How do you go from history school to a kayak instructor diploma? From a nature teacher certificate to nautical courses to repairing touring bikes? “A lifelong sense of the environment and nature conservation,” sums up Nicolas Gobault, a Saint-Jean who dared to take it on a professional level by creating “Syab Vélo” (Sant Yan Ar Biz Vélo – as it is called in his Breton town), his small mobile bike repair shop.
Nicolas Gobault, originally from Rennes, was a student when he discovered Plougasnou in 1997 as the director of a summer camp at the Keravel centre in Bremel. “I went there once, twice… Then I was hired as a kayak instructor. That’s how the youth jobs that were so popular at the time became a real job for me!” After becoming coordinator of the water sports centre, over the years he saw only “the rubbish that washed up on the beach, the quality of the environment that was deteriorating”.
From everyday cycling to bicycle mechanics
Driven by “a desire for something different”, he set off on a nine-month journey in 2019 to challenge the Morlaix Co family, where his aspirations to reduce his environmental impact “finally found concrete answers at home”. At the same time, he founded the En Bulk à l’Ouest association with the “No Waste Girls Group”. “But I couldn’t stop. In 25 years of professional life, I gave everything I could to Keravelle. I had made it and I was thinking about what would happen next,” recalls Nicolas Gobbo.
By coming to people’s homes, I remove as many brakes as possible so they can repair their bikes on site.
Then he followed his partner, who had moved to Belle-Ile-en-Mer for a year and a half after Covid, and matured. “For nine years, I just cycled every day and took the kids to school by bike…” He decided to train as a bike mechanic in Quimper. He then did an apprenticeship at a bike rental company in Belle-Ile, where he spent a year repairing “rental bikes from passing tourists… and once even a wheelchair!”
Mobile workshop that comes to its customers
Back in Saint-Jean, Nicolas Gobault opened the Syab Vélos workshop in his home in March 2024. To make his new activity “profitable while reducing the carbon footprint”, he decided to turn it into a mobile workshop. “By coming to my home, I remove as many brakes as possible from people so that they can repair their bikes on site.” No more loading or transport problems, less fuel: it makes sense, ecologically and economically.
The bicycle mechanic offers repair services “in a fixed workshop at a place called Foen Vian in Saint-Jean or in a mobile workshop within a 20 km radius of Saint-Jean-de-Duyght”. In six months of activity, he has already checked “around a hundred bicycles, from old ones from the 1970s to ultra-modern electric bikes”. He is targeting “the fleet of electric bikes purchased after Covid-19 and showing the first signs of wear”.
Soon also “home bike”?
In the meantime, he wants to “organize group workshops to teach users how to maintain their bikes and make the parts last as long as possible, because if we replace them, we produce waste.” And why not “offer family-friendly bike rentals that give people the opportunity to experiment before investing in a new way of getting around.”
But until then, Nicolas Gobault wants to obtain the “Accueil Vélo” label, which identifies bike rentals, repair shops or accommodations located less than 5 kilometers from a marked cycle route (here Vélomaritime). “Helping a cycle tourist so that he can continue his journey is very useful. Like repairing a bike that is no longer usable: even if you only travel one kilometer, it is much less than if you travel it by car!”
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This. 06 30 53 47 34, email: (email protected); Facebook Siap Philo; Free service, travel costs depending on distance (free in Saint-Jean), possibility to rent a bike.
