I bought my first Ordnance Survey map in about 1972. It was the old 1-inch series (with the red cover), and my house appeared in the bottom right corner of Sheet 94, the Preston map. I quickly realised that I also needed sheet 95 (Blackburn and Burnley), sheet 100 (Liverpool) and sheet 101 (Manchester) because of the position of Whittle-le-Woods. It annoyed me that I had to buy four maps (at 44p each!), but at least this allowed me to travel twenty-odd miles in any direction and still have the comfort of a map. I loved reading these maps, and spent hours planning bike rides to various destinations to view in real life the symbols depicted on paper. I think it was Christmas 1972 when I received a Huret speedometer which I could fit to my bike. It was a mechanical device that showed the speed (up to 40 mph) and included an odometer, and it was this, working with the maps, that was the catalyst for my many early cycling adventures.
At that time, the Automobile Association published an annual guide which also contained a UK road atlas. On the inside cover there was a matrix listing all the major towns along both the horizontal and vertical axes thus allowing the mileage between the towns to be read off at the intersection of each axis. I thought that this was very clever and therefore decided to develop my own matrix, although I would just include towns and villages around Lancashire. To populate the chart required me to cycle to a village or town, note my odometer reading, cycle by the shortest route to another location and record the mileage between the two. Once home, I would add this information to the matrix, and gradually build up my own mileage calculator. Needless to say that I never finished it, since the chart was simply far too ambitious. I may still have it somewhere in the recesses of the loft.
In later years, I bought a cheap map measurement tool that solved the mileage issue for me. This simple device could be rolled along a route on a 1-inch map and it would indicate the mileage on a small dial between two points. This became invaluable in later years when I began cycle touring, and I still have the device, although have no need to use it any more.
In the early 1970s, I cycled for miles carefully recording the distances I travelled using the odometer on the speedo. The machine itself was rather temperamental and I remember getting quite upset with it even on Boxing Day because my small fingers weren’t strong enough to prise apart the bike’s front forks to allow me to fit the mechanism onto the wheel. When it was finally fitted, the flexible steel drive cable regularly came loose and I remember becoming very frustrated with the mechanism. The final mileage on the device showed 4198 miles which was in November 1974. I am not sure where it is now; I’m sure that I wouldn’t have thrown away that piece of my treasured history, but I haven’t seen it for years.
My love of maps continued to grow, and once the 50,000 series (now called Landranger) were introduced in the mid 1970s, I had to replace my old maps with new ones. I bought the relevant maps for the area whenever I was planning a cycling trip and would spend hours reading them and planning routes. I still enjoying reading an Ordnance Survey map to obtain a visual understanding of the terrain. I currently have over fifty 50,000 series maps, which are now seriously out of date, but will always provide an invaluable record of the changing landscape and growth of towns.
I find that reading the maps that I grew up with instantly transports me back to a simpler time. For me, there’s a genuine pleasure to open the leaves of a map and re-live the feelings that inspired me to go cycling to see for real what the maps were telling me.
It was this desire to explore my local countryside that got me into cycling. My bike was simply a means of getting around the district, as initially I had no specific interest in cycling itself. I went cycling on my own more often than not, but at the weekend, I would cycle with whoever was free – most of my friends were quite willing to come with me anywhere – and we used to travel surprising distances. I remember in 1974 cycling to Blackpool with Dave Coxhead to see the DJ Dave Lee Travis who was touring the UK with the Radio 1 Roadshow. The following day, the same Roadshow was in Southport, and although Dave couldn’t accompany me this time, I set off on my own to join the crowds and see the same people once more. That was something like 100 miles in two days, and it was probably typical of what I was doing at that time without a second thought. I often came home from school, had my tea and then went out on the bike for goodness knows how far. One day I noticed on a map that the M61 crossed the A6 near Swinton in a series of flyovers which looked interesting, so I cycled down to see it. It was a 36 mile round trip, and I didn’t set off until after tea at around 6pm.
I got my first new bike for my birthday in April 1973. It was a red BSA with straight handlebars and a Sturmey Archer three-speed rear hub. It had a white saddlebag when I got it as well as front and rear lights powered by four SP2 batteries (now called D cells) which would have weighed almost as much as the bike. It was entirely steel – frame, handlebars, cranks, rims, brakes, seat post, the lot – and very heavy. It even had a steel chain guard! At some stage, I fitted a ‘bottle’ type dynamo to power the lights to save having to buy batteries. This wasn’t very reliable, especially in the wet and had the added disadvantage of extinguishing the lights whenever the bike stopped. All my mates had similar machines, and even the ‘racers’ (a term used to describe any bike with dropped handlebars) would have weighed a similar amount. This bike lasted into the late 1970s and received abundant repairs during its life.
On one tour, I was in the Yorkshire Dales when the machine began to handle oddly. When I inspected it, I found that the headstock (the bit at the front of the frame which supports the forks) had developed a crack. If I didn’t get it fixed urgently, the forks could fall off with potentially disastrous consequences. I called into a garage and asked whether they could do anything. Nowadays, I suspect that the answer would be a straightforward ‘no’, but then, a friendly mechanic offered to weld it up for me. This was a great advantage of having a steel frame. In half an hour, I was back on the road with just a bit of paint missing from the front and a rather lumpy welded repair. I never had any more trouble with the frame. I don’t think I even paid the mechanic, but he must have earned great karma from that small act of kindness.
