High streets may be close to the point where there is no more room for bike stores cafes catering for middle-aged men in Lycra.

Beyond the malls, high streets are polarising into the highly fashionable and the distinctly also-rans. At one end of the scale it is charity shops and discounters, at the other it’s artisan cafes serving pricey coffee and bike shops.

The agglomeration of charity shops and discounters is relatively well documented, but for males craving a ‘Dad Bod’ (it’s the latest things for Mamils – middle-aged men in Lycra) hitting the road and shimmying down to the nearest cafe or bike shop is just the thing.

Cycling is the new golf – there’s almost no end to the machines, clothing and accessories that can be purchased in stylish shops and in these places men, and it is mostly men, can mix with like-minded individuals. And then there are the cafes where winsome (and more toned) younger people will serve the wannabes a latte or perhaps a doppio espresso.

The fact that all of this will probably not result in much more than blokes on bikes who tell themselves that they only just missed out on qualifying for le tour is by the by. The important bit is that they are supporting high streets and shopping in a way they might not otherwise do.

At the better and more affluent end of things cafe society flourishes in a biking world where men and machines are in at least some sort of harmony and retailers have responded by providing interiors that cater for two-wheeled fetishists.

Oversupply of stores

The only potential fly in the ointment is at what point will we reach peak cafe, peak Dad Bod and peak indy bike shop (and this includes big chains that look and behave like indies)?

It would be a brave sector analyst who would call time on things at the moment, but to judge by London’s Spitalfields Market where an Evans Cycles (the retailer was recently sold to private equity group ECI) is cheek by jowl with a branch of indy cycle shop Peleton, which is a few yards away from Cycle Surgery, things may be heading for oversupply.

And many shops that started off as bike emporia have morphed into cafes that have a few bikes or clothing and accessories (think Rapha).

Bike shops, cafes, and biking cafes are good-looking, generally friendly places, but the locations where it might be an idea to set up a shop of this kind look to be increasingly limited, whatever the man who just jumped a red light might say.