Cycling circa 1948
A couple of years ago I spent some time with my Grandparents; going through their old family photos with the hope of putting them in a vaguely chronological order, adding names and dates when known. We discovered some real gems from their cycling days which I thought I’d share.
Here’s one of my favourites, Granny showing off some shorts that she'd customised from a pair of trousers; “they were much more comfortable to cycle in, but people thought I was quite risqué” she'd told me with a smile.
Sadly she died last year at the grand age of 93, leaving my Grandad behind after almost 70 years of marriage; having met though a shared love of cycling.
This blog is dedicated to my Granny.
My Grandad had started work in 1944 as an apprentice coachbuilder, but with the war on was put on a bench to be an arc welder. He used to ride in on his Dayton drop bar that his father had bought for him and remembers being encouraged to join a local CTC (Cyclists’ Touring Club, now Cycling UK) by a club cyclist at the workshop. “All the club members were older than me and had old type touring bikes. At the time it was good to go out with a club as all the road signs and places names had been removed, so you needed a good road map”
As he got to know club members his age and the bikes they rode, he looked for an upgrade; choosing a Thanet Silverlight* with it’s unique cradled BB unit “to be one better than the Carpenter, Hetchins, Pratt & Paris”.
The club organised “lovely long breakfast runs, up to 100 miles plus in a day”. With no cars on the road due to petrol rationing, it sounds like a cyclists dream. “We were the boys that rode with our head in hell and our bum in heaven” he told me, “always on a Brooks B17 saddle”. He and Granny recommended I buy one when I went on my first cycle tour; very grateful I did, as it’s the most comfortable saddle I’ve used.
After a while some of the members formed a subsection called the East Surrey Road Club. Riding 100 miles in 8-7-6 hours to gain the CTC ‘hard riders’ badges. Grandad remembers competing in early morning races and afternoon tours before finishing the day with a ‘club tea’ in the pub. It was on one such day he met his future wife.
Granny received this signed copy of Ragged Staff’s ‘Cycling is Such Fun!’ book for winning a Treasure Hunt race arranged by the East Surrey CTC in 1948. She had been a member of a local YHA and rode an old Raleigh when they met but later ordered a four speed Paris** from a cycle show they’d visited; recalling travelling by train from Dorking to Stoke Newington to collect it.
I love this photo of the two of them cycling along the A24 near Boxhill, Surrey c. 1949. They explained that a photographer had been on the side of the road and called out to them to swap addresses so he could post them a copy and they could send him the payment. Hard to imagine these days; waiting a couple of weeks for a photo!
Below is a more recent photo of my Grandparents, that I took in 2017. I had made Grandad a Liquorice Allsorts cycling cap, as they’re one of his favourite sweets and I’d wanted to make him a special one as a thank you for his continued encouragement, enthusiasm and support for Alleyhats (think that’s some local honey they’re holding, that I’d taken with me!)
I hope to get some more pictures and tales to share when I next visit Grandad, as there’s some great photos of the bikes he’s had over the years and more of them both on various cycling adventures.
*Grandad had the frame numbers SL1313 and SL2012 as he wrote off his first frame after crashing into a pedestrain who had stepped out, ending up in hospital for a couple of days! However, he’d taken out insurance (for two and six pence a year) so made a claim and got a new frame. He said he was also given one pound to change over all the good parts to get it back on the road. (I’ve added a link to a very similar frame I found to show some of the details.)
**Granny’s Paris was pale blue and a different model to the one featured on Condor’s website but there's a bit of history about the frame builder Harry Rensch.