She's at it again! Helen Pidd on the Apollo Haze Women's Hybrid

Helen Pidd's article in the 14 May edition of the Guardian's Weekend.

I really like it when the Guardian's Weekend magazine invites journalist and writer Helen Pidd to contribute something on cycling. In this week's issue she's road testing the Apollo Haze Women's Hybrid – and isn't very complimentary about it.

In three words, she describes it as 'cheap and nasty' and goes on to recommend the Specialized Sirrus, which costs an additional £200 and, of course, bolsters the theory that in this world, you get what you pay for.

Helen lives in Berlin, as we learned from her previous review of the Velorbis Victoria Balloon, which was given the thumbs up. The Apollo, however, was on a loser from the word go. For a start, it cost only £139.99, not that Pidd had ruled it out of court because of price. She was road testing the bike in London and decided to take it up Swains Lane in Highgate, only to discover that the lowest of the bike's 18 gears wasn't working. This she put down to the way it had been assembled by Halfords staff.

"The Apollo is usually sold flatpacked, ready for customers to assemble at home (a disaster waiting to happen). Mine was allegedly set up by a professional," wrote Pidd, explaining how most independent bike shops will tell you that 'it's impossible to make a decent bike for under £300', adding that the Apollo proves the point.

Pidd describes the Apollo as 'ugly' and wonders 'how many grown women would really choose a metallic lilac number with tacky flowers transferred on to the frame?' She's right, of course, but claims that when she took the Apollo off-road, it coped well, adding that not all the components are rubbish ('the rear mech is Shimano') and there was a women-specific gel saddle.

Neither the gears nor the saddle, however, were enough to make up for the bike's malfunctioning gear and 'hideous appearance'.

Pidd recommends that if you can't afford a brand new bike for around £300, opt for a secondhand one. Now that is sensible advice. There are a load of very cheap bikes around, but the 'get what you pay for philosophy' is all too real. Best to buy secondhand. In fact, only a month or two ago, I found a Specialized Hardrock mountain bike in one of those new-fangled pawnshops (this one in Croydon) for a mere £90!

When I consider that my son has a Hardrock that needs more than £90 worth of work, he'd be better off buying another one if its only £90!

Tatsfield Village for tea and a cream bun

It was one of those 'was it even worth going?' moments when Andy pulled out two iced Belgian buns, but to hell with it, they were lovely, especially with a cup of warm Twinings English Breakfast tea – far better than the PG Tips we'd been drinking over the past few weeks.

Iced Belgian buns – lovely!

On arrival, our bus stop was dry and sunny and that put us immediately in the mood to help a troubled motorist by pushing her broken down car to the kerbside where later it was examined by a portly man in trainers (who definitely needed the exercise). When Andy brought out the buns, to complement his cereal bars, and I poured the tea, well, we would have been forgiven for thinking we'd died and gone to heaven.

Today, the main conversation was about prices and how everything is unnecessarily expensive. Tea at just under £2 a cup is ridiculous when you consider how much it costs to make and then there's double glazing and that moment when the salesman brings out his calculator and claims that it'll cost you something ridiculous, like, say, £15,000 but that if you sign on the dotted line you can have it for...sound of fingers on calculator keys...£2,000. How, you wonder, could something go down in price by £13,000? Answer: because it was never worth £15,000 in the first place. I'm exagerrating, but not by much. We live in a country where being ripped off is just part of the average day for most people – two quid to go one stop on a bus, £1.75 + for a cup of tea, a pack of five razors for over a tenner when it's cheaper to buy a new razor, it goes on and on.

In the end, of course, people think: sod that, I won't bother and then the Government moans about the economy being depressed because consumers ain't consumers. I wonder why? The worst thing, of course, is that the goods on offer are often pretty shoddy and not worth the money in the first place, but we all know that, don't we?

Mind you, those Belgian buns were worth every penny – and so was the Twinings English Breakfast tea.