are seeking to experience familiar landscapes in equally new ways.

So if this has given you the itch, consider a final proposal from a collective of urban pranksters and artists calling themselves Wrights and Sites. They’ve published two ‘Mis-Guides’ – “travel documents for directionless journeys”. Their mis-guidebooks direct you to look at wild flowers growing in industrial estates, to chalk momentos on the pavement where you have said special ‘goodbyes’, or to place a wreath on the site of a memory you want to lay to rest.


What a thought – that the humble map has spawned such diversity of response, from Bruce Duncan’s athletic and adventuring exploits to Bill Drummond’s artistic and political agenda.

Race the wilds but don’t despair if you’re locked into urban life. There are delights to be found in all directions.

Cheap Cheap

As we continue to develop a new range of products for release in early summer, we’ve been immersed in the mysteries of organic and non-organic materials, scheduling, and the workloads of our production team. Amidst the hectic activity, it’s sometimes a blessed respite to turn to our e-mail.

We were recently delighted to be contacted, out of the blue, by an architect, Juliette, who wrote:

“I wanted to thank you for the work that you do, and especially for the manner in which you do your work. This may be strange since I haven’t purchased one of your products yet, but I’ve started to save up so that I can buy the Field Bag for my husband. But I enjoyed your section of ‘Scribbled Thoughts’ so much that I thought I would pass this passage along”.

Juliette went on to quote a passage by an influential early 20th century economist from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. It seems that Simon Nelson Patten was one of the first economists to argue for a shift from an ‘economics of scarcity’ to an ‘economics of abundance’.

Photo courtesy of Epsos

He has some harsh words for ‘the capitalist’ whom he distinguishes from ‘the frugalist’:

“The discipline of the capitalist is the same as that of the frugalist. He differs from the latter in that he has no regard for the objects through which productive power is acquired. He does not hesitate to exploit natural resources, land, dumb animals, and even his fellowman… The frugalist… stands in marked contrast to the attitude of the capitalist. The frugalist takes a vital interest in his tools, in his land, and in the goods he produces. He has a definite attachment to each. He dislikes to see an old coat wear out, an old wagon break down, or an old horse go lame. He always thinks of concrete things, wants them and nothing else. He desires not land, but a given farm; not horses or cattle or machines, but particular breeds and implements; not a shelter, but a home…”

This put us in mind of Ellen Ruppel Shell’s book, Cheap, an entertaining broadside railing against discount culture and the notion that cheap is better. “A cheap price is a shortcut to being cheated”, inveighs an ancient Chinese proverb. Shell distinguishes between cheap, disposable culture and thrifty, reusable culture. Most tellingly, she targets Ikea whom she accuses of using illegally harvested hardwoods from the Russian Far-East and Asia, and sourcing production to some of the lowest-paying companies on the planet. When she cites a table that sells for $69 to a master craftsman, he has to admit that he couldn’t buy the wood for that price, let alone build the finished table.

Photo courtesy of Kouhoku

Now, it’s easy to become pious and to surrender to Shell’s sometimes soundbite rhetoric. We’re as guilty as the next person when it comes to the mix of local, homespun stores and retail chains and supermarkets that we use. Much as we’d like to be 100% dedicated frugalists, we actually live with a mixed economy, prizing the hand-crafted while often reaching for the mass-produced.

But, slowly, we are trying to chip away at the block of our reliance on the mass-retailed and cheap. And all our efforts at Millican are spent trying to develop the most hand-sourced, hand-finished products that we can.


Take Derek the Drinks Cooler. His insulation is made with 100% Herdwick sheep wool, harvested from the coats of Borrowdale flocks at local Yew Tree Farm . Then, Vera , our dame of sewing after forty years at Pringle and Kangol, hand-stitches the insulation.

