Читать книгу One More Kilometre and We’re in the Showers - Tim Hilton - Страница 11

The cycling year had its own feast days or observances and a racing man’s calendar was almost a matter of routine. In the twenty-eight Sundays between March and September many races had an allotted and unchanging slot, whether they were important events – the Bath Road 100, the Anfield 24 Hours, the Solihull Invitation 25 – or less significant local time trials. Massed-start road races did not have these definite dates, firstly because there were so few of them and secondly because roadmen did not have a firm and long-established governing body. However, bunched road racing was always celebrated in the ‘Isle of Man Week’ at the end of every June.

Trackmen also knew when and where they were going to compete. They would go to meetings held at regular intervals in the summer months, generally in the evening. For trackmen who raced on grass there were many ‘sports days’. Agricultural sports days were often part of a country show and were held on Saturdays. Urban sports days, organised by a factory, a colliery or a local police force, took place on Wednesday or Thursday afternoons, depending on the early closing day. These afternoons were shared with athletics. The runners often wondered at the feats of men on wheels, so cycling made some converts. It looked so specialised and brawny. Good grassmen were indeed among the sporting mighty and their muscular prowess over slippery, uneven ground also served them well in hill climbs – the peculiar races that end the cycling year.

Hill climbs are organised by cycling clubs in later October and November. In essence, they are time trials from a low to a high point. On the continent there are some extremely taxing mountain time trials, notably on the roads above Nice and on the Puy de Dôme. These are sometimes part of a stage race. They were introduced to the Tour de France in 1939. British hill climbs became popular in the 1920s and have a quite different character. They are festive and look forward to Christmas. But they are also hard. You need legs that are filled with months of racing – though we have known climbs to be won by the agility of delightful, underweight teenagers. They get special applause.

Depending on your part of the country, the climbs are long or short, but never very long. They are either ‘technical’ or straightforward. Some demand guile, others brute strength. Famous longer hills, like the Horseshoe Pass or Nick O’Pendle, are in the Peak District or North Wales. They are used by Manchester and Merseyside clubs. Birmingham clubs use hills in Mid Wales or the valley of the Teme. Londoners go to the North Downs or the Chilterns. In flat East Anglia clubs use what they can find. Hill climbs in Suffolk, for instance, are sometimes ridden in only forty seconds. Welsh climbs, however, can occupy a competitor for ten minutes.

Not longer, or the drama of the race would be lost. Hill climbers need a clapping audience. The climbs attract much larger crowds than other events against the clock. They are also held later in the morning, so as to race in light but also to attract knowledgeable spectators. The people who devise the hilly courses want to make their races into theatre. They look for a narrow road, preferably a lane with poor surfaces, stretches of faux-plat and – exquisite touch – a cattle grid at the hardest corner. If there is a pub near the hill, so much the better.

Some purists believe in hills that can be ridden on a fixed wheel. Others like varying gradients that demand the use of gears. Either way, the spectators are connoisseurs of a ritualistic race. The crowd will be on either side of the lane, all the way to the top, crying ‘Up! up! up!’ to each panting rider. At the summit are ‘catchers’ to grasp and hold the cyclists who, totally spent after the extreme effort of the brief climb, fall with their machines. The finishers are warmed in blankets, or sometimes by a brazier. Steam and smoke mingle with the cold air.

Next, beer and mince pies. Racing is over until the following year. Now the ‘social season’ begins. Miscellaneous entertainments, club runs and other gatherings reach a climax with the club dinner. Like so much else in the cycling world, these dinners have a standard pattern. They are held in late January and early February. On these occasions the club’s prizes and trophies will be awarded by an honoured guest, most often a well-known racing cyclist from another club. At the dinner there is a mixture of formality and licence. A three-course meal is served by waiters. Men wear suits, ladies wear gowns. At the end of the dinner there is a series of toasts, to ‘The Club’, ‘The Visitors’, ‘The Ladies’, sometimes ‘The Road’ and finally ‘The Queen’.

After the Loyal Toast – still observed by a surprisingly large number of clubs – cross-toasting is permitted. Anyone can bang on the table, jump to his feet and say, ‘I wish to take wine with …’ and then name some person or group of people with a jesting or semi-private reference. Then another person will say, ‘I wish to take wine with …’. This can go on for some time, and with hilarious or disappointing results. The custom of cross-toasting is an old one, and perhaps now belongs only to cycling clubs; I know of no other organisations which follow the ritual. Its cycling origins are in the convivial dinners held by clubs in the 1890s and Edwardian times, the golden age of bohemian dining.

