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I am now trying to get myself a bit fitter after a seasonal layoff from longer bike rides. As it is cold, damp and the visibility is poor the roads are not an attraction and I need a bit of … Continue reading
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This week is the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, by far the biggest thing that ever happened round here so the various layers of Belgian local government and the former allies have finally got their act together to … 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!
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.
I have written this review in two parts. The first is what you might call the “official review” which I have given to the ECF web site for our cycle campaigning community. It should appear on ECF.com shortly. But reading it I discovered some interesting content relating to my past role at CTC, the UK cyclists’ charity which prompted me to add some additional reflections which I have added here in my personal blog.
The “official review”
Anyone wanting a comprehensive review of how our roads entered what we might call the “modern era” should look no further than this highly enjoyable read from British cycling journalist Carlton Reid. He has taken an investigation of the role cycling played in road modernisation in the late 19th and early 20th century and extended it to cover the origins of road construction, the engineering of cars and how this period of change was influenced by politics, business and social class.
This is also very much a book for campaigners. It is the most thorough examination I have read of how the battles for influence were fought by cyclists and motorists across the Victorian and Edwardian period, particularly in the UK and the USA. From a modern perspective we might assume that these were battles between driving and cycling lobbies but the book is fastidious in showing that for much of this period these were often the same people fighting to improve the roads for both modes of travel.
But Carlton is happy to call himself a revisionist. He does have a clear mission in this story. This book wants to reclaim a piece of history on behalf of cycling, correcting the way that the motoring lobby subsequently grabbed the road space and made it a “space for cars”, especially Henry Ford’s later claim that it was the motorists that created modern roads. This makes the book essential reading for modern campaigners who are challenging some of the attitudes and values from that period almost 100 years later. For many ECF members and supporters we can trace our roots back to those early campaigners in the Cyclists’ Touring Club (today’s CTC) and the League of American Wheelmen.
The great pleasure of the book is that the reader can almost sense Carlton digging away in libraries and on line and uncovering gems that he just had to share. The role of cycling in the design and manufacture of early cars. The business tactics of the early cycling and motoring companies. He is particularly good at discussing the personalities of the period and their influences from pioneer roads campaigners like Rees Jeffreys to businessman Henry Lawson. There is a whole chapter on ten of the key names where one can sense the journalist in Carlton almost interviewing them to find out their cycling origins and how it influenced their careers.
This book must be regarded as essential reading for anyone with an interest in cycling advocacy even if it is mainly focussed on the UK and the USA. Perhaps it leaves the door open for new chapters from contributors in other countries to add their story in later editions.
To buy an electronic copy of “Roads Were Not Built for Cars” go to the book’s website.
Some extra personal thoughts
A few weeks ago I reflected on this people who came before me in my role as Chief Executive of CTC, the UK’s cyclists’ charity. On that occasion I was considering how I would have reacted if I was at the Club during the First World War when cyclists were being encouraged to join the Cyclists’ Regiments.
A few days later I read Carlton’s book which triggered other thoughts about how CTC’s leaders reacted at various times in the history of cycling, and how we see them with the benefit of hindsight. The Club was a key player for most of the period of the book and its Council members and staff populated many of the campaigns and activities, something that still makes me enormously proud.
This meant I paid special attention to the CTC figures in the book, especially two who filled the same post as me, Secretary, the position which became Director and then Chief Executive. When people want to critique anything CTC is doing their names are dragged out as examples of what the current generation might be doing wrong. What was really interesting to me was how Carlton’s neutral eye balanced some of the myths we have built up around these two inside and outside CTC.
Ernest Shipton was Secretary from 1883 to 1907. As “Roads Were Not Built for Cars” points out it was very common for our leaders of that period to be as passionate about cycling as motoring and Shipton was no exception. He was a founder of the Automobile Club, later to become the Royal Automobile Club.
He is largely remembered by cyclists as the man who engineered a vote at the 1906 CTC AGM to allow the Club to admit motorists. This decision was overturned at the high court despite Shipton’s evidence that cars had made cycling no longer attractive and the Club needed to change. Within months of the court decision he had left his post and his 24 year career is only remembered in one line – the man who tried to turn CTC into a motoring organisation.
In the other camp during that debate was George Herbert Stancer. He was already an influential figure as editor of Cycling, one of the biggest magazines of the time (and still around today as Cycling Weekly). Several years later he became Secretary of CTC, taking on a position he would hold for over 30 years, then continuing as President until 1964. To many in the Club (including me) GHS is the man who probably did more than anyone else to reform cycle campaigning as a defence against the encroachment and danger of cars. His predecessors fought for road improvement as equals, but by Stancer’s time as Secretary motorists dominated the politics of transport.
