Ah autumn. Season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and lashings and lashings of rain. Granted it might not feel chilly enough yet to really feel autumnal, but the leaves are already beginning to turn and you know it's coming. With it comes more mud, road crud, and lots of cleaning bikes in the cold wet dark. Make it easy on yourself with a few key bits of kit like a pressure washer, or use the wear and tear as an excuse to upgrade your parts — and do it all with some significant savings.
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Sealskinz All Weather Cycle Gloves (Black) £40 £20
First things first; washing your bike (or indeed riding it) with cold hands is no fun at all. Grab yourself a pair of All Weather gloves from Sealskinz and keep your mitts toasty and dry. There's also plenty more waterproofed goodness where they come from too, so if you need winter-proof socks, or indeed a water resistant hat, check it out.
Available with a 50% discount from Sealskinz
Karcher K2 Compact Pressure Washer £74.99 £64.16
More wet weather means more mud, crud, leaf litter and so-on. This in turn means muckier bikes. The last thing you want to do at the end of a ride is get the bucket and sponge out to clean your bike, so make things easy on yourself. A pressure washer like this compact one from Karcher will blitz your bike cleaning in the blink of an eye.
Available with a 20% discount from Halfords
Shimano Ultegra 6800 Tubeless Ready Wheelset £424.98 £259.99
A good set of wheels will firstly help you motivate yourself to keep riding through the winter, and this heavily discounted wheelset from Shimano is ideal. You won't need to worry about trashing your carbon-rimmed racing wheels on potholed and puddled streets. Compatible with 8, 9, 10 and 11-speed systems, they're also tubeless ready.
Available with a 38% discount from Evans Cycles
Yale 720p H4B-HD DVR 4 Channels CCTV Kit with 2 Cameras £239.99 £194.99
Want to keep an eagle eye on your precious bike shed? With bike thieves becoming ever more audacious, many cyclists are turning to home security systems to keep their pride and joy safe, or at least catch the criminals in the act.
This CCTV system from Yale has two cameras with night vision which can be used indoors and outdoors, with the ability to add another two if you want. 1TB of recording space means plenty of room for storing video, and you can back up recordings to a USB or external hard drive, plus monitor activity from your smartphone or tablet.
Available with a £45 discount from Maplin
Shimano XT 1x11 Drivetrain Groupset £459.99 £299.99
Autumn and winter are not kind to drivetrains. Grit-encrusted mud will grind through the metal of even the most meticulously cleaned and maintained groupset. Happily, decent parts are coming down in price, and now you can get an 11-speed Shimano XT drivetrain complete with cassette, chain, cranks, derailleur and shifter for under £300.
Available with a 35% discount from Chain Reaction Cycles
Continental Quality Road Inner Tube £6.99 £3.49
Inner tubes. You can never have enough. You always need to have one, and if you end up buying them when you puncture, you're guaranteed to be in a location which charges a crazy amount for them. So stock up ahead of time and get them cheap, like these road inner tubes from Continental, available in a range of sizes and with both Presta and Schrader valve types.