Bohemianism never wins the day. The turn of the last century was also the period when respectable working men first dined together with their wives as members of voluntary societies. To this day, cycling club dinners are properly managed. Hotels are preferred to pubs. The tables have a placement. The top table is occupied by the club’s committee members and local dignitaries, often including a mayor or local councillor and a representative of the county police force (it is politic to be on terms with the police: we need their permission to race on the public highway). So club dinners have a social dimension, expressed in various ways. There is no cross-toasting between those seated at the top table and other diners. It is not done. In this way cycling club etiquette obeys a quite ancient taboo. English has a technical term for drinking with a person of a different class. It is called ‘hob-nobbing’.

The new cycling year begins after the club dinners. The ‘social season’ was too long for many keen racing men, who – after the mid-1950s – took up the new winter sport of cyclo-cross. Some people considered the ‘mud pluggers’ a little raffish. That was because, in the early days of cyclo-cross, courses were improvised and the racing unregulated. One or two clubs offered short time trials on the mornings of Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. The best known of these yuletide events, in which competitors often wear fancy dress, is organised by the Chesterfield Spire Road Club. In February we find ‘reliability trials’, fast training rides open to all comers. Then come the first time trials of the year, often on restricted gears, and two-up events, the riders competing in two-man teams. Serious competitive riding begins with the North Road Hardriders 25 on the last Sunday in February. This superbly uncomfortable race is on the Hertfordshire lanes north of Potters Bar and is often ridden in snow or on icy roads. That’s why tricyclists like it.

The next high point in the cycling calendar was the movable feast of Easter. On Good Friday all trackmen and their fans would be at Herne Hill for the meeting organised by the Southern Counties Cycling Union. This is among the oldest of cycling traditions, for track riders have made their way to Burbage Road, SE24, every Good Friday since 1903. An even more ancient Easter event is the annual rally of the Clarion clubs, generally held in Sheffield and consisting of a 25 championship followed by a great picnic. The Easter weekend offered a full programme of racing everywhere in the country. For some reason it was also regarded as the best time for family touring, though the paschal weather is often cold.

There were regional differences in the repeated festivities of the club cycling year and many local celebrations. I have been told tough stories about the way that Scottish cyclists rode to the Gordon Arms for their Burns Night reunion, passing the night in a large shed-cum-dormitory behind the famed hostelry before the dawn ride back to Glasgow or Edinburgh. There were other reunions and rallies at Cumnock in Ayrshire, Chigwell in Essex, Matlock in Derbyshire, Harrogate in Yorkshire and Mildenhall in Suffolk. These gatherings often take place on the weekend of August bank holiday. The biggest reunion is the York Rally, which occupies a weekend in June and was first held in 1945. Five hundred people were expected. Five thousand turned up. This event marked the beginning of the post-war cycling boom. The York Rally is still held every year, and many are the quarrels about its organisation and purpose.

In the mid-1950s I had begun to learn about such matters, and am still learning. Nobody gave me direct instruction about the culture of British cycling: I picked up my knowledge here and there. It was none the less good knowledge. I realised that it was important to know what cyclists valued. The lore of wheelmen was more interesting than the things that schoolteachers thought important. Difficult teenager that I was, I rejected many of the old ways and wanted change. Yet love for the bike encouraged me to listen to all sorts of tales that, on first hearing, seemed inconsequential or tedious. As, for instance, when dedicated cyclists spoke – with growing enthusiasm as spring turned to summer – of their future expeditions to the Isle of Man, where they would spend the week that includes the year’s longest day.

Why go every year to this small island in the middle of the Irish Sea? Here is my short version of the Isle of Man story. It takes us from the grass roots of British leisure riding to the heights of racing cycling; for on Mona we will meet Fausto Coppi, to this day the vital symbol of the sport; Louison Bobet, three times winner of the Tour de France; and Tom Simpson, who in 1967 would ride himself to death on the Ventoux mountain in Provence. One late June day in 1959 all three men were in Douglas, the Isle of Man’s unremarkable capital. And so were thousands of other cyclists. Here is an odd corner of our collective history, but an instructive one.

The Isle of Man has always been a cycling island, thanks I suppose to a certain backwardness and a tardy adoption of the motor car. There are 500 miles of lanes for the tourist. At least three clubs have looked after the native wheelmen. Racing was always popular and in former days there was a macadam track in Douglas’s Oucham Park. The person who made his native place into an international centre of cycling was a journalist, Curwen Clague. When he wasn’t on the bike Clague worked for the Isle of Man Examiner. Since he was a competent editor he was on terms with the island’s right-wing but eccentric government. Clague also knew the leaders of local industry. There wasn’t much money in fishing, nor in agriculture, so that industry was mainly tourism.

