One More Kilometre and We’re in the Showers

When I was eleven Rodney and Margaret, trying to maintain or revivify their marriage, went to France and Italy without me. I was to stay with Margaret’s parents in their big house in Raynes Park, which is at the further side of Wimbledon. (Raynes Park is notable as a catchment area for the Redmon Cycling Club, whose name is an anagram of Morden.) My grandparents were gentle people, old, each of them absorbed in their own thoughts. Early on the morning of my parents’ departure I went and hid in a creosoted shed in the garden and then in the Raynes Park church. I thought that Rodney and Margaret would not dream of searching the church, and I was right. And I reckoned that they had to catch their boat train or all would be lost to them. So it was. Off they went without saying goodbye, which is what I wanted.

I received a couple of postcards in the next few days. They must have meant a lot to me, for I kept them and have them still, after forty years and more. This was Margaret: ‘Dear Tim, where oh where were you when we wanted to say goodbye this morning? We are on deck on this boat now and it is very cold and blowy. We shall be in Paris at suppertime.’ Bon appétit, comrades everywhere. The next week my father writes from Italy – Florence actually, now I look at the postmark. ‘Dear Tim, we had a very jolly ride in a bus today. In every village the people were having feasts in the open air to celebrate the paper which is the Italian Daily Worker. Lots of Love Rodney.’

I resented these messages, since I liked being in France and thought that I should not have been left in Raynes Park. My grandparents did not know what to do with me. By good fortune, they had a library in their house, a real library with fitted bookshelves. Within this room I dreamt of becoming a writer. Its windows opened on to a large garden. There was a veranda, a workshop, a garage, lawns, a tennis court, the orchard, the kitchen garden and then the chicken runs. One day in that summer of 1951, bored, lonely and not a happy boy, I wandered into the garage. My grandfather had a Bentley but scarcely ever drove it, preferring to potter among his redcurrant bushes. So the garage was not much used. I pushed open the door and saw a bicycle behind the Bentley. And that is how I began.

II

Most boys or girls need to be taught how to ride a bicycle. In my case no tuition was needed. I was a natural. Just as some young animals swim as soon as they are thrown into the water, I was immediately balanced, fast and athletic. The machine from the garage was too big and I perched between the saddle and the top tube. None the less I managed. Within half an hour the bike and its rider were on the road, down Grand Drive towards the Kingston by-pass, whose concrete blocks and expansion gaps I recalled in many a later time-trialling effort.

My first days as a cyclist were magical. Never in my short life had I felt anything like the aerial liberation the bicycle granted me. Yet the Raynes Park bike was nothing special. Later on, I had another crucial physical experience. That was when I first rode a light racing machine. Suddenly I was a bird: uncatchable, self-contained, soaring and zooming towards the horizon, free from human worry and therefore happy. Cycling is about physical pleasure and happiness. I know that the bike can also make you weep, especially when you’re a teenager and don’t understand your body. Pleasure is none the less our goal and daily bread; and at some point in a good ride – as any time triallist will tell you, but will not be able to explain – pleasure and suffering are one and the same thing.

After long pleading with the ruling class of 90 Bristol Road I was finally granted my own bike. It was not to be a new machine. Some puritanical ukase of the communist ethos forbad expenditure on goods that were easily advertised. For years, I’m amazed to recall, my family didn’t even have a radio. However, from the cycling point of view I was fortunate that my first bike was patched together. It was built by an old metalworker who produced cheap machines as a hobby. Bikes of his sort were known as ASPs, the initials standing for All Spare Parts. Superficially, my ASP had the look of a racing machine. It had dropped bars, a bottle cage and Benelux gears. In reality the ASP was cumbersome and went dead on the hills. But it taught me to appreciate good equipment. Nowadays one of my spacious garden sheds contains twelve good bicycles, all in use at various times of the year. I have never been a motorist and have never owned a car.