We could cut costs drastically in terms of both product and production. But we prefer to take a leaf out of Simon Nelson Patten’s book, valuing the individual goods, tools and human beings in the process. In the words of Ellen Ruppel Shell,

“Craftsmanship cements a relationship of trust between buyer and seller, worker and employer, and expects something of both. It is about caring about the work and its application. It is what distinguishes the work of humans from the work of machines”.


Like any work, Millican life can sometimes feel like an automated treadmill, with a host of converging lists, pressures and demands. But our priority is to keep the accent on the human wherever possible, on the good health of our employees and ourselves, and on Shell’s ‘relationship of trust’ between us and our buyers. As with all work-life balance issues and any ethical business, this is never going to be simple.
But, then, outside nature, silence and star-gazing, what ever good really came ‘cheap’?

The Humble Pencil

As a largely internet-based business, we’re greatly dependent on the digital world. High-speed wireless connection, Googling, and i-Podding are all part of the weave of our lives. But in many ways, we’re still analogue afficanados.

Take the humble pencil. It’s often a pencil that we reach for, rather than a rather more costly ink pen, when we’re doodling in our creative notebooks.

Photo courtesy of Hythe Eye

And what a thing of beauty a pencil is. We were bowled over when we moved to Keswick to find ourselves in the very heartland of pencil country. Legend has it that in the 16th century, a violent storm uprooted local trees just down the road from our home. A strange black substance was revealed underneath. This proved to be an enormous deposit of graphite.

Locals quickly used it to mark sheep and it remains the only large scale deposit of graphite ever found in solid form. England enjoyed a monopoly on pencil production for many decades, and today the Derwent brand of fine art pencils continues to be produced in Cumbria. Keswick even has the distinction of having its own pencil museum!

Photo courtesy of Derwent Pencils

Today, when many of us use biros or ink pens, we can lose touch with the pencils of our youth. But anyone visiting a Third World country is quickly reminded of a pencil’s value as he or she is surrounded by children chanting for this precious instrument.

Great to see, then, the work of Pencils of Promise, a NY charity which is building schools throughout the developing world, creating classrooms in which children can be equipped with pencils, books and good teaching, changing the odds on their leading healthy lives and enabling them to contribute to their own future provision and their country’s growth. This non-profit organization all began with its founder travelling abroad and realizing the value of the humble pencil in local children’s lives.

Photo courtesy of Pencils of Promise

Consider. A child is 40% more likely to live past the age of five if its mother has had a basic education. At least 700,000 new cases of HIV could be prevented each year if all the children in the world had a classroom to study in. And, of course, these classrooms will progressively become linked to the internet highway, leading to a further cultural transition from analogue to digital in these countries and additional educational possibilities.

That’s not a prospect without its ambiguities, though. We’ve recently been reading an online article by the British philosopher, Roger Scruton who has raised justifiable concerns about online friendships and how they may be corrupting our ability to form trusting relationships rich in vulnerability and risk. In contrast to face-to-face friendships, Scruton writes,

“When I relate to you through the screen, there is a marked shift in emphasis. Now I have my finger on the button. At any moment, I can turn you off. You are free in your own space, but you are not really free in mine, since you are dependent on my decision to keep you there. I retain ultimate control, and am not risking myself in the friendship as I risk myself when I meet you face to face”.

It’s certainly true that online friendships don’t occupy the same mutually vulnerable space as a face-to-face friendship and can represent a “reduced risk encounter” (albeit one with its own issues of danger given the ever present chance of meeting impostors lurking behind aliases and avatars).

But we suspect that Scruton is probably being too conservative in his reaction to the digital world. Some Facebook users may have several hundred friends on their pages but I think we all understand the difference between a list of vague acquaintances and the small band of close friends that we know and trust deeply.

It’s not that we’re unaware of some of the dangers of online activity, especially amongst internet addicts and the young. But we still think, overall, we should welcome the digital world, while continuing to enjoy classic analogue pleasures.

