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

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2004

Copyright © Tim Hilton 2004

Tim Hilton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006532286

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007391752

Version: 2016-10-03

‘An exhilarating work … just the book for anyone who, shooting past a traffic jam on the way to work, imagines himself wearing the winner’s yellow jersey at the head of the Tour de France pack’

Independent

‘Remarkably infectious and richly atmospheric; so much so that the effect is like being hoisted up on to his handlebars and swept along for the ride. His enthusiasm drives everything forward at an exhilarating lick’

Sunday Telegraph

‘A hugely engaging history of the sport’

SIMON O’HAGAN, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday

‘A charmingly eccentric account of his love of cycling, mixed in with a history of the sport’

JOHN PRESTON, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph

‘This strange, funny and moving memoir is irresistible. A quirky, oblique elegy’

Financial Times

‘A deeply affectionate mental scrapbook … Hilton has the skill as a writer to make the subject of cycling fresh and compelling again. Fascinating … Exuberant’

MATT SEATON, Guardian

‘Hilton is a brilliantly quirky, inventive writer … A wonderful testament to a life in the saddle’

Daily Telegraph

For Daniel

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Introduction to the Ebook Edition

Introduction

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Index

Acknowledgements and A Note on Sources

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

The ebook edition of this book allows me to thank fellow cyclists whose help I forgot to acknowledge in the previous introduction. First among them is Eric Auty. Years ago he gave me his ‘Shake’, the Monckton Boys and the Hercules Professionals (Cheltenham, n.d.), which describes 1930s cycle racing in the East Midlands coalfields. His book also gives an account of riders who, like Shake Earnshaw, were the first to join the ‘paid ranks’, to use the old journalists’ expression. Not that there have ever been large numbers of British professionals. For good or ill, our sport is predominantly amateur. But we all admire the band of lonely cyclists who left their British clubs for an uncertain professional life on the Continent. I should have acknowledged Rupert Guinness’s The Foreign Legion (Huddersfield, 1993), the classic history of their pioneering adventures.

The first sentence of my own book has turned out to have been an invitation to friends old and new. To my delight, nearly one hundred people have sent me their life stories, photographs, poems, programmes and club magazines. Their letters show that cyclists – of the older generation, for they are the best cyclists – are generous historians. Something about cycling life encourages reminiscence. We all wish to pass on the lore of cycling tradition. Lore is nothing if it is not shared, as my correspondence proves. So, in this second introduction, I give thanks to people who have augmented my brief snatches of history and have, gently, questioned the evidence for various prejudices.

Some memories take us back through many years, happy days and wars. Ethel Brambleby (Aldershot Wheelers), for instance, is the daughter of an Edwardian who discovered cycling in 1902. She began racing in 1934. A little later, Ethel tells me, she made herself a teatime guest at Pear Tree Farm. She must be the last of the few visitors at Frank Patterson’s strange home. But was the farm as unusual as I have imagined? There may have been dozens of Englishmen who built such castles around their yeoman dreams. I am not hostile to Patterson’s art, which is a genuine part of our national life, and hope not to have upset his devotees.

In One More Kilometre … I did not write enough about women racing cyclists of former years. The records are lacking, though somewhere they must exist. I still have no definite information about the Rosslyn Ladies. Harridans or heroines? Surely the files are with a daughter of the club. I know – this is to counter one of the myths about them – that some of the Ladies had husbands. It’s still true that young women cyclists became independent when they ceased to be tandem stokers, especially at the time of Hitler’s war. They were, and remain, spirited people. Connie Charlton, née Stubbs (Priory Wheelers), has excellent recollections of North London and Hertfordshire cycling. And she writes: ‘I must be the only woman to catch Alfie Engers. I was riding up Hornsey Rise when I drew level with a very young lad. He told me his name, said he worked in a bakery and was thinking of joining a cycling club …’

Connie Charlton advised him, so was at the birth of a marvellous career. Connie also recalls the especial friendship between the Priory Wheelers and the Coventry Road Club. Every year they had a Warwickshire reunion. Stalwarts of the Coventry RC, as I have mentioned, were Ron and the late Edie Atkins. I thank Ron for the gift of some of his memorabilia and urge readers to look at his wife’s end-to-end bike. Its frame is by R. O. Harrison. The machine is now preserved in the Coventry British Transport Museum. Snowy Woodhall (Addiscombe CC, formerly Redhill Clarion CC) recalls, as does Ron Atkins, tyro cyclists who were also in the Young Communist League. He questions my brusque statement that there were no cyclists in the navy. He knew a number of them in the Portsmouth area. Thanks, Snowy. We agree that it’s better to be on a bike than in a boat.

Mike Daniell (Stevenage CC) has joined with me in adding to our lists of cyclists who are artists. He could write a fine book on this affecting topic.