In the 1920s and 1930s there had already been contacts between the clubs in Man and their counterparts in Ireland and the British mainland. Merseysiders went to Man for holidays. Manx cyclists put their bikes on the ferries to compete in Cheshire and Lancashire. Curwen Clague saw how these cycling habits could be expanded. His idea was to promote a road race within the series of events that, since 1907, had given the Isle of Man its position in the world of motorcycle sport.

A harmless and maybe profitable venture, said the Tynwald, the Manx parliament. The island’s elders also offered to close the roads to other traffic on the day of the cycle race, which would never have happened on the mainland. Furthermore, massed-start racing was opposed, even forbidden, by the governing bodies of British cycling. Fortunately, the men of the House of Keys had no interest in the policies of the National Cyclists Union or the Road Time Trials Council. They would govern their own island as they wished. So, in 1936, the first of the Manx international road races was held on a course that had already been established by motorcyclists. A 37³/₄ mile circuit took riders from sea level at Douglas, first to Ramsey and then up a 5-mile climb to a point at 1,384 feet on the mountain of Snaefell. There was a thrilling descent before a return to the finish at Douglas. The winner of the race was a Birmingham man, Charlie Holland of the Midland Cycling and Athletic Club. In later years competitors have ridden this circuit three times, covering 113³/₄ miles.

From the height of Snaefell on a clear day it is possible to see the mountains of Mourne in County Down, more mountains in Galloway, yet more mountains in the Lake District and the peaks of Snowdonia in Wales. There is a theory that the Isle of Man has a share of four countries and possesses some of the character of each of them. It is hard to define such a mixed character. What data might we use for evidence? The names of the boarding houses that formerly gave a welcome to cyclists must tell us something. For the modern essence of Man is not in its agriculture or religion (Methodist), nor in anything preserved by the National Trust, since nothing at all on Man has attracted that Trust. It is rather in the wealth of small houses, terrace after terrace of them, that were lodgings for holidaymakers.

An abbreviation of my master list of their names goes as follows.

Ballasalla

Rosegarth

The Oban

The Winston

South View

Greg-Malin

Thiseldo

Stoneleigh

Woodside

Mannin

Annandale

Hollyrood (sic)

Ellesmere

Palatine

Wavecrest

A bit of mainland patriotism here, some Scottishness, a more pronounced hint of Ulster than of the Republic of Ireland, one or two remnants of the ancient Celtic tongue of the Manxmen. Palatine is an obscurely boastful name for a boarding house. These places of lodging have masculine-sounding names, with the exception of Thiseldo, which I think must be a contraction of ‘this will do’.

Also masculine and gritty are the indigenous family names of Man. Here were born the Caines, Cregeens, Crellins, Kermodes, Kewleys, Killips and Quayles. Once they worked the land and scratched for its sparse mineral deposits. Some went to sea in the herring boats. Then they entered the lodging-house business or were employed in catering, amusement arcades, dance halls and the adventurous network of electric railways.

After the war the pattern changed again. Agriculture and fisheries went into further decline. The native population decreased. Young people were the most likely to leave. The older people of Man were joined by retired couples from the surrounding four countries, who often supplemented their pensions by opening guest houses. Old British club cyclists were among this influx. They had enjoyed their Manx holidays and preferred to live in Douglas than in Liverpool. There is also an Italian community on the island. Most Manx Italians were in Douglas because they were interned there during the war. Then they saw no reason to return to mainland Britain, especially if they were in the catering businesses. Some of the Italians, like the Signorio family of the Mannin guest house, were cycling fans and took block bookings from clubs.

The British interned Italians; and the Germans kept Curwen Clague in a prisoner-of-war camp for the duration of the conflict. Back home and back on the bike, Clague used his demobilisation period to make plans for the future of cycling. The Manx holiday calendar worked by the week rather than by day trips. Clague saw the opportunity for six consecutive days of varied cycling events and realised his vision in the Manx Cycling Festival, which was to grow until the early 1960s. In the 1950s thousands of cyclists regularly packed into the steamers for their holiday in Douglas, Ramsey or Peel. By day they raced or toured. Each night they went to the dance halls or the pubs (which had notably long opening hours). Clague was certain that his festival should occupy the same week of every June. He was right. Under his direction ‘Isle of Man Week’ became cycling’s equivalent of the Lancashire Wakes Week or the Birmingham Industrial Fortnight, when so many factories were closed or operated at half strength.

Clague’s programme included time trials, team time trials, the long mountain time trial around the Snaefell circuit, kermesses, Britain’s only summertime hill climb, various holiday games and contests (‘Miss Bicycle Belle’) and of course the international road race. In 1946 it had a French winner, Jean Baldessari, who went on to a professional career and rode the Tour de France in 1950–1. A more notable winner at Douglas would be Ercole Baldini. He won in his last year as an amateur, 1956, and a couple of months later, even before he had signed professional forms, took the hour record on the Vel Vigorelli. In 1958 Baldini was the world professional road champion and also came first in the Giro d’Italia.