Photo courtesy of Horia Varlan

So we’ll be keeping both our Keswick pencil and our PC, without indulging any rift between them. Our PC takes us all around the world, allows us to converse with people in every continent, and to draw down a wealth of instant information. But, at the end of the day, as we meander down the road, we can also have a very different experience gazing up at the trees, and down at the soil beneath which first lurked that astonishing deposit of graphite.

The Vintage Bike Project

As an entrepreneur, you have to be prepared to be overtaken by your passions. But even I’ve been surprised by the direction our latest project at Millican HQ has taken.

It was only a few months ago that I was on my way to visit ace clothes retailer, Oi Polloi, on Tib Street in northern Manchester with my Millican samples. When, out of nowhere, I spotted a small bike shop, GBH Custom Bikes. Having just sold my mountain bike and being up for a change, perhaps a road bike, I was determined to investigate.


I entered a tiny shop-cum-workshop, with bike gear everywhere. Judging by the state of their hands, the two guys there clearly love their bikes. Meet Gbob and Hippy. It turned out that GBH was at a fulcrum moment, selling off some of their stock and about to move into a sole focus on custom bikes.


Meanwhile, hanging in the rafters above me, I spotted one frame, once blue, now largely rusting. Hippy mentioned it was a 1947 Raleigh Clubman frame – that is, a club touring bike, what’s more a fixie, ungeared.


Now … it just so happens that 1947 is branded in my memory as the year when Millican Dalton died. Also tucked away there was the knowledge that Millican, an early cycle camper in his youth, used to be known for his trusty blue bike.

What had begun as a random bit of window-shopping then turned into a full-scale fantasy on my way home that evening. What if we re-built the Clubman, applying the Millican design philosophy? We take a classic, tried and tested shape, add functionality befitting our current era, and use recycled and more sustainable materials wherever we can.

My uncle Gerben, Holland, 1940

Once completed, I’d be able to enter any number of cycle races around the Lake District, raising money for charity, honouring Millican Dalton, and promoting all we stand for at the same time. Having spent my childhood in Holland, I’d grown up with and on bikes. End of daydream.

I loved that bike ... well, scooter really ...

Then, of course, the more practical realities began to creep in. The truth is I know very little about bike details. What was I thinking straying off my known turf? Ah, I told myself, isn’t Millican also all about connecting with new worlds and new collaborators? Objections squashed, I penciled a follow-up trip to Manchester in my diary.

Once there, I visited GBH again, asking for their help to re-build the bike. Hippy, as might be expected, then proceeded to deluge me with an avalanche of technical options, most of them considerably beyond my knowledge base. I figured I'd need to spend a lot of time poring over websites, blogs, forums and chatting to people passionate about bikes, before being able to settle on a spec. Perfect.

Retro Raleighs gave me the perfect start, with a compendium of details about the original bike and its specification. If you’re into cycling, you might also know or like to spend time in these online emporiums, veritable labyrinths of pleasure for the bike enthusiast – The Old Bicycle Showroom and Classic Lightweights.


Today, as I write this, Hippy is building the bike, based on the general spec we’ve agreed on. One of the biggest turning points has been to forsake the original non-gear spec and embrace the functionality of modern gears – six in total, 3 x 2.


Because, somewhere along the way, I also managed to sign myself up for the Sportive at the Keswick Mountain Festival in mid-May. And I’m certainly not getting up and over mountains in my present condition, unless I have at least some gears to help me on my way.

Meanwhile, our quest to combine the best of old and new continues, with determined trawling of our contacts for second-hand components that will conform as close as possible to the original. We have chosen new components for the wheels, gears and brakes. However, the frame, drop bars, lights and pedals will remain orginal. While the saddle and saddle bag will be custom made. Completion date: 15th May. I wish Millican Dalton could see what we’re doing in the spirit of his name.

Whether he’ll want to see what I’m doing on Saturday 22nd May is another question.

The new sportive route, taking in a series of challenging and spectacular Lakeland passes (Honister, Whinlatter, Newlands), proudly advertises itself as “a very demanding route with little recovery between climbs”.

The training starts here…