One More Kilometre and We’re in the Showers. Tim Hilton

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СКАЧАТЬ them are as ancient as oaks. Today there might be a couple of dozen clubs that were founded in the nineteenth century. Hundreds more have lived and died. There are around 500 in existence in the United Kingdom at the time of writing (2003). They are local or regional, mainly local. They take their names from some town or suburb, as in the case of the Finsbury Park Cycling Club (always known as ‘The Park’ to its members), the Ipswich Bicycle Club (which is one with a nineteenth-century foundation date) or the Cardigan Wheelers. When you meet another cyclist it’s not long before you enquire about his club. Then you know a wheelman’s home base and can also guess who his mates are. ‘So you’re in the Saracen. Then you must know Johnny Roberts!’ Other bits of this kind of conversation, mainly jocular, include ‘Never heard of them’ – when of course you have – or ‘So you’re one of those, are you?’, which is an invitation to debate.

      The Cyclists Touring Club, founded in 1878 (motto: ‘This Great Club of Ours’), was often the parent organisation for smaller local clubs. The CTC was concerned with leisure riding and cyclists’ rights. If younger CTC members were more interested in racing than touring they would band together to call themselves a ‘road club’. Thus we have the Warwickshire Road Club, already mentioned, the Corsham Road Club, the Oxford City Road Club, the Yorkshire Road Club, and so on. If the word ‘path’ appears in any title it means that the club also specialises in track racing. Hence the name of the Redditch Road and Path CC. Older cyclists still use the word ‘path’ when they are talking about a cycle racing track.

      How many people make a cycling club? About half a dozen, at the lowest count. And the maximum is about 100. The history of British cycling tells us that defections will occur, or a formal split, if this number is exceeded. A sociologist, perhaps aided by a psychiatrist, might be able to explain why it’s best if a club has sixty to seventy members. There are or have been much larger clubs, but they are seldom tied to a locality. The RAF CC once had more members than any other club (maybe it still has) but really was an umbrella fellowship organisation. Other fellowships include the Army Cycling Union, the National Clarion CC and the Tricycle Association, whose members are spread throughout the land.

      Do cycling clubs differ in their nature? Some people say that all clubs are the same; others maintain that there are vital differences between one club and the next. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two claims. Individual clubs do have their own traditions and personalities, but these resist description and are difficult for an outsider to grasp. So we rely on rumours and odd remarks that we have heard on the road.

      Here is a list of some clubs past and present in more or less alphabetical order, but occasionally straying from the A – Z.

      A5 Rangers. Still in existence? I believe so. Their base was somewhere in the Rugby – Nuneaton area. They used to follow the straight and determined route of the A5 to Shrewsbury and thither into Wales. Other names of clubs announce their usual runs and destinations. The Kentish Wheelers, for instance, rode into Kent: but the club’s home was in Brixton in south London. Do not be misled by the name of the Rutland CC: its members lived around Rutland Road in Sheffield. Other club names indicate peripatetic habits. There was the Wanderers CC, based I know not where, the Tyneside Vagabonds CC, the Colchester Rovers CC, the Bedouin CC, from Croydon, the Thirty-Fourth Nomads CC and the Nomads (Hitchin), who for some reason like to have this parenthesis in their name. I have an enemy in the Nomads so I hate the lot of them. He says that I cut him up in a race. It’s just that I was faster.

      The Buckshee Wheelers is a fellowship club. By reason of its constitution the club is in terminal decline. The members of the Buckshee were in north Africa in the last days of Hitler’s war and somehow managed to organise bike races in the desert. Their motto, one Buckshee Wheeler told me, was ‘Growing and Growing and Growing’. Shouldn’t that be ‘Dying and Dying and Dying?’ I pertly said. ‘Tim, the roll of honour is growing and growing.’ Though not rebuked, I felt chastened. The Buckshees allowed some post-war national servicemen to join their ranks, with a cut-off date of 1953. The youngest Buckshee Wheeler is said to be the fine roadman Brian Haskell, who is now seventy-four. It is understood that the very last member of the Buckshee Wheelers will bequeath all the club records to the Imperial War Museum.

      My father should have been a Buckshee, just as he should have ridden with the Clarion. The opening lines of one of his favourite songs were learnt, I believe, in Alexandria in 1943 or 1944. If any Buckshee Wheeler reads this book I hope he will now smile. Lil is a stripper in an Alexandria brothel.

      Oh her name was Lil, she was a beauty,

      She lived in a house of ill reputy, She drank whisky, she drank rum, She smoked hashish and o-pi-um …

      Also under B there’s the Bon Amis CC (thus spelt), which calls to mind other British clubs with French names. Among them we should applaud the San Fairy Ann CC (they live in Kent), reputedly flourishing as never before, the Compagnons du Petit Braquet, the Vélo Club Pierre (who come from Stone in Staffordshire) and the Vélo Club Lanterne Rouge – a bunch of north London veterans who may be encountered at the Halfway House on the Cambridge Road just to the east of Enfield.

      The Barrow Spartans CC doesn’t sound a convivial club. I’ve ridden from Barrow-in-Furness, a depressed industrial town, once the home of shipbuilding and nuclear submarines, into the Lake District. That morning I nearly died from cold and lancing rain. A lovely lady at Grange-over-Sands gave me shelter in her off-licence. We drank two miniatures of brandy, so as not to be too spartan, while the downpour washed her windows. No doubt this comfort was illegal. If you’re wet through on the bike a good plan is to head for a launderette, strip off and put all your clothes in the dryer. Good fun on a club run, if the local housewives don’t call the police.

      CCCP are the initials on the all-red road jerseys of the Comical Cycling Club of Penshurst. They don’t seem like communists to me. I know from experience that at least two of them are very fast and fit. The Curnow CC represents cycle racing in Cornwall. (The Vectis CC does the same for the Isle of Wight, as do the Manx Viking Wheelers in the Isle of Man.) The Chesterfield Cycling and Athletic Club has now gone, though other clubs that once united cycling with athletics are still in existence, notably the Halesowen A & CC and the Midland C & AC.

      Letter D. The Dartford Wheelers were in great rivalry with the Medway Wheelers. The De Laune CC is a south-of-the-river London club. The Derby Mercury CC, the Dudley Castle CC and the Dursley CC speak for themselves, as far as their origins are concerned.

      The Elizabethan CC (defunct) and the Festival Road Club (still going well) remind us of the birth of so many clubs in the early 1950s. The Festival RC still uses the logo of the 1951 Festival of Britain. On the subject of logos (club signs which you drew when registering at a youth hostel, or in correspondence), that of the Unity CC is of two hands clasped in fellowship. Unfortunately, fellowship sometimes collapses. The names of the Kettering Amateur CC and the Kettering Friendly CC record a split between the cyclists of a quite small town. I do not recall the details of their dispute but know that it was a tremendous business.

      On now to the Lancashire Road Club, always to be thanked for their promotion of twelve- and twenty-four-hour time trials, the Liverpool Co-operative CC and the Ladies Cycling Fellowship. Members of the Liverpool Century Road Club probably had to prove their worth with a 100-mile ride. The League International exists to promote massed-start events for veterans. The London Italian RCC was a forerunner of the Soho CC, which had a brief glory in the late 1980s. Its members were Italian waiters or were concerned in other ways with the catering trades.

      Montague Burton’s Cycling Club must have been composed of the store’s employees. The Monckton CC took its name from the colliery in which so many of its members earned their living. The Monckton was a very strong club in the 1930s, with little to fear from their neighbours in the North Nottinghamshire Road Club.

      The Out-of-Work Wheelers belonged to a time of high unemployment during the premiership СКАЧАТЬ