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We are talking miles today, not kilometres. Half a million of them to be precise. That’s the equivalent of cycling to the moon and back, or 20 times round the world. On Sunday we had a small celebration with club-mates … Continue reading
This is the third installment of my fixie story, the restoration of Freddie Grubb frame number 11773 to its rightful condition as an example of classic British bike design from the middle 20th century.
In the previous two chapters I wrote about the bike’s life as a part of typical cycling club life in 1960s and 70s East Anglia, featuring grass track racing and roller cycling.
This third blog post brings us up to date covering the period 1980 to the present day. It’s a long time period, but for much of that time not much happened, except the creep of decline, and then in the last three years the restoration process bringing it back to life. It won’t call this the final post because I hope that it is just step towards another life, so we can call the two chapters Decline and Restoration.
If you have no interest in bike parts and history…well you can probably stop here!
Chapter 3. Decline
As I wrote in the last chapter I continued to use Freddie as an occasional racing bike to the end of the 1970s when I set off for university in Durham. So the bike was generally kept in reasonable condition up to that point.
My treatment of my bikes fitted many clichés of student life. I was always a bit short of cash so I bodged and bent my various combinations to keep myself on the road for three years, and I certainly didn’t have much sense of care, the bike was just “my old hack”.
I know for one year I took the fixed to Durham because I needed a spare bike, the catch being that instead of flat Suffolk the county of Durham is extremely hilly. I was definitely much, much, stronger then because I rode everything on fixed, including the legendary Stang climb out of Teesdale with its 20% opening section. But I must have gone soft because I even bodged a set of gears onto the bike by hanging a derailleur off the rear wheel for a few months.
From Durham I started work and I continued to use the fixed as a commuting bike for the next few years in places such as Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bristol and Birmingham. It was my workhorse, taken out in all weathers and stored in all sorts of places on a weekly basis, a role for which it was perfectly suited with the low maintenance needs of a fixed bike.
And that damage wasn’t just wear and tear. Frames from that period have almost no fixing points for any accessories. I have a modern touring bike that has about 12 fixing points for racks, bottles or pumps. Next to it stands a 1970s Mercian road bike that has mudguard eyes and almost nothing else, so it has everything else bolted on to it, with appropriate damage to the underlying paintwork. Well Freddie Grubb had all of that abuse, and some. Over the years I fitted bottle cages, pannier racks, saddle bag supports, lights, those gears, cable stops and levers, each of which took off its own souvenir section of paint.
And at some point I just stopped using it, I think when we moved to Cardiff. It was hung up in the garage, not to be used for another twenty years. The best that can be said is that it probably didn’t get any worse in that time, except that a few bits got corroded in place. I probably could have got rid of it a few times when space pressures kicked in, but I probably never did because I couldn’t actually work out that it had any value to anyone else.
Chapter 4. Restoration.
So what changed? Why rebuild and treasure the previously unloved machine.
Two things I think. Firstly I had a growing awareness that my bike was perhaps a bit more than the wreck I had allowed it to become, especially as I was more exposed to some classic bike collectors and web sites.
Secondly I was looking for a good idea for my 50th birthday. I guess I might be typical middle aged bloke, whenever I am asked “is there anything you want?” for birthdays and Christmas I have no idea. However the Freddie Grubb just crept up on me as a “project”. Instead of something new and shiny I could celebrate by bringing something almost 50 years old back to life.
A bit of online research and before long it was a reality which I announced to family and friends. However from that point onwards it was a long slow crawl, not least because minor events like moving to Belgium got in the way.
So taking my cue from Rob Penn’s “It’s all around the bike” here is a brief run through of the restoration process and some of the stories behind the bits and pieces that ended up on the final machine.
First steps.
The very first part I got came on my 50th birthday. Dad handed me a cardboard package still showing the original price in pounds, shillings and pence. An unused fixed wheel chain from PFK Ling of Bungay. Lord knows where he had it stashed in his bike sheds, but it was almost a perfect connection back to the bike’s roots in the Godric CC. The most unnoticed and abused part on a bike, but precious in this context.
However the main job was the frame and I quickly concluded that there was only one company I felt comfortable doing the job, especially as I wanted a few “non-standard” modifications, a confession I will pass over quickly because it will horrify classic bike purists.
The company was Mercian of Derby, specialists in this area and still making traditional road and touring bikes of their own. When I worked at CTC our tech guru always said Mercian had the best paint treatment in the country, so that was endorsement enough. And because so many traditional bike owners use Mercian they also had a relationship with the suppliers of bike decals from traditional brands so I knew I could get proper replica Freddie Grubb decals. That in itself was tricky, because as part of the research I discovered that the Holdsworthy company gave the Grubb image a makeover in the early sixties and I had to get just the right badges to match my bike’s original design or they would be the wrong year. The “crossed flags” image was meant to bring a touch of Italian class to the badge apparently.
When I sent the bike off to Mercian I asked for three main things. Firstly a colour to keep close to the original, something close to the emerald green of the club.
Secondly I wanted fixing bolts for a bottle cage. No need to cover the bike in new fixtures, but I cannot imagine riding these days without a bottle and I didn’t want to tarnish the frame with a clamp on cage. They are discreet, but will be useful.
However my final mod is the one to upset legions of fixie purists. I wanted a back brake. Yes I know that it is entirely possible to brake using only the back wheel and yes I used to be able to do all those kinds of antics like almost locking up the real wheel. But my knees are shot, I have already had two sessions of keyhole surgery on the left one and I find that the hard “anchoring back” you have to do to use the real wheel as a brake really makes my knee ache. So two cable stops were added to enable me to ride with a back brake.
I have made my confession, it is done and the changes work for me. I am entirely comfortable that a future owner will go back to a frame restorer and say “get rid of these abominations” but at least the provenance of the modifications is public. The order was placed for an amount of money eye-wateringly more than I had planned and far more than the frame is probably worth and Freddie set off to Derby. Never to be seen again.
Well, not quite. Mercian may be wonderful, but quick they are not. Let’s call if “craftsmanship”. It took a series of plaintive phone calls over several weeks for the frame to make it back to me just before I relocated to Belgium, several months after I sent it to them. The unveiling of the shiny, immaculate new look took place just days before moving to Belgium, forcing me to reluctantly put it back in its packaging because it did look great. (As I wrote at the time.)