The classic Stancer photo is an elderly GHS on his beloved tricycle, but the younger Stancer was altogether something more formidable. He is almost our Churchill, fighting back with his speeches, thunderous editorials and fierce letter writing. And like Churchill such strong opinions made him a divisive figure.
I have been told numerous times by people outside CTC that the Club in the 1930s sold UK cycling down the proverbial river, in particular by its opposition to cycle paths. Within days of becoming CTC CEO in 1998 I was told by one of the most influential figures in UK cycling that if it wasn’t for Stancer and his colleagues the UK today would have a network of cycle lanes as good as any in the Netherlands. “CTC has a lot to answer for” I was told.
“Roads Were Not Meant for Cars” does a lot to balance those myths and legends about Shipton and Stancer.
Shipton may be damaged goods inside CTC but the book makes it clear that his views were mainstream at the time, nearly all the leading motoring figures had cycling roots and this golden period of “Road Improvement” they represented both modes on committees and campaigning bodies. CTC members voting 5:1 in favour of admitting motorists suggests he was in touch with the feelings of his constituency inside CTC too. In that context his actions look a lot more rational.
Stancer too benefits from a detailed look at the situation faced by CTC in the 1930s. In particular the book has a detailed account of the now notorious Alness Report, published in 1939. This committee of Lords was stuffed with pro-motoring figures which made it impossible for the cycling witnesses to make any progress. However for many a belief that Stancer’s statements to the committee that cyclists didn’t want cycle lanes is a damning critique that undermines his place in history.
The story looks very different in this book. Seeing the wider content of that report I realise now just how much the concern of the day for the cyclists was whether they should be removed from the roads entirely to allow speedier passage of cars.
“In evidence given to the Alness committee, CTC officials had stressed that the main objection was to the quality of cycle paths and not just the principle of being able to continue riding on the carriageway, the hard-won right of cyclists since 1888. The CTC feared that legislation would be brought in that would make it compulsory to use cycle paths even before a useable network had been built, and that, going by the poor provision of paths in the previous five years, there was little likelihood that the paths of the future would be of decent quality.”
“witness after witness – from surveyors to arch motorists – attested to the dire nature of England’s experimental cycle paths but, apart from cyclist witnesses, most wanted cyclists to be forced to use the paths.”
At the end of this section of the book is an exchange from the report which should probably be printed out and stuck to the wall over the desk of every construction engineer, cycling official and cycle advocate in the world.
Earl of Iddesleigh:
“If we could enable you to avoid the great motor roads and provide for you really satisfactory roads on which you would not have to compete with a great deal of fast moving traffic, there would be a gain in enjoyment?”
Stancer:
If it were possible to provide facilities that are equal to those that we enjoy now, with the additional advantage that they would not be shared by motorists, I think that cyclists would have no objection …
Earl of Iddesleigh:
Are the two grounds upon which you are against cycle tracks these? First, because the cyclist insists on his abstract right to the use of the highway, and secondly, because it is less pleasant to use a cycle track than a highway?
Stancer:
The second one you have mentioned is far more important. Cyclists would never insist upon their abstract rights if it were not that they are losing the chief pleasure of cycling by being forced on to the paths. If the paths are by any miracle to be made of such width and quality as to be equal to our present road system, it would not be necessary to pass any laws to compel cyclists to use them; the cyclists would use them.
I have to say that even today it is very hard to disagree with GHS. Nearly 80 years later I am living in a country that has cycle lanes such “width and quality” in parts of Flanders that it is indeed unimaginable that we wouldn’t use them. Sadly we also have some parts of the country where the lanes are so bad they are almost unrideable for most of the year. The use of both is compulsory.
But most of all I thank “Roads Were Not Meant for Cars” for bringing a thoroughly researched narrative and a clear context to those debates. Shipton and Stancer may have been made decisions that are not judged well by some in cycling today. But this well balanced narrative suggests that they were doing what they thought was right in the norms, the knowledge and the resources of the time.
I am sure things we campaigned for and against in my time at CTC will look very different in the year 2114. I can only hope that we have a narrator like Carlton Reid to disentangle myth from legend when the time comes.
Having written about cycling in Sofia in my previous post this one is about my impressions of Sofia as a tourist in the two brief tours that I took around the city centre in my short visit.