The man who assembled my ASP was a club cyclist. By this term I mean someone who is dedicated to the culture of the bike, as well as being a member of a club. He showed me his own best machine, which was of great beauty and had the céleste colour of Bianchi frames from Italy. Perhaps it was indeed a Bianchi? Or had he somehow, in 1951–2, realised that this was the colour of Fausto Coppi’s frame? He said that his son, who was then entering an apprenticeship and for a couple of years had been a member of his father’s club, would not be allowed such a bicycle until he was much older. Father and son lived alone together, the boy’s mother having died, and the son was no doubt taught that cycling is a serious business. I never met this boy and didn’t really like his father. I guessed he thought it correct that the experience of bereavement should be a part of growing up.

Cyclists of my generation were usually brought up within local divisions of the Cyclists Touring Club and then joined more specialised clubs when they began to race. This was my experience. I had the good fortune to have a mentor in Albert Burman, a family man who was active in both the Birmingham CTC and the Warwickshire Road Club. Many people who did not know him will recall Albert with affection for the cartoons he contributed to our weekly paper, Cycling. A collection of his drawings, Laugh with Burman, is a treasured possession. Albert and his wife Gwen died long ago. Their daughter, my adored Joan, went away to somewhere in Canada, her lovely, liquid brown eyes a legacy from her father.

In the 1950s Albert Burman was still a useful time triallist, especially at the classic 25-mile distance, but was taking it easy when I, as a boy, became his clubmate. Not too easy. A club run when Albert was captain would have a fast pace. He had also been a pioneer of cyclo-cross and off-road riding. So his routes were always difficult, with forays on unmetalled roads, across fields, along canal banks and through the tracks of the Forest of Arden or Yarningale Common. Albert also insisted that the lunch break should be taken in the garden of some country pub. One of his favourites was to the west of Bewdley, on the hill towards the Wyre Forest. I always sat next to Joan. Her father would settle himself opposite us, take the first sip from his pint of mild and then produce a folded copy of that day’s Reynolds News, his preferred Sunday reading, for Albert was a co-operator and a trade unionist.

So also were many of the adult cyclists whose company I joined. At that period cycling still had many links, or at least a general friendship, with the labour movement. The ethos – still with us – was of egalitarianism and hands clasped in fraternity. We do not always live up to this ideal, but it is accepted that cyclists always talk to each other, and mostly as equals, whether they are boys or men, the racing members of an elite club or the most leisurely of tourists. Beside this camaraderie there is no political agenda among cyclists, which is one reason why I found them much more agreeable people than communists; and I still believe that the ‘fellowship of the road’, or whatever similar phrase was used, reflected a great social reality.

Cyclists thought themselves set apart from the rest of the world, as they were and are; but in the 1950s it was gladdening that we were so numerous. There were hundreds of cycling clubs throughout the land and as many as sixty people might join the Sunday club run, especially if the club was in a city. Club runs were often organised so that racing members – whose events had been held much earlier on Sunday mornings – could be joined by their clubmates at the elevenses halt, maybe 20 miles or so from the ‘meet’, which for us was a point on one of the roads leading south from Birmingham: the Maypole on the Alcester Road, the Robin Hood roundabout on the Stratford Road, the Barley Mow in Solihull, which was on the way to Warwick, or the Northfield Baths on the road that led to the Lickey Hills and Worcester.

Practically everybody raced occasionally, even if they didn’t race every week. Cycling as recreation was mingled with cycling as sport. Then as now, people talked about ‘going out training’ when they were simply leaving the house for a ride. Racing members of a club also took part in social activities that had none of the dash and excitement of competition. There were many camping weekends, map-reading competitions and pantomimes. ‘Rabbit pie suppers’ could be good. They were begun in the days of austerity and rationing. Many were the whispers about the poacher-cyclists who provided the rabbits. I thought it strange that fit young men were prepared to attend the lantern-slide lectures that were held not only by sections of the CTC but also by clubs whose first concern was with racing. But cyclists did go to such events; and these are some of the talks they might have heard:

How to use your camera

Blue skies and good companions

The infinite variety of cycling

Their abiding splendour

Where the mountains blush

The quest

Over the Welsh hills with a cycle and a camera

British railways

The Cotswolds

France: its customs and characteristics

Peeps through the microscope

Scotland through the lens in colour

Hill tracks and valleys in central Wales

The hillside figures of Britain

Holidays with cycle and camera

These lectures were free, but sometimes a souvenir programme was offered, its price usually 1s. 6d. The lecturers themselves had some renown within the cycling community and their discourses were heard in more than one place. A large wooden box containing lantern slides would be put on a train and would precede the lecturer, who of course went from one venue to the next by bicycle.

