Vol 5, No 23
Articles in this issue
- The standing note that the latest hour for reception of copy for the Gazette is 5.30 p.m. on Tuesdays.
- As the Editor will be out of town for the next two weeks, members are asked to send their matter up as early as possible to facilitate the work of his substitute.
- District Captain Arthur E. Buckler announces that next Saturday's run is to Oatlands Park to meet the West, stopping at the "New Inn" on the left-hand side of the road near the park gates, and hopes members well up in geological science will join the projected expedition to the Caves.
- The first ties, and in some cases the second, have been played off, but results will be withheld until a complete return can be made; members will be told their opponents by post card, and the venue of the closing ties published so that others can watch. Communications to Alfred Barker or H. N. Sharp, Croydon.
- J. W. Alison's account of a four-day Easter tour through nine South Midland counties with E. H. Hindley and A. H. Koch. From Hendon by Brockley Hill and Watford to the "King's Arms," Berkhampstead, then Aylesbury, Winslow and Aynho-on-the-Hill, where Koch's front wheel blew over and was buckled beyond the village blacksmith's help and a spare "Humber" had to be telegraphed for to Warwick; on over Edgehill to Warwick Castle, Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon, Worcester and Malvern, the 1,086-foot Broadway ascent, Burford, Witney and Oxford, and home by Reading, nearly 300 miles.
- D. R. Smith of 9, Morden Road, Blackheath offers a 54-inch close-built "Matchless" with plated spokes, head and spring, new in the middle of last season and scarcely ridden, with two lamps and two pairs of treadles, for £12.
- Three weeks of district rendezvous tabulated: Cheshunt for the N.E., Oatlands Park for the W. and S.W. and the Downs for the two S.E. divisions; then Chigwell and West Drayton; then Havering, Shenley, Ripley and Bletchingley, with the N.E. starting from Lea Bridge Road and Syborn's Corner and the Blackheath division from the "Hare and Billet" and Lewisham Church.
- "Goethe" claims to be the first correspondent actually to have ridden a dandy horse, fifteen or sixteen years ago about a garden of grass and gravel hills. He describes the machine, two 2 ft. 3 in. wooden wheels with iron rims, a wooden backbone, a steering handle, a cloth cushion and a two-foot elbow pad, and no brake, and the "seven-league-boot" sensation of propelling it by alternate kicks. He had meant to bring it to a Club meet this season, but a search revealed only two wheels, a handle and the semblance of a fork.
- "One Who Was There" reports the Sixth Annual North of England Meet: 735 bicyclists and 42 tricyclists in the procession, and the camp started last year proving the great attraction, with the L.B.C. keeping a dwelling of its own among the tents. Four London men attended, two of whom rode down from town, and the best of the racing on a bad grass course was the two-mile Yorkshire Championship, won by Tolson by about a yard from J. W. Greenwood of the Leeds Crescent B.C.
- Under Rule 40 the Captain sanctions the Crystal Palace Co.'s Challenge Cup and the Norwich Sports on 17th August, and the Ipswich B.C., Beckenham B.C. and Ravensbourne A.C. meetings at Ladywell on the 19th. A cutting from the Standard follows, reporting the Cuckfield Petty Sessions summonses against John Thorogood, driver of the Brighton coach, for not keeping to the left, and its guard Edward Spencer for assaulting the Brighton bicyclist John Chapman.
- The letters column for the week, opening Gerard F. Cobb's Swiss series and continuing with W. Silk, junr., of 8, Long Acre recommending the Rhine roads from Cologne to Strasburg with a list of hotels at Bonn, Andernach, Coblentz, Frankfort, Darmstadt, Heidelberg and Baden-Baden, and "Viator" proposing an Annual General Meet every August Bank Holiday at Harrow or Virginia Water so that the S.E. could ride to a northern meet without taking the train.
- Gerard F. Cobb of the C.U.Bi.C., writing from the Thunerhof, Thun, begins a practical account of the "Bicyclists' Paradise" for riders who mean to follow his tracks with Dufour's ordnance map. He insists a ratchet fixing to spoon or roller brake is indispensable on the long hills, details sending his 50-inch "Club" from Cambridge to Bâle by Great Eastern goods for 8 francs 85 centimes and the customs "free pass" against a ten per cent. deposit, and gives his first route table, Bâle to Rheinfelden and back by the two banks of the Rhine.
- C. R. Hutchings, L.B.C., in a letter reprinted from a contemporary, argues that bicycles are unfairly handicapped against tricycles on hills by their gearing: driving wheels of 52 inches and upwards with cranks of only 4 3/4 to 5 1/2 inches against the tricycle's 46-inch wheels and 5 1/2 to 6-inch cranks. Fit a 46-inch wheel with 6 1/2-inch cranks into a crack rider's "Humber" or "D.H.F." and try Reigate or Muswell, he says, and little more would be heard of the tricycle's superiority.
- "Rambler" puts Keith-Falconer's defeat at Surbiton down to sheer inability to stay a terrible early pace, the four-mile record beaten by four seconds before Cortis got away in the sixth, and notes that the only records still standing this year are Falconer's two miles and Cortis's five and twenty-one to twenty-five miles. Cortis married the day after his Surbiton success and sails shortly for Australia, with a farewell dinner at the Holborn Restaurant on the 17th; and E. Chant rode up River Hill after a hilly forty or fifty miles, witnessed by R. B. Hough and E. D. Sewell.
- Members requiring back numbers are asked to write to the Publishers of the Gazette, 35, Eastcheap, E.C., instead of to the Editor.
- The standing note: contributions to "The Editor, L.B.C. Gazette, 35, Eastcheap, E.C.," bearing the author's name, written on one side of the paper only, and received by 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday for immediate insertion.