The hiatus of moving stopped an entire winter of activity in the bike shed, so it was only in the summer of 2013 that I began to contemplate the rest of the rebuild. This delay was also a result of my indecision. I couldn’t quite decide whether to modernise the bike with parts that looked retro but would arrive bright and shiny or whether to put in the hard work to sort, polish and shine my ragtag collection of bike bits into a something that resembled my original steed.
However once I started the build the decision came easily. Like a kid with a new box of Lego I wanted to get it done and that meant only buying the parts I couldn’t find at home. I am not one of life’s polishers, but restoration was the choice, which brought another trip down memory lane.
I thought about fitting some nice modern dual pivot brakes that actually work and stay where they are bolted. But looking at me from a box were the pair of Weinmanns that I used for nearly 20 years on my race bikes, something I had bought new with some money saved from my paper round in the late 70s. Old friends indeed. I do remember that the bloody things would never end up in exactly the same alignment from one week to the next but the drilled levers were the height of fashion at the time and they polished up really well.
Contact points – bars and saddle.
There was never any doubt about the handlebars. I had the pair of deep, rounded steel track racing bars that I always remember being with the bike, the real track rider look. However they are bars for just one purpose, getting down on the drops and sprinting. There is no real flat point on top of the bars to provide a hand rest for a road touring position so I am sure we used to switch to more traditional touring bars when the bikes were not used for grass track. But they look the part and I don’t see myself doing long road rides on the bike, so it’s a small compromise. Red bar tape, of course, club colours.
The saddle was more of a dilemma. I have never owned a Brookes saddle and I wondered if this might be the time to go for the authentic look. I know lots of fixed wheel bikes from the 60s were ridden on the Brookes Professional and this might be my time to give it a try.
However I don’t recall anybody at the Godric ever using Brookes and there were certainly none in our house. By the time I widened my horizons they had become deeply unfashionable except for die hard CTC cycle tourists, you would never see one on a race bike.
What I do have however is an original Unicator plastic saddle. Now these were the saddles I saw every day as a kid on race bikes. Apparently they were a real Cinelli innovation in the 1960s, the first plastic saddle. They are light and unlike a leather saddle they don’t change shape and needed no maintenance. And as if forecasting today’s trend for brightly coloured bike parts they came in all sorts of colours. I remember a particularly unappealing tangerine orange one appearing at some point and I had a green one on the Freddie Grubb. To those who have become used to saddles with a bit of foam padding the hard plastic shell looks like an instrument of torture but I never recall any issues. Pairing up the black Unicator saddle with a nice fluted Campagnolo seat pin that I had used on a variety of bikes over the years seemed to add a touch of Italian class, after all this had been a racing bike and a world record holder. I don’t remember when I got the pin, second hand in the early 80s but it’s been with me a long time.
Wheels
Most important for this discussion is the rear wheel. I had two or three scruffy looking wheels that I had scavenged off my Dad, but none of them offered much encouragement that they would shine up to complement my new machine. They were much more from the “hack bike” tradition with a good layer of grime, spiders’ webs and surface corrosion. I started an online search for a retro looking pair of fixie wheels but never quite got round to buying so to get the bike on the road I went back to the old wheels. After a lot of prodding and spinning I found one seemed to be still in true and definitely had a nice smooth running hub so I decided to polish it up “just for the moment”.
It was a chore but I actually got a nice shine, apart from some tarnish on the hub. However the focus on the hub exposed a discrete trademark a bit like the Campagnolo mark and some initials that I didn’t recognise.
Just out of curiosity I looked it up and discovered I had stumbled upon a rare gem. Fratelli Brivio was an Italian firm making high quality bike parts from about the 1930s, just around the time that the Campagnolo business was growing. I also found numerous references to the possibility that FB made at least part of Campagnolo’s hubs, although exactly what and when seems to be unsure. But there is no doubt that for most of the 50s the FB hub was one of the very best around and I had accidentally chosen the very best wheel to fit my rebuild. Unfortunately I don’t have the pair, but what a great find.
Chainwheel treat
Along with these Italian parts what I coveted was an original Campagnolo Pista chain set, the perfect complement. But I really didn’t want to fork out over €100 or more on top of what I had spent on the frame for a second hand part. Fortunately I spotted a lovely retro styled chainset from London firm Brick Lane Bikes at a reasonable price, so the next time I was visiting London on a work trip I made a diversion by Boris Bike down to the East End and bought just about the only new item on the bike, capping the other choices off nicely.
Finishing touches
And that was almost it. The bike was almost ready. Almost. It passed a small test ride with flying colours. But I wanted just one more item to take it right back to its roots. Bluemels mudguards.
I could buy lots of modern mudguards, mostly from German firm SKS, owners of the historic British brand Bluemels. They are undoubtedly easier to fit and more robustly constructed than the old guards that wobbled, warped and chafed requiring almost constant adjustment. However the modern guards seem to be available in just 3 colours, black, white and silver. Surely somewhere there is an innovative manufacturer producing colour matched guards, because I wanted a nice red to go with the rest of my look?
It is probably a reflection of the low longevity of those old mudguards that nobody seemed to be offering a secret store of old-style guards, except one dealer in Cyprus who occasionally put a pair on E-bay at over €100 a pair, something I just could not be drawn into. Once a month I dipped into the online world to see what was out there and put posts on retro web sites, a depressing process that lasted almost a year with nary a sniff of a purchase. I had just about resigned myself to boring black when a pair of original burgundy Bluemels Clubman guards appeared on Ebay in the English Midlands. I leapt in and secured them, the final piece in the equation. They were the perfect look and were just as useless as their predecessors in sitting nicely on the bike, so really authentic.
Which brings us back to the beginning, the re-launch of Freddie Grubb on to the streets of Belgium last summer, almost 3 years after the project was conceived.
Now I can look forward to those summer days when I can spin him around the lanes and maybe he can be introduced to one or two retro-bike events. And in the long, long term he will hopefully one day travel back to East Anglia where he will have an extended life as the treasured steed of the next generation of Godric CC members. But I hope that is a long way off, I have lots of rides to do before then!
