We will hear more about postmen. Now I turn to a social group that is particularly difficult to explain, even to describe. Many racing cyclists are or have been artists. By the term ‘artist’ I mean someone who once went to a college of art. This is the only sensible way to differentiate between an amateur artist – who might be anyone and might be personally rich – and a professional artist, whose profession often brings no financial reward. Cycling artists begin at art school. And, to this day, one can walk round the studios of many an art college to find the iconic photograph of Fausto Coppi pinned up in a student’s personal enclave, surrounded by other tokens, favourite images and gallery postcards – forty years after Fausto’s death.
Why are so many art students and artists committed to cycling? As with other groups, it comes down to their background. The great majority of art students come from the same social band that produces racing cyclists. And, as I have described, that band is the skilled working class. To these people, art meant work. In Birmingham and other places, notably Sheffield, boys might go to art school at the age of twelve. They were not encouraged to be creative: they learnt how to draw designs for manufacture. This helps to explain the numerous cyclists nowadays who are graphic designers. A mystery remains. How do we account for the cyclists who practise the fine rather than the applied arts? That is, the painters and sculptors?
I imagine a boy – an adolescent, hardly yet a young man – with the bright eyes of youth and eagerness for life, who likes looking at things and gets on well with his friends; and yet is not sociable all the time, for there is some loneliness in his character, perhaps born of a frustration he cannot comprehend. He quite often roams after school and in lessons he does not do well, because of a reading difficulty. His parents and teachers know that he is gifted. They do not understand dyslexia. So all parties agree that Adam, as we may call him, shows precocious talent in drawing and might find his right place in the local art school.
Art school would be fine, Adam thinks. No more maths, no more book-learning. There is a painting in the municipal gallery he has always gone to look at when he gets off the tram in Navigation Street. And so Adam goes to college, where he finds that he can make friends with older people. One of his tutors in the printmaking department is a cyclist. It happens that Adam enjoys riding a bike, sometimes taking expeditions into the country. And he has seen the brilliant machines belonging to racing cyclists who live quite near his home. One way or another Adam finds the money to buy a racing bike. A man in the specialist shop advises him and gives him the address of the secretary of the local club. Adam joins club runs. He goes out training. Soon he rides his first time trial. At last he is fulfilled: another cyclist who went to art school.
For some of us, to be an art student and a young racing cyclist represented the height of happiness, a height within reach. My vision of Adam is not a fantasy. I grew up with boys of his sort and met more of them when teaching in art schools. That was in the 1970s and early 1980s, when art education was still a pleasure for all concerned. Students kept finding things within themselves, which is a reason why they were so highly motivated. There were still a number of problems for the cycling art students. Growing cyclists need to coordinate body and mind. They learn about themselves by training. And then, often, their efforts on the bike take the edge off their creativity in the studio. I am not talking about tiredness but about the deep contentment one experiences after a good 50-mile training ride. That particular glow is unhelpful for a young artist needing to live on his nerves.
Our young Adam, like so many people with their first bikes, may have got his real education in the world when he joined his cycling club. To learn about the club would take him a couple of years. To learn about all the other cycling clubs – as we should – is the task of a lifetime.
Some of them are as ancient as oaks. Today there might be a couple of dozen clubs that were founded in the nineteenth century. Hundreds more have lived and died. There are around 500 in existence in the United Kingdom at the time of writing (2003). They are local or regional, mainly local. They take their names from some town or suburb, as in the case of the Finsbury Park Cycling Club (always known as ‘The Park’ to its members), the Ipswich Bicycle Club (which is one with a nineteenth-century foundation date) or the Cardigan Wheelers. When you meet another cyclist it’s not long before you enquire about his club. Then you know a wheelman’s home base and can also guess who his mates are. ‘So you’re in the Saracen. Then you must know Johnny Roberts!’ Other bits of this kind of conversation, mainly jocular, include ‘Never heard of them’ – when of course you have – or ‘So you’re one of those, are you?’, which is an invitation to debate.
The Cyclists Touring Club, founded in 1878 (motto: ‘This Great Club of Ours’), was often the parent organisation for smaller local clubs. The CTC was concerned with leisure riding and cyclists’ rights. If younger CTC members were more interested in racing than touring they would band together to call themselves a ‘road club’. Thus we have the Warwickshire Road Club, already mentioned, the Corsham Road Club, the Oxford City Road Club, the Yorkshire Road Club, and so on. If the word ‘path’ appears in any title it means that the club also specialises in track racing. Hence the name of the Redditch Road and Path CC. Older cyclists still use the word ‘path’ when they are talking about a cycle racing track.
How many people make a cycling club? About half a dozen, at the lowest count. And the maximum is about 100. The history of British cycling tells us that defections will occur, or a formal split, if this number is exceeded. A sociologist, perhaps aided by a psychiatrist, might be able to explain why it’s best if a club has sixty to seventy members. There are or have been much larger clubs, but they are seldom tied to a locality. The RAF CC once had more members than any other club (maybe it still has) but really was an umbrella fellowship organisation. Other fellowships include the Army Cycling Union, the National Clarion CC and the Tricycle Association, whose members are spread throughout the land.
Do cycling clubs differ in their nature? Some people say that all clubs are the same; others maintain that there are vital differences between one club and the next. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two claims. Individual clubs do have their own traditions and personalities, but these resist description and are difficult for an outsider to grasp. So we rely on rumours and odd remarks that we have heard on the road.
Here is a list of some clubs past and present in more or less alphabetical order, but occasionally straying from the A – Z.
A5 Rangers. Still in existence? I believe so. Their base was somewhere in the Rugby – Nuneaton area. They used to follow the straight and determined route of the A5 to Shrewsbury and thither into Wales. Other names of clubs announce their usual runs and destinations. The Kentish Wheelers, for instance, rode into Kent: but the club’s home was in Brixton in south London. Do not be misled by the name of the Rutland CC: its members lived around Rutland Road in Sheffield. Other club names indicate peripatetic habits. There was the Wanderers CC, based I know not where, the Tyneside Vagabonds CC, the Colchester Rovers CC, the Bedouin CC, from Croydon, the Thirty-Fourth Nomads CC and the Nomads (Hitchin), who for some reason like to have this parenthesis in their name. I have an enemy in the Nomads so I hate the lot of them. He says that I cut him up in a race. It’s just that I was faster.
The Buckshee Wheelers is a fellowship club. By reason of its constitution the club is in terminal decline. The members of the Buckshee were in north Africa in the last days of Hitler’s war and somehow managed to organise bike races in the desert. Their motto, one Buckshee Wheeler told me, was ‘Growing and Growing and Growing’. Shouldn’t that be ‘Dying and Dying and Dying?’ I pertly said. ‘Tim, the roll of honour is growing and growing.’ Though not rebuked, I felt chastened. The Buckshees allowed some post-war national servicemen to join their ranks, with a cut-off date of 1953. The youngest Buckshee Wheeler is said to be the fine roadman Brian Haskell, who is now seventy-four.