Don’t the lectures sound dull? But they served a purpose and supplied a need, or there would not have been so many of them. The reason for their popularity must have been that people simply did not know other parts of their own country and were eager to explore the land on two wheels. This curiosity and desire for travel was not confined to cyclists with little holiday time. Passion for research has led me to the 1950s file of a magazine issued by the Civil Servants’ Motoring Association. It would be hard to imagine a more bourgeois society. Yet the CSMA magazine carried touring articles that were very like the cyclists’ lectures and journalism – except that the motorists were recommended inns rather than cafes, hotels rather than youth hostels or bed and breakfast places.

Touring articles, often written by the same men who gave the lectures, continued in Cycling until the mid-1970s. Reports of the Tour de France alternated with reminiscences of gentle rambles through the Berwyns or the villages of the Isle of Wight. The accompanying photographs were often of a high standard. My lecture titles suggest that 1950s cyclists were often preoccupied with the camera. Articles and advertisements in the CTC Gazette describe quite new, even racy, pieces of photographic equipment. The cameras concerned were often quite expensive, adventurous purchases by cyclists who were seldom affluent and on the whole had conservative tastes. I can illustrate this conservatism by describing the cycling seasons.

III

The cycling year had its own feast days or observances and a racing man’s calendar was almost a matter of routine. In the twenty-eight Sundays between March and September many races had an allotted and unchanging slot, whether they were important events – the Bath Road 100, the Anfield 24 Hours, the Solihull Invitation 25 – or less significant local time trials. Massed-start road races did not have these definite dates, firstly because there were so few of them and secondly because roadmen did not have a firm and long-established governing body. However, bunched road racing was always celebrated in the ‘Isle of Man Week’ at the end of every June.

Trackmen also knew when and where they were going to compete. They would go to meetings held at regular intervals in the summer months, generally in the evening. For trackmen who raced on grass there were many ‘sports days’. Agricultural sports days were often part of a country show and were held on Saturdays. Urban sports days, organised by a factory, a colliery or a local police force, took place on Wednesday or Thursday afternoons, depending on the early closing day. These afternoons were shared with athletics. The runners often wondered at the feats of men on wheels, so cycling made some converts. It looked so specialised and brawny. Good grassmen were indeed among the sporting mighty and their muscular prowess over slippery, uneven ground also served them well in hill climbs – the peculiar races that end the cycling year.

Hill climbs are organised by cycling clubs in later October and November. In essence, they are time trials from a low to a high point. On the continent there are some extremely taxing mountain time trials, notably on the roads above Nice and on the Puy de Dôme. These are sometimes part of a stage race. They were introduced to the Tour de France in 1939. British hill climbs became popular in the 1920s and have a quite different character. They are festive and look forward to Christmas. But they are also hard. You need legs that are filled with months of racing – though we have known climbs to be won by the agility of delightful, underweight teenagers. They get special applause.

Depending on your part of the country, the climbs are long or short, but never very long. They are either ‘technical’ or straightforward. Some demand guile, others brute strength. Famous longer hills, like the Horseshoe Pass or Nick O’Pendle, are in the Peak District or North Wales. They are used by Manchester and Merseyside clubs. Birmingham clubs use hills in Mid Wales or the valley of the Teme. Londoners go to the North Downs or the Chilterns. In flat East Anglia clubs use what they can find. Hill climbs in Suffolk, for instance, are sometimes ridden in only forty seconds. Welsh climbs, however, can occupy a competitor for ten minutes.