Chapter 2 Roller Racing and Record Breaking
In Chapter 1 of the story of my restored Freddie Grubb I wrote about its life in the Godric Cycling Club, a small but successful cycling club based around the Suffolk towns of Bungay and Beccles, an area known as the Waveney Valley.
These are small towns in a rural area so the population catchment isn’t large and apart from the occasional footballer who has a trial with a professional team the area hasn’t turned out a line of sporting heroes to put it on the map. Therefore relative to its size the cycling club has been a bit of a standard bearer, turning out a regular crop of local champions and occasionally a national level competitor.
But in one field of cycling the Godric CC made an impression far beyond the reaches of the Waveney Valley, picking up not one but two world records. And my Freddie Grubb was part of at least one of those records, if not both.
That is entirely in keeping with the name that it carries, because Frederick Henry Grubb (b 1887) was one of the prolific record breakers of his era. www.nkilgariff.com lists 14 of his British records from 60 miles to 24 hours, mostly broken before he won two silver medals at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm and then turned professional. He did not take to professional racing so he turned to bike building to exploit his fame.
Which brings us back to the record breaking story of this Freddie Grubb.
In chapter 1 I wrote about grass track racing in East Anglia which helped sustain use of fixed wheel bikes for many years. The other branch of the sport that carried on in splendid isolation in a few clubs around the country was roller racing.
Today most bike racers and even some enthusiastic hard tourists will have a turbo trainer at home. One of the most unloved instruments of cycling torture imaginable, I was delighted the day I decided I would never do that again.
Prior to turbo trainers we used rollers for indoor training and you still see riders warming up on them before races.
Much less common are the sets of racing rollers where two or four bikes were put onto special rollers connected to a measuring clock.
Inevitably it falls to cycling author Carlton Reid, author of “Roads were not built for cars” (reviewed in December 2014) to provide a comprehensive history of indoor trainers since the 1880s on his web site. He says roller-racing really took off in the 1930s and its popularity as entertainment continued until the 1950s. The great draw for riders is that the lack of wind resistance means you can fit a huge gear to your bike and routinely do speeds well over 50 miles per hour, with a world record of over 130 miles per hour. Short sprints are very fast and very furious. Hard to imagine now but the most famous venue for roller racing in the 50s was the Royal Albert Hall, perhaps the most prestigious concert hall in London.
Carton’s history matches my understanding because the founding generation of the Godric CC were all familiar with the roller races they had seen in the fifties, but quite quickly it had almost died out, not least because the equipment was very scarce. However (and I have no idea why) the Godric were a club that kept a roller tradition. In 1968 the club broke the world 12 hour roller relay record and in the early 70s a Bungay Modern School team from the club set a national schools record at 12 hours too.
I am not sure, and I really must ask Lindsay Wigby, whether the star of this story was used in the 1968 attempt, but Lindsay was in the team so it seems quite possible that my Freddie Grubb was a world record breaker in 1968.
The roller tradition suited these fixed wheel bikes well. Just like the grass track racing the bikes were only a tweak away from being ready to ride at all times. There were many lightweight narrow fixed wheels with racing tyres around because the bikes had been used for time trialling. The single front brakes could be slipped off and the bike was about ready, apart from the fact you had to turn your handlebars up.
Why? Well one might say “because everyone else did”. Like so many things in cycling this habit was part of roller riding lore and was mixed in practicality and probable bull dung. One reason given was that “it opens up your chest and you breath better”. Given that people were doing phenomenal speeds on the road bent like hair pins without apparently suffering from breath problems this seems about as likely as a sticky plaster on your nose helping you play football better. Much more realistically the upright position kept your weight firmly on the rear drive of the rollers. Because you tended to bounce about at high pedal rates this made sure every pedal stroke counted and kept you stable.
However roller riding did test the mechanical creativity of the riders in one way. If you want to ride steadily at over 50 miles an hour you need pretty enormous gears, and even then a high cadence is needed. In those days 11 tooth sprockets were not even available on geared bikes, a 13 was very daring indeed and the smallest fixed sprockets were occasional 14s. But because the Godric were a roller club there was a secret squirrel store of relevant bits, including the near mythological 8 tooth rear sprocket. Old roller riders had abtained huge chainwheels, usually made by TA of France, that could go up to 64 teeth. When combined with a 14 sprocket suitable gears could be reached.
The 8 tooth sprocket was a near myth because whenever it was discussed there was always some doubt about who had it last time and quite where it had come from. I was always told that it was a lawnmower sprocket that had been filed down to the correct width for a bike chain and then welded to the side of a conventional sprocket so it could be fitted. With this baby even a normal 54 tooth road chainset gave enormous gears. In legend it could be combined with one of the giant chainsets to reach record breaking speeds but only heroic men with thighs like tree trunks could get it moving. When I saw it you could only describe it as one of the ugliest and most functional pieces of equipment ever put on a bike.
Both Freddie Grubb and the 8 tooth sprocket definitely found their way to to a Guinness World Record in 1977.
A team of four young guys from Bungay High School were set up to go for the schools’ record held by our clubmates. However we had a secret weapon. The club had been fundraising and bought a set of the newest, smoothest rollers ever made with bearings and drives of incredible quality from Cambridge firm Barelli.
Barelli almost deserve a blog entry in their own right. In the 1970s a high quality engineering firm based just outside Cambridge, England decided to make possibly the finest engineered pedals made in England, perhaps in the world at the time. They came with a lifetime guarantee and retailed from an amazing £50. But cyclists wouldn’t believe that a product was top quality unless it was continental, preferably Italian. So a nondescript industrial estate out on the Huntingdon Road gave its name to a special product. Bar Hill became “Barelli”.
But owner Geoff Chapman was also convinced that there was a place in cycling for the revival of rollers if they could be built to the same outstanding quality as his pedals. The very first prototype even featured electronic counting instead of a mechanical drive, a revolutionary concept that preceded the modern cycle computer by a good five years, but unfortunately couldn’t be made to run reliably. How do we know that? Because it was the set of Barelli prototype rollers that the Godric CC bought. Until a few weeks before the record attempt we had a lot of failures so Chapman replaced the electronics with a nylon drive cable in an oil bath, a design that still put the Barelli rollers low resistance into a different class to all the old sets.
