This is a great posting by Barrie that very accurately depicts the mindset of the British club cyclist in the 1950s! I lived in London at the time and our club runs were mostly in Hearts and Bucks, not hilly Somerset. Most of our time trials were up and down a dual carriageway (4-lane divided highway). Being in school at the time, I had to work hard at a paper route and delivering groceries to make the HP payments on my Claud. I remember a classmate, also in the club, who had a Dayton. Yes, some of the older, more well-heeled members made fun of it, but it was quite a light entry level bike for a kid. In those days the British were very class conscious, which included material things, like bikes. We tried to upgrade our bikes with bits that would make them look like a more expensive model. I was quite self conscious of the cheap Williams chainset my mid-range Claud came with, so I replaced the chainring with a Chater Lea, which looked a lot better from a distance. I also replaced the Pivo stem with a lugged chrome GB one, which had more class, even though it might have been heavier. There was a lot of snobbishness among the bike crowd. The club scene was roughly divided into three distinct groups, the tourists (CTC) at one end, who rode more of the bottom end bikes Barrie mentions, often with hub gears, and at the other end were the road racers (BLRC) who rode exotic continental bikes with 10 gears and, wore colourful jerseys and never carried saddle bags, only bonk bags. In between were the road clubs that did organized club runs, time trials and the odd closed circuit road race. These folks rode mostly British handmade lightweights. Today we recognize various brands of butted alloy steel frame tubing as being of similar high quality, but back in the 1950s people who rode British lightweights regarded "foreign" tubing, such as Columbus, with suspicion, Reynolds 531 being the only acceptable material. I think things have changed somewhat today.
-- John Betmanis Woodstock, Ontario Canada
barrie carter wrote:
> who told you all this rubbish about Flat Time Trials? The mere meaning of the words TIMED TRIAL, should tell you that it was a TEST over an out and home equidistant measured distance. I only en
> ver saw a flat one. round the reservoirs at Thames Ditton and that had more corners than a maze. All the time trials I road ,and that was many, were hilly, but most people rode fixed gear bikes in TTs and it wasnt until the late 50s that guys started to use gears. The fixie craze now on was the norm in the pre and post years.
> As for front changers, you dont seem to understand that these great lumps of iron you call lightweight, Dawes, Phillips, Raleigh, etc were complete rubbish and no club member would be seen dead on them. They never had front changers because most of them had 3 gears not 5 with great chunks of steel williams, phillips or Raliegh chainsets. If you wanted front changers, you were a club rider and had a lightweight that was hand made. The Dayton was another piece of junk that people rave about. None4 of these bikes were ever used by club riders .
> Dont also forget that just after the warf, we had a poor economy m most people had a bike, few had cars, we had petrol rationing too and cars were not made available to \joe Public until the mid 50s, so you rodce everywhere. Hence the suedo racer, Dawes, Dayton, NEVER Raleigh, or Hercules unless you were the local vicar, posty or copper, bikes like the Phillips Kingfisher, sold for 9 guineas[not your sort!] and was usually bought on finance. These old horses were sold with 3 gears and front changers were only fitted to lightweight european steeds.
> Dont EVER think that we only raod flat TTs. The UK may not be the Alps, but little of it is flat, and the organisers of such were sadists.
> Sorry for the lesson
> Barrie Carter Roundham in hilly somerset. UK