Tartan paint? Check out the very special Specialized S-Works Aethos that’s being ridden from Edinburgh to Rome this week

Tartan paint? No, not the fool’s errand where you send the newbie off to the storeroom on an impossible task, this is the special finish that Spoon Customs has put on a Specialized S-Works Aethos that's currently being ridden from Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh to Rome to help raise money to cure motor neurone disease (MND). As well as highlighting a great cause, it looks awesome.

All photos: Simon Eldon Photography 

Okay, so you’re going to need a bit of background to understand all this… Matt Parker from Babble is leading a group called the Babble Rabble on an 1800-mile four-rider endurance relay from Scotland to Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Italy, in eight days. The challenge is called All Roads Lead to Rome and, to save you doing the maths, it works out to an average of 225 miles per day. As long as everything goes to plan, they’ll arrive on Friday, in plenty of time for the penultimate round of the Six Nations rugby match between Italy and Scotland on Saturday (9th March 2024).

The idea is for Babble to raise money for My Name'5 Doddie Foundation which aims to find a cure for MND and provide grants to people living with the condition. The 5 (rather than an S) in the name is a reference to the shirt number of Doddie Weir, the lock who won 61 Scottish rugby caps and who was later diagnosed with MND. Doddie Weir died towards the end of 2022. 

The Doddie Weir tartan was designed a few years ago by ScotlandShop, in collaboration with Doddie himself, and in support of the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. The specific finish you see here was put together by Spoon Customs and painted by Jack Kingston. The bike was built by Spoon too.

All make sense? Cool. Matt Parker is chief executive of Babble, and when he’s not chief executiving (not a word? It is now) he spends a lot of time on a bike, having ridden from Lands’ End to John o’ Groats eight times. That’s keen. The Babble Rabble hopes to raise over £250,000 for My Name'5 Doddie Foundation this year. 

As mentioned, Spoon Customs has been instrumental in putting this bike together.

Spoon’s CEO Andy Carr says, “What on earth has an S-Works got to do with us? Matt already owns three Spoon bikes (two carbon and one steel, which is waiting for Columbus Trittico parts so we can finally deliver it), so for this event, he dug out a spare bike in the shape of a comparatively unexciting matte black Aethos and asked us to do something with it to help him promote their fundraising effort. 

“Like an episode of [the TV series] Gotham Garage, we got the team together and got on with it. This is the result complete with tartan paint, upgraded wheels, and a brand new 12-speed Shimano Dura-Ace groupset, painstakingly coated by our new painter Jack Kingston, who works out of his own workshop up in Hull.”

> Check out our review of Shimano’s top level Dura-Ace R9200 groupset 

Sweden's Slik Graphics provided the graphics for the Enve wheels.

They’re Enve SES 4.5s with a 50mm-deep rim at the front and 56mm at the rear. Can we just take a moment to appreciate those wheels? They're something else!

The overall bike? Well, it speaks for itself. It's an absolute peach, it comes with a cool story, and it’s all for a good cause. What’s not to like?

We’ve not said a whole lot about the Specialized S-Works Aethos that’s at the heart of things. This is the model that Specialized released as “the lightest disc brake road bike ever” back in 2020. 

The US brand said that it chased ride quality rather than weight with this design, but ended up with a frame that weighs a claimed 588g in a 56cm size. Aerodynamics wasn’t a priority either.

> Specialized releases Aethos: “the lightest disc brake road bike ever”

Designers Peter Denk and Sebastian Sevet memorably said that there were to be “no lazy fibres” in the finished Aethos. In other words, every fibre should be loaded and tense – doing a job – rather than just adding weight. They concluded that there were too many ‘stiffness layers’ – or extra plies – in most frames.

When we reviewed the 6.6kg Aethos Pro, we said, “What a bike! If you have the cash and don't care about aero, buy it.”

Want to support the Babble Rabble and the My Name'5 Doddie Foundation? Head over to the Just Giving page. 

Check out loads more Bikes at Bedtime here.