They were, very, very quick as our trials had already proven. However we also had another secret weapon in the older club riders who had been there before and actually knew exactly how to plan a record schedule, especially ride manager John Pugh. I was actually number 5 in the squad in terms of ability and got in because my mate Dale blew up in the trial, but I got my chance from there.
I rode Freddie of course, and during the run up to the event the magical 8 sprocket was rediscovered and probably because I was the last choice for the squad the other guys had the huge chainsets and I had the 8 tooth. And here we are!
So in a village hall near Bungay we set out as four 16 and 17 year olds to break the world record for adults, not just the school distance. And the rest, as you might say is history, as my Guinness World Record certificate will attest. 657 miles, a shade under 55 miles per hour for the whole 12 hours.
I have to admit I had a bit of a personal bad day. Nerves, a touch of asthma, I have no idea why but I had a shocker. I did my part for the whole day but I am very grateful that my much stronger team mates were absolutely on top of their game that day so we had a good margin over the old record.
We held it for about two years until a team of top adult riders from Hounslow Wheelers took it, but to be fair they didn’t smash our time into oblivion. We probably still hold the schools’ record because the discipline has become so rare, maybe one of the modern promoters could encourage a hopeful team to give it a proper thrashing now.
Freddie Grubb is a world record breaking bike. Not the celebrity of the bikes that have broken the world hour record on the track or the Fausto Coppi world championship Bianchi I saw at the Padua bike show in 2013, but there cannot be so many bikes out there that have this claim to fame. And like the first part of the story it is one wrapped up in the club life of the Godric.
I carried on track and roller racing for another year or two (above in green) until I left for university at the age of 19, making it a part of cycling I too left behind. It has taken this restoration project to bring it all back.
Roller racing too has made a bit of a comeback too thanks to the public relations skills of companies like Rollapaluza and Goldsprint, they have really modernised with the right mix of noise, lights and music. if you get a chance to go to a roller night I recommend it.
Prologue
Late last summer a small ceremony took place at our house. Photographs were taken and an old friend took to the roads.
I dressed for the occasion. Traditional striped cycling jersey, matched with black shorts, white socks and a pair of old-school leather cycling racing shoes polished up for the event.
I then rode on a circuit especially selected for the occasion, mainly flat but with sweeping undulations that encouraged my legs to spin the pedals smoothly. It should have been Suffolk, England, but the lanes of rural Wallonia made an excellent substitute.
This was the christening ride for my restored 1963/4 classic English fixed wheel bike, made by renowned London cycle maker Holdsworthy under the brand Freddie Grubb.
Some readers of idonotdespair.com may recall occasional mentions of my long term project to restore the bike, indeed one of my followers even contacted me to offer help finding the missing parts, he seemed quite frustrated that it was taking so long. Well I can tell you now Chikashi that it is done.
Now I also feel the time is right to tell you the story of Freddie Grubb 11773 and to explain why this machine could no longer languish as a scruffy wreck at the back of my bike shed. A bike so ill-treated that one of my college mates renamed him “Grubbie Fred”, a nickname that stuck for years.
At the same time that I am writing this post I am reading the excellent “It’s all about the bike” by Robert Penn. Conceptually he is searching the world to build the perfect bike, his dream bike. That could be an incredibly boring except for bike fanatics, but in the hands of a good author it is a chance to weave together an entertaining collection of stories about the people and places from the history of cycling technologies, from the hoax Leonardo da Vinci bicycle to the founding fathers of mountain biking in Marin County California. And I realised that this is what I want to do with the Freddie Grubb.
The restoration has also made me think about a whole series of cycling places and memories that should be shared. That doesn’t mean a piece by piece breakdown of all the parts on the bike, rather it means spreading Freddie’s story over a few pieces that capture some of cycling’s past, and my own. Because this bike does have a story to tell and perhaps that is why I gradually became guiltier about its decline under my stewardship.
This bike has spent its life in one cycling club, and mostly in one small area. It is a representation of a certain time and place, the fading tradition of fixed wheel bikes in East Anglian cycling. And it is one of a tiny number of bikes on the planet that can claim to be a Guinness World Record breaker – and that does make it special.
Chapter 1. Godric CC and grass track racing.
In my mind this bike represents Godric Cycling Club, my club, the one I grew up with and formed my cycling experiences. (I wrote about the Godric earlier this year here)
I bought the frame sometime around 1973 or 1974 when I had become a gangly teenager and grown out of whatever previous fixie Dad had knocked up for me, and I had a little bit of money saved from my paper round.
I bought it from older club colleague Ross Mullenger, who I think was selling some bits because he had drifted away from regular club riding. It probably cost about £15. I learned later that it was already a club hand-me down from Lindsay Wigby, long standing family friend and club member. It was only when researching the provenance of the bike for the restoration that I identified it as a Freddie Grubb Comet probably made in 1963 or 1964. The brilliant www.nkilgariff.com has a complete history of the Holdsworth and Freddie Grubb marques and even has a catalogue of the 1964 Comet on line.
Freddie Grubb Comet catelogue on http://www.nkilgariff.com
I then went back to Lindsay to ask if he had got it as an original because he was riding with club then.
He filled in the gaps by telling me the original owner was Pete Gilding, one of the few Godric names I didn’t know, but someone who had been actively racing with the club at that time. A quick dip into the published club history and I found a picture of Pete with my Dad after they won the impressive Norwich CU grass track team pursuit shield in 1958.
Too early for my bike to have been one of the winning steeds, but a great link to the origins of the Freddie Grubb because they would all have been using grass track bikes like mine, perhaps handed round in just the same way.
But I now knew that this is a one-club bike which throughout its life has carried the green colours of the Godric CC. Hence my selection of the green, yellow and red banded Godric cycling shirt for the christening ride. And here we are, a photo of another Godric ride and in the middle is that sprouting teenager in blue stripy bobble hat with the green bike. It must be around the time I bought the frame and first fitted it out. Previous owner Lindsay is three places to the right in black.
Elsewhere a teenager buying a fixed wheel bike in 1974 might raise a few eyebrows, but it really would not be a surprise for anyone who was in Norfolk or Suffolk club cycling. Many riders round there had a “fixed” or “track bike” set up for road riding despite the fact that their use as club riding bikes had almost died out across the rest of the country. (We never called them “fixies”, that is an entirely modern phrase).
