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.
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