It had been a brave contribution to the Tour. Charlie Holland had never even seen a bigger mountain than Snaefell on the Isle of Man, so the Galibier – the fearsome, snow-capped col that rises above Briançon, the highest town in Europe – was a challenge beyond his experience or imagination. That year the riders had to struggle through thick mud from melted Alpine snow. On his dogged way to the summit of the Galibier Charlie passed Maurice Archambaud, sobbing by the wayside, unable to continue. And Archambaud was a champion, the holder (like Desgrange before him) of the hour record sur piste, an experienced man of the Tour who was willed on by thousands of French fans. Holland had no one at all to support him. As far as the bosses of British cycling were concerned, he might have been riding on the moon.
Charlie Holland’s pioneering ride in 1937 was a high point in British cycling. High, and also remote. Eighteen years would pass before, in 1955, there was again a British presence in the Tour de France. To this day (2003) only fifty-one British cyclists have ridden the Tour and only twenty-one of them have completed the race. This is a modest number. But let us be grateful to the BLRC. If it were not for the League there would have been even fewer British riders on the continent. All of the earlier British riders in the Tour were brought up in the BLRC. Tom Simpson – the dead king of British cycling – was an utterly characteristic Leaguer whose early career was formed by BLRC attitudes.
Why have there not been more British cyclists in the Tour de France? Dozens of our boys had legs for the job. Alas, they were not encouraged by our official bodies. The professional class was weak and big cycle companies like Hercules and Raleigh retreated from sponsorship. We were all absorbed in the domestic sport of time dialling. And always in the background was the innate pastoralism of our cycling culture. This attachment to rural rambles and the gentle pleasures of the countryside is most obviously seen, I think, in cycling poetry.
The Britons who raced on the continent are a different breed from those who wrote poetry after riding their bikes in the English countryside, but there is some common ground. The racing men and the poets understand each other, for they come from the same background in British cycling club life.
Poetry!? By racing cyclists!? Yes, though mainly by recreational cyclists. Hundreds of people, maybe thousands, have become poets with no other reason for writing poetry, or writing at all, than their devotion to the bicycle. On my shelves is a collection of their verses. It is a small anthology in proportion to the huge total number of cycling poems written since the 1890s. The tradition continues and flourishes, not quite in secret but in privacy, for the poems are published in club magazines and nowhere else.
The themes of cycling poetry are quietly stated and the verse is not obscure. Cycling poets write in conventional ways. They describe the weather and the alternation of the seasons, matters that everyone can understand. Time dialling is a common subject. Our poets are also inclined to discuss age and death, for the further ends of life are a cycling preoccupation. Yet they don’t treat death as a drama. Oddly enough, I have never come across a poem about the death of Tom Simpson. Perhaps they don’t get published. I wouldn’t be surprised if Simpson poems exist or once existed. They would be sealed in a feeding bottle and then buried under the stones at the horrible monument on Mont Ventoux. People take anything to this shrine.
Passionate love poetry is rare. Cyclists do of course write about attractive women. The most favoured women are barmaids. Next most popular are the owners of traditional cafes and teashops. In third place, some way behind, are other cyclists. Here is the author of ‘Lines written after a chance encounter with a charming member of the Merseyside Ladies’ Cycling Association’:
A presence brought enchantment to the ride
A presence, riding with me, by my side …
There are also many poems which address a favourite bicycle as though it were a good old wife:
We’ve had some pretty good times together
Awandering up and down the hills and dales …
Other categories of cycling verse include the very important rolling-road poems, with their tales of memorable rides:
At the witching hour one winter’s night, snow thick upon the ground
Some Clarion lads from Manchester left Handforth homeward bound …
And there are many good-cheer poems:
There’s an inn down in Surrey that’s known far and wide
For the welcome extended to all those who ride …
At one time it was also common for clubs to sing as they went along the road together. The club run, especially after it turned for the homeward ride, but before the final ‘blind’, became a wheeled choir. If the run was well attended there had to be a choirmaster in the middle of the bunch to coordinate the tempo and remind clubmates of the words of songs. The effect was probably ragged, but a singing club run must have been an impressive thing, astonishing to a bystander.
Some songs – I write of days long gone by – were from the music hall or were well-known ditties such as
Summer rain brings the roses again
After the clouds roll by …
Less often, clubs sang the classics of choral music. Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ was a favourite, though no one knew the German words and there has never been a translation into English. Ignorance of the words of songs led cyclists towards mockery. ‘The Soldiers’ Chorus’, for instance, was sung as ‘Beer, boys, and bugger the Band of Hope’, probably as the Sunday club run passed some nonconformist chapel.
Some clubs had their own poet who wrote songs and coached other members. The Catford CC was one of them. This song comes from the Catford:
We’re boys of every sort, in all the branches of the sport,
The road and track boys, the lady-back boys, Our object is good sportsmanship, our racing is good fun, Our motto is Good Fellowship, for each and ev’ry one …
A ‘lady-back boy’ is the owner of a tandem who has a girlfriend. This Catford song probably has an early date, since the singing club runs were most popular in the 1920s and 1930s. The last report I have of a club wheeling through the lanes in song (a CTC section: it would be, wouldn’t it?) comes from the mid-1950s. I never myself experienced a singing club run though I know some people, rather older than me, who recall the phenomenon. One of them points out that only cyclists would have joined in such a practice. ‘Other people aren’t crazy enough.’
The songs, recitations and poems began with the first Clarion ‘smokers’ and the birth of club magazines. Some of them relate to a minor development in English literature. In the 1890s there was a vogue for rolling-road poems from the pens of such official writers as Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton and John Masefield. They made an addition to English nature poetry simply by writing so much about roads. Many of their sentiments were transferred to verses by cyclists. The same official writers often give us descriptions of gypsies. And, sure enough, a preoccupation with the wandering people of the countryside also has a place in the literature of cycling. For what is a cyclist, if he is not a postman who dreams of becoming a gypsy?
The Romany is weather-beaten, misunderstood, ungovernable and free. So he entered the lore of cycling as soon as the sport became truly popular and became an alternative way of life for the low paid. Many of the clubs founded in those days – plenty of them still in existence – have the words ‘nomads’, ‘wanderers’ or ‘vagabonds’ in their names. It had been easy for the young spirits who founded such clubs to make an association with the gypsy. Cyclists went their own