Because no, the couriers and hipsters did not take fixies straight from track racing to the road in the last 10 years. In British cycling the racing scene excluded mass start road racing until the late 50s and cyclists in most racing clubs thrived on a mixture of time trialling and club riding with occasional diversions into grass track racing and roller racing. Most time trialling was done on fixed wheel bikes that could be converted from one use to another with a change of wheels. These were not the steep angled, aerodynamic track machines used on today’s velodromes, these were machines that could fit mudguards one day and race the next.
I think this tradition carried on much longer in Suffolk and Norfolk than almost anywhere else for a number of reasons, not least of which could be that it is one of the flattest places in the country so a simple single gear is really not a handicap for spinning around the countryside. Almost the first “proper” bike Dad put me on was a fixed wheel, not least because it would be ”good for my pedalling.” They were also a lot simpler to maintain and a lot less prone to problems on mucky roads so they were popular winter road bikes, often referred to as the “hack bike”.
Another possible reason fixies stayed on in our area was that we still had opportunities to race on fixed bikes while other parts of the country converted almost completely to road riding using 10 speed derailleurs. In particular there was grass track racing which only survived in a handful of places across the UK. East Anglia was one of the hotbeds and as a child in the 60s I can remember being taken to a whole series of carnivals and rallies where the cycling crowd would come together. I probably rode my first bike race in the kiddies’ handicap events at a grass track meeting. The adults would pull out another pair of wheels with rubber studded tyres, put them in their fixed bike and race round a single white line painted on the field, sometimes with fields of 20-30 riders. Hopefully it was a nice cricket ground or school sports field, at worse it could be like riding in slow motion across a lumpy paddock.
By the time I bought the Freddie Grubb in 1974 many of the meets had died out, but we could still expect to race several times a year on grass and we would train every Wednesday on our club track at the Ditchingham Meadow sports grounds. So it was essential that I had a track bike of my own.
This photo is one of my favourite cycling pictures, taken by the local paper at one of our regular races in Bungay, probably our club championship in about 1976/77. I love the sense of competition and motion in the two riders at the front. Andy Warne being shadowed by Richard Avery, probably about to try and pounce for the win. I am the white helmet in third and that’s about as far forward as I got in most races.
Actually Freddie and I did sneak an Area Championship win once with some highly tactical riding. In the short one-lap race I got the perfect draw for the final, number 1 on the inside. I then asked canny track star Brian Harper (right) to be my pusher off, the builder with the strongest arms in cycling. As we waited on the start line Brian whispered in my ear “I am going to push on the whistle, don’t wait for the gun”.
Spectators would have observed a metaphorical greyhound race where the rabbit shot out ahead of the dogs before they even moved. Somehow the judges neglected to call it a false start, just as Brian had guessed. Jet propelled by Brian’s shove I had a ten yard head start at the first corner which was reduced to the width of a tyre as four of us hit the finish line 400 yards later, but I held on for a very rare win.
All I can say is “track craft”. Anything goes in grass track racing.
Some 16 years ago I was offered a job with CTC, the national cyclist’s organisation in the UK. For me the move was never a doubt once the offer was made. Yes we had some real challenges, I was stepping out of a business career that saw us swap a settled lifestyle in Cardiff to a much lower paid job in one of the most expensive places in England. But no doubt whatsoever about the move to cycling on my part.
Not so my old boss. When the the Chair of CTC’s board phoned my corporate boss for a reference he unexpectedly got his ear bent for nearly 20 minutes about how I was throwing away my career for a whim. And he made it pretty clear that he blamed CTC for throwing temptation in my path. He made the same point very clearly to me. The CTC Chair was extremely rattled and spent much of the next two years worrying that I had taken the job on emotion and I might soon set off back to my corporate life.
But of course my old boss had no idea about my deep connection to cycling and the irresistible draw of a dream job. But then again nor do some of the people I work with today. Because in our world of common sense cycling in European cities it really isn’t essential to be passionate about the sport or pastime of cycling to know what a civilising effect it has on a city. I heard this best described in Copenhagen. The city cycling officer said “In Copenhagen you get up in the morning, you clean your teeth, maybe some breakfast then you bike to work. Nobody thinks about having a club for people who clean their teeth, it’s just what you do.”
Well in my childhood cycling to school was still quite normal. But being a “cyclist” wasn’t. My trip back to Bungay was a chance to celebrate that with the people who made my cycling life possible, the Godric Cycling Club. I went back as the guest speaker at their Annual Dinner and prize presentation. About 70 people took over the local golf club, many of whom I have known since childhood, either my parents friends or indeed my own schoolmates from the 1970s.
Close to my heart? My earliest memories are of being carted off to races at ungodly hours in the morning, waking up to ask if Mummy or Daddy had won. Even now my dad is the Chairman, my mum organised the dinner and there were enough relatives to have their own table, these really are my cycling roots. And the club itself has rocked from time to time, but when a glass of wine was raised to toast the founding members of sixty years ago it was brilliant to see several in the room.
As an after dinner speaker the job is of course not to overstay your welcome, entertain with some travellers’ tales and in my case throw in some anecdotes about the quirks of cycling in Belgium then get out of the way so everybody can get round to collecting their winnings from the groaning table of prizes and on to the raffle.*
But as part of my speech I said roughly this:
I wasn’t such a great racing cyclist. I am proud that my name appears on at least one of these trophies, but my speeds were not exceptional. (“I’ll second that” agrees a voice in the room)
But this club gave me the opportunity to be what I am today. Firstly the club was always a supportive place to be, it let me go forward in another way. I got the chance to try out things that some young people never get to do. At 14 they let me be the club-room secretary, having the keys the club building, selling Mars bars and drinks or organising the table tennis tournaments in the winter.
At 16 I organised my first open race. It was probably so inconceivable at the time that nowhere in the rules of cycling did it set a minimum age for event organisers, so I just put my hand up to run one of our cyclo-cross events. These were chances you just cannot replicate.