By 1959 there were continental professionals at the Isle of Man Week, with entries from France, Italy and Spain. The pros included Jacques Anquetil, Federico Bahamontes, Louison Bobet, Fausto Coppi, André Darrigade and Raphael Geminiani. The top men of the day, they arrived in state at the little airport at Castletown. They didn’t race hard, but at least they had come to the Isle of Man. Their presence pleased everyone, especially no doubt Jim Hinds of the Southern Roads CC, who won the international race in front of these legendary champions.

So, in the unlikely venue of the Isle of Man, some of us could feel that British and continental cyclists were becoming closer. But we were still British, in our old ways and modest aspirations. I remember 1959. It was my year of dreams. Bahamontes won the Tour. Alf Engers, of the Barnet CC at that time, reduced the British 25 record to 55.11. I was shaving my legs and doing 300 miles a week, fantasising about going to spend a week on the Isle of Man. What a steamer journey from Fleetwood to Douglas, chugging across the wide straits of Colwyn Bay … I imagined a place where tailless cats chased red squirrels, where I might meet a Bicycle Belle and perhaps ride in the lesser races. Fun and glory in the land of kippers and fairy lights! The plan came to nothing, like most of my cycling projects at that date and ever since.

On a bike you can go anywhere – and in my own book, if I wish, I can go on and on about the Isle of Man. Curwen Clague died in 1981, but his enterprise continues to this day. For some time the cycling festival has been directed by Desmond Clague and the annual ‘Curwen’s Race’ is ridden in his father’s memory. Long may it continue.

But now I return to the 1950s. My list of lodging houses tells me that the price of bed and breakfast on the Isle of Man was generally between 8s. 6d. and 12s. 6d. The steamer fare from Fleetwood to Douglas was 17s. The ferry would take your bike for an exorbitant 6s. Tandems cost an even more exorbitant 9s.

The prices I mention are part of our cycling story. Nearly everyone had to make prudent calculations in shillings and pence, either to race at any level or to go on holiday. Ours has been a sport for people who had to count money saved from their wages. Unlike some sports – athletics, rugby, rowing, tennis, cricket, boxing – competitive cycling never had any wealthy adherents. There were gentlemen amateurs during the short fashionable craze for cycling in the 1890s, but none thereafter. A handful of people made money from racing but there was no professional class. In the 1950s British cyclists were almost always employed in sound and unglamorous ways. I will describe their jobs in a moment. My point now is that they never had any spare money, cash that they could spend in a careless way.

All the same, there were signs that quite big money was almost within reach – money and glamour too. The Manx international race had such prestige. So many people wanted to see it that Curwen Clague used grandstands at the race finish on Douglas promenade. He was able to charge £6 for grandstand seats. That was about the cost of a week’s lodging in a Douglas boarding house – a pretty high price – but the stands were none the less filled. The fans were no doubt prepared to pay more to be near the continental stars, especially if they could mingle with them after the race, as often happened.

My fellow Brummie John Turner (Moseley Road Junior Art School and then of the Midland C & AC) has a telling story about the end of the international road event in 1959.

I had a short talk with Louison Bobet and André Darrigade at the end of a pro race in the IOM one year … Bobet was polite, immaculate, not a hair out of place, apologised that he needed to sponge himself down with Eau de Cologne before talking on the wall by the grandstand. Darrigade joined us looking very fierce and all I could see were his massive thighs and lower legs totally criss-crossed with varicose veins that stood out like ropes on his muscular limbs. Simpson came along … just out of sympathy I said … ‘remember what Bobet has been through’ (a major op to remove masses of pus from his back, taking seven hours of surgery). Without a change of expression Simo looked straight at me and said ‘Who cares a **** about Bobet?’

I can annotate John Turner’s reminiscence. By the time of Isle of Man week in late June of 1959 Tom Simpson had gone to France (with £100 in his pocket) and had been offered a professional contract. He was not in Douglas to compete in any of the races. Probably he just wanted to look at his future opposition. He was by nature a quick learner, had surveyed the continental scene and was not overawed. Simpson knew that Bobet’s career was over, or in its twilight. And this young man was competitive. Hence his uncouth remark to John Turner. There is another possible interpretation. Simpson may have been thinking of his hero Fausto Coppi, who was also on the Isle of Man. Here was a person whose racing days should have been concluded a couple of years before. But his prestige was immense. Although he had done nothing at all in the Man race the other riders rose to clap as Coppi entered the dining room of the Douglas Bay Hotel.