Not longer, or the drama of the race would be lost. Hill climbers need a clapping audience. The climbs attract much larger crowds than other events against the clock. They are also held later in the morning, so as to race in light but also to attract knowledgeable spectators. The people who devise the hilly courses want to make their races into theatre. They look for a narrow road, preferably a lane with poor surfaces, stretches of faux-plat and – exquisite touch – a cattle grid at the hardest corner. If there is a pub near the hill, so much the better.

Some purists believe in hills that can be ridden on a fixed wheel. Others like varying gradients that demand the use of gears. Either way, the spectators are connoisseurs of a ritualistic race. The crowd will be on either side of the lane, all the way to the top, crying ‘Up! up! up!’ to each panting rider. At the summit are ‘catchers’ to grasp and hold the cyclists who, totally spent after the extreme effort of the brief climb, fall with their machines. The finishers are warmed in blankets, or sometimes by a brazier. Steam and smoke mingle with the cold air.

Next, beer and mince pies. Racing is over until the following year. Now the ‘social season’ begins. Miscellaneous entertainments, club runs and other gatherings reach a climax with the club dinner. Like so much else in the cycling world, these dinners have a standard pattern. They are held in late January and early February. On these occasions the club’s prizes and trophies will be awarded by an honoured guest, most often a well-known racing cyclist from another club. At the dinner there is a mixture of formality and licence. A three-course meal is served by waiters. Men wear suits, ladies wear gowns. At the end of the dinner there is a series of toasts, to ‘The Club’, ‘The Visitors’, ‘The Ladies’, sometimes ‘The Road’ and finally ‘The Queen’.

After the Loyal Toast – still observed by a surprisingly large number of clubs – cross-toasting is permitted. Anyone can bang on the table, jump to his feet and say, ‘I wish to take wine with …’ and then name some person or group of people with a jesting or semi-private reference. Then another person will say, ‘I wish to take wine with …’. This can go on for some time, and with hilarious or disappointing results. The custom of cross-toasting is an old one, and perhaps now belongs only to cycling clubs; I know of no other organisations which follow the ritual. Its cycling origins are in the convivial dinners held by clubs in the 1890s and Edwardian times, the golden age of bohemian dining.

Bohemianism never wins the day. The turn of the last century was also the period when respectable working men first dined together with their wives as members of voluntary societies. To this day, cycling club dinners are properly managed. Hotels are preferred to pubs. The tables have a placement. The top table is occupied by the club’s committee members and local dignitaries, often including a mayor or local councillor and a representative of the county police force (it is politic to be on terms with the police: we need their permission to race on the public highway). So club dinners have a social dimension, expressed in various ways. There is no cross-toasting between those seated at the top table and other diners. It is not done. In this way cycling club etiquette obeys a quite ancient taboo. English has a technical term for drinking with a person of a different class. It is called ‘hob-nobbing’.

The new cycling year begins after the club dinners. The ‘social season’ was too long for many keen racing men, who – after the mid-1950s – took up the new winter sport of cyclo-cross. Some people considered the ‘mud pluggers’ a little raffish. That was because, in the early days of cyclo-cross, courses were improvised and the racing unregulated. One or two clubs offered short time trials on the mornings of Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. The best known of these yuletide events, in which competitors often wear fancy dress, is organised by the Chesterfield Spire Road Club. In February we find ‘reliability trials’, fast training rides open to all comers. Then come the first time trials of the year, often on restricted gears, and two-up events, the riders competing in two-man teams. Serious competitive riding begins with the North Road Hardriders 25 on the last Sunday in February. This superbly uncomfortable race is on the Hertfordshire lanes north of Potters Bar and is often ridden in snow or on icy roads. That’s why tricyclists like it.

The next high point in the cycling calendar was the movable feast of Easter. On Good Friday all trackmen and their fans would be at Herne Hill for the meeting organised by the Southern Counties Cycling Union. This is among the oldest of cycling traditions, for track riders have made their way to Burbage Road, SE24, every Good Friday since 1903. An even more ancient Easter event is the annual rally of the Clarion clubs, generally held in Sheffield and consisting of a 25 championship followed by a great picnic. The Easter weekend offered a full programme of racing everywhere in the country. For some reason it was also regarded as the best time for family touring, though the paschal weather is often cold.