And of course when I went on to university I got involved in running our cycling club, making friends for life but also filling my CV with more of those try-outs for real life that came with the territory. Discovering the stunning region in which we lived while the other students made it little further than the bar. Plan and lead group rides? Deal with bureaucracy? Plan cycle tours round France? But of course we did, it just was just the world I knew. And every one of those experiences enriched my CV and when at 23 I didn’t have a clue what to do I discovered that what I was really equipped for was something called management. I’ve been there ever since.
So now I have the unque honour of traveling Europe managing cycling programmes, talking about cycling, promoting cycling, meeting people who are battling to grow cycling in small groups in cities that often don’t really seem to care. Or put me in a Belgian cycling club where I don’t even speak the language. I know I am among friends. Because the Godric Cycling Club made that my world, a very comfortable place to be. I hope that all cycling clubs continue to give a next generation of young people that chance, the chance to grow up as individuals, not just as places where the only winners are the ones who go fast. That has made cycling so much more to me that brushing my teeth. Its what I do, it’s my people.
When I join a group of cyclists I do not despair.
Thank you Godric Cycling Club.
Related posts:
“Cycling’s helpers” by David Horton on the ever excellent “Thinking about Cycling”
Press report in local media
* On the podium on the Champs Elysee after getting his trophy for his Tour de France win Bradley Wiggins, Britain’s first ever winner said “Are we going to do the raffle now?” Millions of spectators worldwide were completely baffled. About 30,000 club cyclists in the UK just collapsed with laughter, recognising just how many local cycling club dinners Brad must have attended during his career rise. One of us.
One can have too much of a good thing so I’ll stop banging on about the Tour of Flanders after today. I promise to post something about daily cycling and the “30 rides in April” Challenge at the end of the week, but be warned that I am hoping to go for a complete fix of race watching in the next few weeks with visits to Paris Roubaix, Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
What I am really looking forward to alongside the race experiences is an excuse to cycle in parts of Belgium and northern France a bit further than I can reach on day rides from Lasne and perhaps a bit off normal tourist routes.
Actually I have to confess that I don’t know what a normal tourist route is in Belgium. Ever since I got here I have felt horribly unprepared to become a Belgian resident because I knew so little about the country. I know I am not alone because so many people I have spoken to had experienced holidays or business trips to the more celebrated European countries or tourism areas such as France, Spain and Italy or they have visited popular capital cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Those that have been to Belgium mostly visited Brussels or Bruges in search of beer or a statue of a peeing boy and experience almost nothing outside the cities.
As cyclists we experience countries in a different and more intimate way than other visitors. This may be seeing cities above the dark tunnels of metros and free from the congestion of surface transport or seeking out the most rural routes and tiny villages away from the hot spots. Wherever I have lived I even find myself driving non-cycling visitors round the routes I have cycled because I feel I can explain them better and I know where I have stopped, looked and felt the terrain.
So I feel embarrassed that I knew nothing of what Belgium had to offer the visitor or the touring cyclist just a few months ago and my learning curve is enormously steep. Cycling really helps however and this weekend was typical of that sensation. The only images I had of riding in Belgium before I moved here came from those classic races on television but I could not put them in to context without riding the area a bit and tasting the countryside. I know my local area better now but I should know more.
The area where the Tour of Flanders finishes is known as “The Flemish Ardennes”, presumably because it is the lumpy bit of Flanders which is generally the flatter part of Belgium. I am sure the naming has nothing to do with the first rule of Belgian politics which is “if they have we one, we want one” in the battles between the Dutch and French speaking communities. So if the higher hills of Wallonia get more widely recognised as the Ardennes then the Flemish need to steal a bit of the branding too? Of course not, cynical me.
However it was a really nice place to ride a bike. We started our ride from the neat market town of Frasnes, just over the border in French speaking Wallonia and set off north to ride across a range of hills to Ronse, one of the towns on the Ronde route. Then we had been pre-warned that we would have a hard climb out of Ronse to get up to the route of De Ronde.
The most important thing to say was that the countryside was absolutely deserted. It may have been Easter Sunday, freezing cold and the cycling was on but I can rarely remember a ride with so little traffic. It was absolutely great to drift through small hamlets and farmsteads feeling we were the only people around. And once we started climbing up through the small forests the world was silent except for the gusty breeze in the trees.
Even when we dropped into Ronse it was hard to imagine that this was a town about to experience one of the world’s major sporting events this weekend, the town was like a ghost town. It would have been hard to improve on those first 12 km but actually we did.
First we had to find our way out of town without getting blocked by the race. Vincent had plotted me a route that bisected the various loops of the race perfectly. It was also great to see that the route was part of a permanent Ronde Van Vlaanderen route, obviously a tribute to the race.
Firstly a chance to channel your inner Cancellara by climbing the Kappellestraat out of town, up a steep climb through the houses and out onto a high wooded ridge where we wound our way through some beautiful houses and gardens overlooking the town. Steep though, as you can probably see from Geoff’s grimace!
At the top we were able to cross the course of the race and then set off into a network of narrow lanes. My confidence was boosted by a sign that said this was the Eddie Merckx cycle route but other than that it seemed to be another deserted road.
Just a kilometre down the road we reached a crossroads which produced further surprise because Vincent’s recommended route took us down a dirt track which wound past a farm and then up a draggy climb. It all seemed as if we might be going down a completely wrong direction but the views from the top were great.
After that we switched around what seemed to be a few cars parked in country lanes and suddenly emerged at the top of the Paterberg.
If I combine the routes we rode with the all the possibilities shown by the route of the race it is pretty clear that this will be a superb place to ride a bike for the occasional touring ride and cycle tour too. Strongly recommended by our guide Vincent was the Route do Collines which looks as if it will be a fantastic ride.
I quite fancy the idea of the some of the sportives that criss-cross the area too. Ultimately I really hope one day I might be fit enough again to take on the Tour of Flanders Sportive itself but that is a whole different story.
Cycle touring in Belgium – clearly one of Europe’s undiscovered secrets.
It is with enormous trepidation that I announce I am going to go for a bike ride with a local cycling club tomorrow.
It is one of the greatest failings of cycling as a social activity that jumping this barrier is a nerve-wracking experience even for someone like me who has been riding in clubs all my life. I have had some of the best cycling experiences ever and great friendship from my long term clubs Godric Cycling Club, Durham University CC, Cardiff Ajax and Reading Cycling Club but each time the first ride was a big step.