It was very much late autumn here with the first cold temperatures of the year coming in, down to about four degrees centigrade overnight and there was snow on the Vitosha Mountain that overlooks the city. The city was mostly wrapped in a steely grey grip that briefly lightened for our afternoon bike tour but otherwise kept things a bit dull so maybe we didn’t see the city at its best. But I must say the mountain itself is a great landmark as you move about, forever on the skyline and real symbol of the city. I really wish I had enough time to take a trip up there, it looked amazing for walking or mountain biking but it would be a substantial excursion of a few hours.
It would probably be fair to say that Sofia is not one of Europe’s tourism hot spots. Nor one its wealthiest cities, so it has a slightly run down feel with buildings, roads and parks often in need of some repair and restoration. What it has in its favour is a rather sleepy, quiet nature because for a capital city of well over a million people we did spend some time wondering where they were. Little of it is completely car fee except the main shopping drag of Vitosha Boulevard but the main city centre buildings and parks are mainly in two central neighbourhoods which were easily accessible by bike, foot and metro so it was actually a really easy city to navigate.
What Sofia also has is an incredible history. Its pre-Roman history goes back to 4BC, then it was a major Roman centre for nearly 500 years. At times it was part of various Bulgarian empires which brought a Christian heritage but for another 400 years it was part of the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th and 20th Centuries it fell into the Russian sphere of influence with a communist government from 1946-1990. Unfortunately it was flattened and rebuilt several times in that process so much of ancient Sofia is buried under the later layers and it is a bit of a detective exercise to see the differing elements.
What we mainly saw to represent the city history were two distinct groups of buildings.
The first were the religious sights – cathedrals, churches, mosque and synagogue reflecting the diverse heritage of the city.
Chief of these was the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral which turned out to be quite a surprise for me. From the outside it is a giant of white and gilded domes.
But inside it was dark and unlit except for tiny windows up in the dome and large groups of candles. One could sense the detailed painting on the walls and up in the heights the dome could be brightly decorated but it was the darkest, gloomiest major cathedral I have ever been in, almost cave-like.
By complete contrast the tiny Saint Petka Church was a medieval church sunk below the level of the city roads close to excavations of the old city which are being unearthed in front of a new metro station, one of the few surface signs of an older Sofia.
The second group of buildings reflect the more recent Soviet past. Almost inevitably there is a huge block of Soviet architecture of which the most striking was the former Communist Party Building, the Largo building which is a classic of its type.
The memorial to the Soviet Soldiers also survived the end of the communist period in a small park to the west of the city centre with its dramatic statues and friezes.
The complete contrast to the features that represented the communist period was a display near the National Cultural Centre which celebrated 25 years since the end of communism. There were evocative photographs and logos from the period right across the bridge, although I couldn’t help but be amused by its proximity to the drive-through McDonalds – was this what the revolution was for?
Other highlights were the National Theatre and the attractive gardens out front.
In addition to the physical sights of Sofia I have to say that everyone we met was incredibly helpful and welcoming, from our hosts to hotel staff, restaurants and cafe staff. They went out of their way to make us welcome at the Bulgarian themed restaurant – traditional dancing a bonus!
And a thank you to the bar staff on Vitosha who said they were closing, and then kept the doors open as long as we were there. I guess that is the advantage of being the only customers in town!
I leave the post with pictures of some striking statues in a square just in front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. My research has failed to turn up their subject but I found them quite moving.
This gallery contains 22 photos.
Before we went to the UK a few weeks ago my wife and I were discussing the meaning of “home”. Although we grew up on opposite sides of the planet we both had the benefit of spending many of our … Continue reading
This gallery contains 22 photos.
One of the real benefits of being in Belgium is the near proximity to our neighbours. Luxembourg City is just over a couple of hours South-West of us by train so it was an easy choice for a short break … Continue reading
Even though I am stepping out on a cold misty morning today the Danube never fails to excite me.
Partly it is the huge size, partly I can look down river and catch a first glimpse of the buildings of Budapest along the banks. But it has always done this whenever I have come to it on trips.
But also I think about this amazing corridor that links so many capital cities and countries, running from Germany to the Black Sea. How much human history has been seen along these waters. Something of the exotic perhaps? As a Brit we are often far removed and sadly uneducated about much European history, but when I get the Danube I always feel I should know more.
It is a long standing ambition to cycle the eastern section. Today I will have to content myself with this first view and some cycling along its great cycle paths later.
I Do Not Despair 