There were regional differences in the repeated festivities of the club cycling year and many local celebrations. I have been told tough stories about the way that Scottish cyclists rode to the Gordon Arms for their Burns Night reunion, passing the night in a large shed-cum-dormitory behind the famed hostelry before the dawn ride back to Glasgow or Edinburgh. There were other reunions and rallies at Cumnock in Ayrshire, Chigwell in Essex, Matlock in Derbyshire, Harrogate in Yorkshire and Mildenhall in Suffolk. These gatherings often take place on the weekend of August bank holiday. The biggest reunion is the York Rally, which occupies a weekend in June and was first held in 1945. Five hundred people were expected. Five thousand turned up. This event marked the beginning of the post-war cycling boom. The York Rally is still held every year, and many are the quarrels about its organisation and purpose.

In the mid-1950s I had begun to learn about such matters, and am still learning. Nobody gave me direct instruction about the culture of British cycling: I picked up my knowledge here and there. It was none the less good knowledge. I realised that it was important to know what cyclists valued. The lore of wheelmen was more interesting than the things that schoolteachers thought important. Difficult teenager that I was, I rejected many of the old ways and wanted change. Yet love for the bike encouraged me to listen to all sorts of tales that, on first hearing, seemed inconsequential or tedious. As, for instance, when dedicated cyclists spoke – with growing enthusiasm as spring turned to summer – of their future expeditions to the Isle of Man, where they would spend the week that includes the year’s longest day.

Why go every year to this small island in the middle of the Irish Sea? Here is my short version of the Isle of Man story. It takes us from the grass roots of British leisure riding to the heights of racing cycling; for on Mona we will meet Fausto Coppi, to this day the vital symbol of the sport; Louison Bobet, three times winner of the Tour de France; and Tom Simpson, who in 1967 would ride himself to death on the Ventoux mountain in Provence. One late June day in 1959 all three men were in Douglas, the Isle of Man’s unremarkable capital. And so were thousands of other cyclists. Here is an odd corner of our collective history, but an instructive one.

The Isle of Man has always been a cycling island, thanks I suppose to a certain backwardness and a tardy adoption of the motor car. There are 500 miles of lanes for the tourist. At least three clubs have looked after the native wheelmen. Racing was always popular and in former days there was a macadam track in Douglas’s Oucham Park. The person who made his native place into an international centre of cycling was a journalist, Curwen Clague. When he wasn’t on the bike Clague worked for the Isle of Man Examiner. Since he was a competent editor he was on terms with the island’s right-wing but eccentric government. Clague also knew the leaders of local industry. There wasn’t much money in fishing, nor in agriculture, so that industry was mainly tourism.

In the 1920s and 1930s there had already been contacts between the clubs in Man and their counterparts in Ireland and the British mainland. Merseysiders went to Man for holidays. Manx cyclists put their bikes on the ferries to compete in Cheshire and Lancashire. Curwen Clague saw how these cycling habits could be expanded. His idea was to promote a road race within the series of events that, since 1907, had given the Isle of Man its position in the world of motorcycle sport.

A harmless and maybe profitable venture, said the Tynwald, the Manx parliament. The island’s elders also offered to close the roads to other traffic on the day of the cycle race, which would never have happened on the mainland. Furthermore, massed-start racing was opposed, even forbidden, by the governing bodies of British cycling. Fortunately, the men of the House of Keys had no interest in the policies of the National Cyclists Union or the Road Time Trials Council. They would govern their own island as they wished. So, in 1936, the first of the Manx international road races was held on a course that had already been established by motorcyclists. A 373/4 mile circuit took riders from sea level at Douglas, first to Ramsey and then up a 5-mile climb to a point at 1,384 feet on the mountain of Snaefell. There was a thrilling descent before a return to the finish at Douglas. The winner of the race was a Birmingham man, Charlie Holland of the Midland Cycling and Athletic Club. In later years competitors have ridden this circuit three times, covering 1133/4 miles.