If I feel like this today then I know why people can own a sports road or mountain bike for their whole lives and never hook up with a club. Both they and the clubs miss out so often.
A quick examination of my symptoms please doctor:
Will I be able to keep up?
Will my bike fall apart?
If they leave me will I have a clue where I am?
I don’t climb too badly for a bigger lad, but my descending is pretty rusty at the moment – that could be embarrassing.
I’ve never really had a bad first ride on any of these counts, but I have a deeply repressed memory of something odd happening on one of my first club rides in Cardiff. Can’t even remember the details but one of my creative repairs revealed itself during a ride and as I did a patch up by the roadside I could see the eye rolling going on in the background. “We’ve got a right one here” they hinted to each other. I could easily have become one of so many one-timers who never returned instead of enjoying many more years of riding and club life because many do have a really unwelcoming first experience.
Rugby was my other sport for years and despite being a complicated, physical sport it handles this sort of thing so much better. It has the advantage of taking place at a fixed location but the most important welcome to new starters used to be “the fourth team”. (Replace with 5th, 6th, 7th team as appropriate). Can’t run, can’t catch, don’t know the rules and have a long distance relationship with anything called fitness? We’ll give you a run out in the 4ths and see how you get on under the avuncular support of an almost retired older player with a gammy leg and a deaf ear. Everyone plays because a proper 4th team has any number of players between 9 and 17, except the required 15. A proper 4th team is like the boxes of reject broken biscuits we used to love as kids. All shapes and sizes and only occasionally you turn up a complete custard crème, but its the mix that counts. And when you return to the clubhouse the 4th team creates its own legends of the bar. In short, a place for everyone.
This is the biggest argument out for entry level cycling groups in every town in the world.
Back to the matter in hand.
Tomorrow I am going out with the local Belgian cycling club.
This throws up a whole new set of challenges. At least in the UK I know the stock formula for most clubs is a Sunday ride – 60 miles with a coffee stop for most road clubs and maybe shorter distances with elevenses and lunch for the CTC groups.
Here club cycling seems to follows the French model. A racing club is just that, a club focussed on competition with a supporting network of ex-riders and officials. A cycle touring club looks to all intents and purposes exactly the same – club colours, quality road bikes, helmets and a calendar of events but the purpose is to ride together as groups and not to compete. So I reckon they fill the gap that I am looking for – strong-ish riders but not going to rip my legs off, like a club run or a faster CTC group in the UK.
Connection to my most local club has already failed because they are mainly interested in touring events – this weekend they are driving out to events both days. Sounds great, 100km including the legendary Mur de Gammont today but I actually want to learn about this area first and I certainly don’t want to give up 2 hours cycling time to sit in a car. So I’ll save that for another day, tomorrow I’ll try plan B with another club.
Checklist:
- I have found where they start
- My bike is scruffy but unlikely to be a laughing stock
- I can do the distance
- I have a domestic pass out
So it is time to get a grip Mayne ……. But they are Belgian, born to be hard cyclists. But my conversational French is awful. And what if I fall off on the cobbles, and what if they ……..
One of the great frustrations from moving house has been embodied in a cardboard box, just one amongst so many. But an odd shape, long and flat.
It arrived a week before we moved and I allowed myself a single peek into the box before very reluctantly I packed it away.
So having unpacked everything domestic over the last two weeks I treated myself to a session in the shed and I carefully brought Freddie Grubb number 11773 into the light after its respray and refurbishment for its 50th birthday (and mine).
A thing of rare delight, a 1963 English steel track frame which has been in my first club, the Godric CC for its entire life. I acquired it in the 1970s and after a short racing career in grass track and rollers I mistreated it for almost 30 years.
But now as I gradually pulled the packaging away I broke into an irrepressible beaming smile. This is my classic and I am really looking forward to the gradual build. Watch this space for more updates.
Happy Birthday to my Mum who is celebrating her 70th birthday with other family members in what is probably a very rainy Yorkshire.
I am really sorry I’m not there, but I hope everyone has a good time. Now I just have to come to your 75th, no tours to be planned.
To my blog followers – indulge me – its nice to say something about your Mum on line! Novelty silly cycling hat supplied by Velo-city organisers just for the occasion.
This post celebrates my cycling roots. It was triggered by a request by Dennis Kell, editor of Winged Wheel, the magazine of CTC Suffolk, for 200-300 words to mark the 250th edition of the magazine.
CTC Suffolk- Winged Wheel magazine is 250!
Hi Kevin,
Congratulations on your new position. All in CTC Suffolk wish you well.
Our local group magazine has just reached its 250th edition (First Published in 1947 and still going strong.) I’m sure you must have seen it in the past and I can send you an anniversary edition if you let me know an address.
As a Suffolk boy, we wondered if you might be able to give a couple of lines to this special edition before you set off for pastures new. Any personal memories of the magazine, the Birthday Rides or cycling in Suffolk generally would be fantastic. I’ve managed to get hold of several former editors going back to 1959 who have added a few comments and we shall have a couple of articles from edition 1.
Sorry for the late notice, but we are hoping to go off to the printers in the middle of February to ensure it gets out on time.
If you are able to send us something, it will be really appreciated.
Once again, good luck with the new position.
Best wishes,
Dennis Kell Editor
Suffolk is the eastern most county of England. It’s the low lying bulge in the coastline that sticks out into the North Sea, facing the Netherlands. It shares something of a heritage with our neighbours, our mediaeval economy was built on shipping wool to Flemish weavers and it was Dutch engineers that introduced many of the water management systems that helped control the ingress of the sea and drain the fields around the Norfolk boards to our north. Nothing like the extent of the drainage in the Netherlands itself or the Fen Country in Cambridgeshire, but the influences were enough for some of our architecture to feature Dutch gable ends.
The other thing we share with the neighbours is that Suffolk and Norfolk kept a higher residual level of cycling than most other parts of the UK. Still nothing like real European levels, but still one of the few rural parts of the country where it is not unusual to see an elderly lady on a bicycle cycling in to the town to collect her shopping. My late grandmother used to cycle 15 miles each way to her nursing shift so the culture was well established.
