CTC Gazette, Vol 1922, No 1
Articles in this issue
- Editorial notes ridiculing R.A.C. secretary Sir Julian Orde's proposal to tax every wheel on the road, and reporting an Ashby-de-la-Zouch county court case in which a lady cyclist knocked off her machine in Coalville won damages. Also covers E. J. Burrow's Krysbal Glassine paper screen as a cure for headlamp dazzle, an inquest on a cyclist killed on the Nottingham–Castle Donington road, and Dr. T. Lindley's award of £25 to a dropped-handlebar cyclist run down by a motor cycle combination.
- C. W. Empson's wry guide to the Bath Road out of London — past the perilous 'Old Ladies of Kensington', through Brentford, Hounslow, Slough and Maidenhead Thicket to Reading — with preferred scenic alternatives via Egham and Wokingham, Windsor Great Park, Runnymede, and the lanes through Fifield, Waltham and Hurst.
- A famished Sunday cyclist on a Roman road is refused even bread and cheese by a pious farm-wife who 'never gives at the door', then is generously fed by a labourer's wife in the cottage opposite, beginning a friendship kept up by letter ever since.
- C. G. Harper on the etymology of place-names for touring cyclists: Isaac Taylor's 'howler' over Shotover near Oxford, the Wallop villages on the Exeter Road (from the Anglo-Saxon 'weallan', to well up), Sittingbourne's buried 'seething burn', and the hare-and-tun rebus of Watton in Norfolk.
- Lighting-up times and moon phases, the surviving turnpike toll at the Barbican Gate at Sandwich, Cornwall's prehistoric Stripple Stones, Cheesewring and Hurlers, and the ruined towers of Nether Hall near Roydon, Essex. Queries cover living costs in St. Malo, cycle-camping in Brittany with a school party, and touring South Africa, plus a recommendation for the Villa Constantia at Bordighera.
- John Hingeley traces the ancient ridge road climbing out of Redditch — the fish-hook and needle town — through Headless Cross and Crabb's Cross to Astwood Bank and the village of Arrow, with views of Bredon, the Malverns, Worcester and the Severn Valley, arguing such ridgeways are the oldest roads in the Midlands.
- Supplement to the Olympia Show report covering Dunlop's Magnum and racing tyres, the Healey-Shaw machine on the Bates stand, Leon Meredith's Constrictor tubulars and new Red Python, Palmer, Macintosh, Hutchinson and North British Clincher covers, Moseley and Bergougnan tyres, Kynoch's aluminium Roman rims, and repair sundries from Leicester Rubber, Goodrich, Chemico and Elephant.
- John Urry, in his fifty-sixth season and with over 200,000 miles ridden, reflects on the blessings of the bicycle, urges every member to recruit one friend and double the C.T.C.'s membership, celebrates the Irish renaissance as opening Killarney, Glengariffe, Glendalough and Connemara to tourists, and notes how cyclists and motorists now 'mix' better on road and in club.
- Asks whether the high-built 'Giraffe' safety bicycle still has a market, recounting the evolution from the Ordinary through the Xtraordinary, Facile, Kangaroo and Rover safety. The Giraffe's raised bracket gave immunity from side-slip and mud, but firms such as J. K. Starley and Co. and the New Howe Machine Co. of Glasgow found it arrived too late — only one complete example is known to survive.
- C. Edwardes recalls a February 1918 forty-mile ride, guided by the C.T.C. Handbook, to a remote coast village where the tiny 'Moon' inn's gentlewomanly landlady conjured astonishing meals — shoulder of mutton, raspberry pie and a silver tea-pot — amid wartime privation, oranges from a wreck washing up on the sands.
- Summarises an account in The Times by G. A. Pos, formerly C.T.C. Chief Consul for Holland, of Dutch cycling: unbroken files of commuters in Amsterdam's Leidschestraat, the 60,000-member General Netherlands Cyclists' League founded in 1883, some 1,500 miles of roadside cycle paths and 1,000 miles more laid across woods and fields in the Veluwe, Gooi and North Brabant.
- News notes: 'Wayfarer's' lantern lecture repeated at Birkenhead, the new Raleigh catalogue with Frank Patterson sketches, Foreign Consul W. G. Quigley's party to the Oberammergau Passion Play, Bartholomew's contour map of France, Humber price cuts, John Lawrie's evidence at the Tarbet–Crianlarich road enquiry, and the Birmingham and Midland D.A. annual dinner. Continues with secretary G. Herbert Stancer's rear-lights reply to a motorist ('The Essence of Safety') and the coming Lights on Vehicles Bill campaign.
- 'Wayfarer' draws 360 riders at Leeds, 750 at Liverpool, and visits Nelson, Leicester and Newcastle with 'The Lure of the Road'; whist drives at Birmingham and Sheffield; the Metropolitan D.A. annual dinner and its recovery of £5 damages for Miss B. Smith; South Hants road repairs won at Portsbridge; and the inaugural meeting of the new Oxford and Reading D.A.
- Letters include 'Wayfarer's' resolution to double the 10,000-strong membership in 1922, Chief Consuls on the Vale of Glamorgan ('The Garden of Wales') and Leicestershire's re-laid main roads, support for J. Foxley Norris's proposed cyclists' union, the running rear-lights controversy, a defence of the Metropolitan Hardriders' tests, and technical exchanges on electric lamps and accumulators.
- Extracts from members' letters accompanying 1922 subscriptions, praising the Gazette, the Handbook and the Rights and Privileges Committee — including a 42nd renewal from a 63-year-old member and a donation from a member whose charabanc claim the Club won in full.
- Subscriptions fall due January 1st (10s. full members, 6s. family and juvenile); councillors' attendance record for 1921; notice of the Oxford and Reading D.A. inaugural meeting at Barnett House, Oxford; and dates of D.A. annual general meetings from Nottingham and Manchester to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Glasgow.
- January fixture lists for the District Associations, including the Birmingham and Midland sections' runs to Kenilworth, Much Wenlock and Chipping Campden, Bristol and Gloucestershire's programme, Cardiff's speed-judging run to Newport, and Metropolitan, Sheffield and South Hants runs with meeting points, tea stops and leaders.