I come from a very keen cycling family. This stems from my father, who for most of his working life travelled many miles from home to his workplace in Manchester to do the evening shift. He could not afford a car until he was in his 50s and so bicycles were essential to his life. And that also applied to his three sons. We even had a shed erected in the back garden for the sole purpose of storing our four bicycles. My mum did not participate.
He was fond of telling stories about his cycling experiences. One that sticks in my mind (because he told it so often) is about a holiday which he took in Ireland in 1938. The main highlight was that he went with his best friend, Wilf, on a tandem and spent a fortnight travelling around lovely countryside in the south. I can’t remember all the details, but one of the incidents that occurred to them was that they were cycling past a van when a long ladder fell off on top of them and they were thrown to the ground. The other was when he was cycling home in the early hours of the morning going past Strangeways prison in Manchester. All of a sudden, some police men appeared and arrested him because presumably they thought he had escaped from the prison!
He was fond of telling stories about his cycling experiences. One that sticks in my mind (because he told it so often) is about a holiday which he took in Ireland in 1938. The main highlight was that he went with his best friend, Wilf, on a tandem and spent a fortnight travelling around lovely countryside in the south. I can’t remember all the details, but one of the incidents that occurred to them was that they were cycling past a van when a long ladder fell off on top of them and they were thrown to the ground. The other was when he was cycling home in the early hours of the morning going past Strangeways prison in Manchester. All of a sudden, some police men appeared and arrested him because presumably they thought he had escaped from the prison!
When my brothers and I were quite young, my dad was very keen on us all doing the Cycling Proficiency test to make sure that we were safe when we were riding around Manchester on our cycles. We all cycled to school and back home at lunchtime for a meal cooked by mum, then we cycled back to school and sometimes found that we couldn’t put our cycles in the cycle shed in the afternoon. When I was about 11yrs old, I was invited by one of the teachers to join a weekend cycle ride from Manchester to Buxton and to stay overnight in a youth hostel. I was delighted to join the group of about eight of us, only to be horrified when I got to school to join them to find that my cycle was much smaller than everyone else’s and had no gears! But the teacher kept an eye on me and made sure that I wasn’t left behind; the only real problem was cycling up the long hill into Buxton. I had to get off and push my bike up the hill. Coming back was fine! This did not put me off cycling and there was a bonus because I was able to persuade my dad to get me a full-size bike after this misadventure! Later, in my teenage years, I used to cycle quite long distances with friends going train-spotting or visiting youth hostels and sometimes camping. Nowadays my cycling is restricted to hiring a bike when we are on holiday and cycling around usually relatively flat islands in hot sunshine.
Barry Lee, Lepton
Barry Lee, Lepton