Lots of factors come together to make it possible, not least the relatively flat terrain and low rainfall. But the main factor must surely be the amazing collection of minor roads and the relatively low volumes of traffic in the towns which mean fewer people driven off the roads as cars and speeds got faster. It also seems to tap a residual demand, Kesgrave School in Ipswich, our country town was one of Sustrans early successes with their Safe Routes to Schools programme.
I grew up a Suffolk cyclist because my father was (and is) a keen club cyclist and racer who brought the whole family up inside his club, the Godric Cycling Club. We rode everywhere of course – to school, out with our mates, doing the paper round, but it was the Godric that provided my cycling culture.
When I became CTC Director in 1998 one of my very first speaking invitations was to speak at the CTC Suffolk and Wolsey Road Club Annual Dinner. They treated me a real surprise, digging out a cyclo-cross race programme from Holywells Park in Ipswich with my name on it, probably aged about 13.
In summer 2011 I returned to ride with Suffolk CTC again because they organized the CTC’s annual festival of cycle touring “The Birthday Rides”. (So named because they celebrate the anniversary of CTC’s founding at a similar rally in 1878). We had a brilliant week.
The Dogmobile - Kevin Mayne and Murphy on adapted tricycle
I camped on the main site with Murphy because the others were away and I constructed the dogmobile out of a disability trike from the CTC fleet at Reading. The Suffolk posse were amazing, they compiled hundreds of miles of routes, refreshments, social events and of course amazing weather.
So it was my pleasure to give Dennis some words that sum up how I feel about cycling and Suffolk:
At the end of the CTC Birthday Rides last year I was fortunate enough to be able to say a few words to everyone about how I felt about the event. It was relatively easy to sum it up. “Never have I felt prouder of being from Suffolk”.
Of course I was thanking CTC Suffolk for the event you had put on, but it was far more than that. The beauty of our countryside, the warmth of the welcome, even the relatively considerate behaviour of the drivers made a lasting impression on everyone who came and I have little doubt that it will boost the numbers of returning cyclists for years to come.
The other really important thing about cycling in Suffolk for me is that it where I discovered the sense of community which provides my real motivation. In Ipswich and Bungay my childhood was surrounded by cyclists, my extended family. And we learned to ride together in these lanes, not jammed to the side of the road escaping busy traffic. I was recently at a presentation where a mental health professional was asked why CTC’s programme of rides for those recovering from mental illness was so successful at boosting patients’ wellbeing and stopping them from being readmitted to hospital. He replied “Professionally I can’t define it. But they just ride, then they ride together and they talk, and then they feel better”
I think he was speaking for all of us.
I am now going to be based in Brussels working for the European Cyclists Federation. The most important part of my new job is to support new and emerging cyclists’ groups and help them get established at the national and regional level. Most of them will be transport campaigning groups who can get awfully serious about the intricate details of cycling infrastructure. But I know what I will also be telling what I learned in Suffolk. We do this because we want to share the special quality that cycling brings to lives. I will be trying to capture that feeling on my blog www.idonotdespair.com Magazines like Winged Wheel are essential to that sharing too, I wish you every success for the next 250 editions.
Kevin Mayne, CTC Chief Executive 1998-2012.
Stephen Coe, CTC board member for South West England casually asked me in December if I would be willing to be the guest at the Cycle Somerset annual dinner in January. He seemed awfully taken aback when I offered with enthusiasm.
Call me a bit of a sad case but I have been going to cycling club annual dinners since I was about eleven years old. Each year of my childhood my parents would get either excited or wound up like springs in early February because of the forthcoming club dinner, one of the social high spots of the year. Usually this involved one of them bringing home truckloads of trophies as well but what always struck my childish mind was how special and exotic it all seemed in a household where going to dinner wasn’t exactly common.
Then at some point when I felt bold enough I piped up and said “can I come to the club dinner” and to my amazement they said yes. No real idea when or where, just large numbers of adults having a good time talking bikes, races and riders. I felt wonderfully grown up but as I look back I sense that I was really part of the extended family of the Godric Cycling Club which I seemed to have known all my life.
I became a regular after that – hoping desperately that one day I might land one of the trophies as well. However I can confirm that my career in cycling has little to do with my speed on a bike and it took many years until I finally landed one – nearly 13 I think. However you could spot the future organiser and front man because it was at our club dinner that I did what I think must have been my first ever public speech in about 1978, aged about 17.
The guest of honour was cycling journalist Mick Gambling, well known on theUKcycling scene at the time, and I had to propose the vote of thanks. I don’t even remember how my jokes went the applause was addictive and I knew this was something I could do, somewhere I felt at home.
Since I became CTC Director in 1998 I have done many more dinners and had the pleasure of being Master of Ceremonies for the CTC National Dinner for the last few years. A lot of the speakers on the circuit charge, I guess it’s because it is an extension of their day job – the TV commentators, journalists and former riders. I guess I’m lucky that the day job pays, I can’t imagine having to turn people down who can’t pay, we are all family aren’t we?
And what of Cycle Somerset?
A lovely bunch who made us feel really at home in the Italian restaurant at the Somerset County Cricket Ground inTaunton. No trophies to present, this really is a friendly touring club who feature rides for riders of all abilities. The racing is left to the other clubs in the area, Cycle Somerset was formed to fill the gap.
One thing I have also noticed is that all the really vibrant clubs I have been to recently have started a ladies only section, there’s a real case for dedicated rides. Most of us would like to think we can keep the inner bloke in check when on a ride, but the evidence suggests otherwise, dedicated women’s rides are definitely a coming trend in group riding.
On Sunday after the dinner I was also invited to help launch the Taunton Bike Clubwhich caters for young riders of all ages and abilities. They are going to have multiple launches – this one was the touring launch and featured a Sunday ride to a café. Look like the next generation is in safe hands inTaunton, especially with pied piper Jonathon Sladden at the helm.
Taunton Bike Club Launch 22nd January 2012
Thanks to CS for the invite, it was great to get another fix of cycling company. I have no idea if this tradition carries on outside theUK, I’ll have to use visits home to get a fix. However it will be quite a while before I can deliver an after dinner turn in French or Flemish.
I Do Not Despair 