Vol 6, No 22
Articles in this issue
- Standing note that the latest hour for reception of copy for the Gazette is 6.0 p.m. on Tuesdays.
- Leader on the dull season: attendance at meets is disgracefully thin, members being away or detained by lawn tennis and river picnics, and only the District Captains turn up with clock-like regularity. For the Editorial department, however, August means doubled work with an empty tub, hence the appeal for members returning from tours to write up where they went and what they liked.
- The Editor announces three weeks ten miles from anywhere and twenty miles from anybody, leaving the Sub-Editor in charge at No. 35, Eastcheap with a nearly empty tub, and warns that unless copy arrives without delay "something awful will happen." Signed T. E. S.
- Obituary of Ernest Carr, who died of diphtheria at his residence at Guildford on Thursday 26th after a week's illness. A member since 1877 and an assiduous attender who once took the Attendance Prize, he had lately resigned on moving from Croydon to Guildford; some forty men of his volunteer corps rode from Guildford to his burial in the cemetery at Shirley.
- Repeat of the programme for Saturday 22nd September at 3.30 p.m., One Mile Club Handicap, Twelve Miles District Scratch on bona fide roadsters (three starters per District, eight meets qualifying), Half-mile Club Scratch and a 220 yards flat race for boys under 16. Entries close 17th September, members admitted free on their badge and outsiders for 1s. at the gates. Signed E. S. Price, Hon. Sec.
- District reports for 28th July: the N.W. rode from "Jack Straw's Castle" by Harrow and Pinner to Ickenham, stopping to see the old frescoes in Ruislip Church and taking tea at the "Coach and Horses"; the S.W., accompanied by A. Hawley in fine form and already training for the 1884 Bath ride, changed its Mickleham run at Leatherhead and went on to Cobham, returning by the "Bear," Esher; and thirteen S.E. men rode by Caterham and Godstone to East Grinstead for tea, songs and music.
- Table of meets for August, no run on 4 August for Bank Holiday, then South Weald, Chipping Barnet and a combined Walton-on-Thames meet; a joint Dewnham/Erith gathering of four districts; and Havering, Little Berkhampstead, Dartford, Guildford and Riverhead.
- R. M. Gruggen concludes his Rhine tour, riding from the Forest into Bale and the "Hotel Trois Rois," then by Rheinfelden, Stein, Laufenburg and the rope-ferry over the Aar to a Kaiserstuhl climbed at sunset and eight miles of dark riding to a cheap insect-ridden inn. Next day the party coasted "legs over handles" past the dozing frontier officers to Schafhausen, took a flat-bottomed boat to the rock in the Falls of the Rhine at Neuhausen, then went by rail to Zurich and the Uetliberg and home via Dieppe, where they watched Paris, Dieppe and "Clarence" club races, 407 miles awheel from Cologne to Schafhausen in eleven days.
- A route ridden in August 1882 and offered as an alternative to those given by H. H. S. and W. T. H., running from Stoke Newington by Clapton, Copper Mill Lane, Woodford, Chigwell and Abridge to Ongar and Chelmsford, where the "Saracen's Head" waiter conjured up a smoking sirloin, then by Braintree, Halstead, Sudbury ("Rose and Crown"), Bury St. Edmund's, Scole and Bungay to Beccles and Lowestoft. The writer recommends it over the main road by Romford and Ipswich, despite the Suffolk reapers' cries of "Gie us a largesse."
- Two letters: "Tricyclist" disputes "The Front Wheel Hub's" verdict that tricycle path racing is a fish out of water, citing the close handicap finish at Wisbech and arguing early bicycle racing was just as processional; and "Undine" mourns the Keston carp reported killed by the S.E. District Captain, quoting Pallas, Eleazar Block and Buffon on carp of ninety pounds and a hundred and fifty years to show that two feet round is almost diminutive.
- On Friday 27th Douglas Smith (London Bicycle Club) and F. R. Fry (Clifton B.C.) started at twenty-three minutes to ten to attack the hundred-mile record. Fry rode the whole distance without stopping, averaging about 3 min. 30 sec. a mile for 5hr. 50min. 5sec. and beating both the amateur and the professional record (6hr. 29min. 57sec.) by 39min. 5 4/5sec., with C. D. Vesey, J. D. Butler and F. L. Adam making the pace; Smith stopped at 41 1/2 miles and retired four miles later. Every mile past fifty is tabulated as a record.
- The Annual Paperchase of 28th July, mustered at Snaresbrook Station because the D.C. could not offer Whip's Cross. Weeks and Lloyd laid a line up the Woodford road by Monkham's Lane to Buckhurst Hill, Chigwell Lane and Golding's Hill to Theydon; Jolly and Sharman improved on the papered route, Forster gave up until the D.C., twenty minutes late, turned him back, and the pair worked out every inch of it before tea, songs and the piano at Abridge.
- "Porcupine" follows R. M. Gruggen, L. Potter and "Zulu" through Normandy, Dieppe to Rouen and Trouville, melons and flies, Potter's well-timed spill in the centre of Rouen, and Zulu asked to demonstrate mounting to the multitudes at Honfleur, and prints Gruggen's own account of the circular run by the Corniche road to Caen and Havre. Also the hares' derisive shout across an Epping Forest gorge, a private Bath ride planned by Brown, Francis and Gruggen, and "Every carp has its day."
- The Captain's sanctioned list under Rule 40: the Twenty-five Miles Championship at Taunton and the Hammersmith B.C. races at Stamford Bridge on 2 August, the W. Lancashire B.C. autumn sports at Liverpool, the North of England Cyclists' Meet races, and the Surrey B.C. at Kennington Oval on 15 September.
- A. L. Gruggen's address is now Moosomin, Manitoba, Canada, N.W.
- Contributions must be addressed to the Editor, L.B.C. Gazette, 35, Eastcheap, E.C., bear the author's name, be written on one side of the paper only, and reach the office by Tuesday evening if immediate insertion is desired.