The Bike Ride

Vic Robinson turned up at my house with his Sisters bicycle, it certainly had seen far better days, and it was in sorry state, perished tyres, rusty chain, no gears and no brakes. We did the best we could, pumped up the tyres, oiled the chain and took the front mud guard off.

The reason for taking the mud guard off was to gain access to the bare tyre with the sole of your shoe. This made a very effective brake but had to be applied with extreme caution, especially on steep hills. Many a friend had been launched like a stone from a catapult in this manner. Landing was unpredictable and injuries ranged from a badly dented ego to a lot worse. My cousin Les Smith went for the more serious injury. Whitfield hill was long and steep, and 30MPH was easily attained on the long descent, knowing Les he was probably going a lot faster when he went over the handlebars. Owing to the velocity of his bike, Les never had time to save himself, and managed to hit the ground face first. He spent several days in hospital and in the following years he had repeated operations to his nose and mouth. I must say that it didn’t improve his looks and it didn’t stop us modifying our bikes either, break shoes took on a new meaning.

A few days earlier, Vic and I decide we were fed up with local rides, so we decided to venture further a field, Dungeness was the goal and 22 miles seemed a bit of a challenge. Our dilapidated bikes didn’t deter us; we set of with nothing more than a couple of apples and bags of enthusiasm.

Just leaving Dover town we approached an old man sitting on a wall near the horse trough. In those days it was quite common to see old men passing the time of day sitting on a wall. ‘Where you two off to then,’ he asked in his rural accent. ‘Dungeness’ we replied in unison. The man laughed so much he nearly fell off the wall into the garden behind. We were fifty yards down the road by the time the old man had composed himself enough to shout, ‘good luck, you’ll need it on those bikes.’ What did he know?

Just down the road a bit was Dunfords greengrocers, Vic went in and distracted the owner by asking spoof directions, and I deftly stole two apples. I wasn’t too fussy; I just stole the biggest ones which just happened to be Bramley’s. Boy was they sour.

We reached Folkestone in an hour and Hythe in two; this looked as though it was going to be a piece of cake. Dymchurch flew by and as we were approaching New Romney when my chain snapped, I could here the old man laughing.

New Romney had a hardware shop and we stopped outside, neither of us had any money. The owner came out and asked us what the problem was, where we came from, and where we were going to, he didn’t laugh when we told him, but had a look on his face I wasn’t familiar with. To our great surprise the man repaired the chain and told us to, 'go forth and multiply' a polite way of explaining his farewell remark.

Home! There was no way we were going home yet, we only had another four or five miles to go. Two miles down the Lydd straight Vic got a puncture, needless to say we didn’t have a repair kit or a pump. It would have been too embarrassing to go back to the hardware store.

Now I remember someone saying, that in an emergency you could stuff a punctured tyre with grass and still ride it. Getting the tyre off wasn’t easy, getting grass in was even harder, and getting the tyre back on was almost impossible. We prevailed and Vic managed to ride for a mile, I couldn’t understand why he was swerving all over the place until it was my turn. Trying to pedal was like going up the steepest of hills and steering was like being in deep mud. We carried on undaunted.

The journey so far had taken four hours; it was going to be a long way home.

It took us six hours to get back to Dover, half riding, half walking, and very sore bums caused by a combination of saddle soreness and the cooking apples working overtime on our bowels. The old man wasn’t there when we went passed his wall, but I’m sure I heard him laughing.

Years after our bike ride, I recalled the look that the store owner had given us, it was incredulity. He must have thought we were mad, had he seen us shuffling home at two miles an hour with the tyre stuffed with grass; he would have been convinced of it.