Mick Sutton and I had planned to go on a cycle tour of the Yorkshire Dales immediately after we had finished our O-levels in July 1975. Well, Mick did all the planning, and I just tagged along with him. We set off from his home in Blackburn and cycled to Mick’s aunties in Carnforth for the first overnight stop. I’ve no idea why – it wasn’t even remotely on the route. The next day, we made our way across to Stainforth youth hostel, just north of Settle. From there, we moved onto hostels in Kettlewell, Garsdale Head and Grinton Lodge, having a glorious time in the beautiful weather.
We had pre-booked the hostels on the tour, paying around 50p per night for accommodation and £1.15 for all meals, including a packed lunch. Hostels in those days required members to carry sheet sleeping bags (or they could be hired for additional cost). My mum made me one, which I hauled round the route along with a wash kit (including towel), spare clothes and tools. I didn’t have cycling clothes as such, just normal clothes which I continued to wear in the evening. I must have stunk, but I never realised. Mick was even worse, because I don’t think that he even brought any spare socks. I have a photograph of him washing his only pair in the River Wharfe near Kettlewell.
The weather was hot and sunny all week, and although the hostels were no more than 25 miles apart, we did not travel by the most direct route. Instead, we took numerous diversions to seek out sights along the way. We would frequently leave our bikes behind a hedge and go off on foot to explore the countryside, seeking out waterfalls (or forces, as they are known locally), and any other feature on the map that took our fancy. I clearly remember visiting Hardraw Force near Hawes, and making my way behind the drop of the waterfall. I don’t know how we managed this because nowadays (and probably then), the waterfall is on private land, and can only be accessed through a pub and by paying an entrance fee. I’m sure that we didn’t pay any fee, but perhaps my comprehensive map-reading ability (and a willingness to jump over/under fences and ignore ‘no entry’ signs) allowed us to sneak in the back way.
Garsdale Head youth hostel was interesting. In the handbook it was classified as a ‘simple’ hostel (others were ‘standard’, ‘superior’ or ‘special’) and was extremely basic, even by the standards of the day. An extract from the 1975 YHA Handbook reads:
“Position: 1¼m due N of the Moorcock Inn on slopes of Lunds Fell marked ‘Shaws’ on 1-in. OS maps. Leave cycles in shed at bottom of drive near river; cross footbridge over river, through graveyard and farmyard and up fell side to hostel. Stands on 1250ft contour. OS 90. GR 976947. Bart 34, 35.”
As the handbook hinted, the hostel was a mile from the nearest road and halfway up a fell. There was no heating (not necessary in July anyway) and it had gas lighting. I clearly remember leaving the bikes after cycling along a dirt track through a forest, then hauling our bags up a very steep climb to the hostel. Giving a grid reference was necessary because there were very few signposts. It closed in 1983.
The hot weather was to bring about an early end to the trip, however. We had cycled from Hawes over the Buttertubs pass (diverting, of course, to see the famous buttertubs potholes which gave the pass its name) and the intense heat was melting the tar on the road. (How come this doesn’t happen any more?) I remember the descent being difficult with the tar sticking to our tyres, but once we were safely down, we headed east along Swaledale. Unfortunately, probably due to the tar, Mick lost control on a bend in the village of Muker and scraped along the ground, badly grazing his arm and shoulder. We managed to get a lift to Grinton Lodge youth hostel where the warden took pity on us, and drove Mick to a local doctor who cleaned him up. I had called my mum and explained the situation we were in, and thankfully my brother Tony still owned a van and he very kindly drove out to rescue us the following night.
In 1975, all youth hostels were closed between 10am and 5pm so we weren’t allowed to stay in the property, but the warden allowed us to accompany him as he went about his business. We were driven to a neighbouring hostel at Keld, and I remember having tea and biscuits there and chatting to the warden.
I still look back on that trip as one of my favourites, even though it nearly ended disastrously, it clearly planted the seed in my head for taking future cycle touring holidays. Significantly, however, since then I have always toured alone.
I had ridden the red BSA bike since I was 14 and even now, the mileage I covered still impresses me. I was always a methodical child, and since I had an odometer, each day I would record in my diary the mileage ridden. I have recently transcribed these data into a spreadsheet (you’ll soon come to realise that this is what I do!), and I can now see that in 1973 I cycled 2485.8 miles. Notice that I didn’t say around two and a half thousand miles, but two thousand, four hundred and eighty-five point eight miles exactly. I did that in 105 separate rides (which gives an average of 23.7 miles per ride), most of them on the BSA bike. I didn’t keep a diary in 1975, which I now regret, since I’ve no formal record of the mileage ridden during that year. It was probably between two and three thousand, although could well have been more. I covered almost 12,000 miles between 1976 and 1978, with only about 30% of that being due to commuting.
It would have been in 1973 that I gained a ‘sponsor’ for my cycling. Ted Kelly lived on Carleton Road (where I subsequently bought my first house), and since he retired, he had been seeking new interests. He was 65 when he first began to talk to me about cycling. He gave me copies of ‘Cycling’ magazine and told me of his many adventures as a young man. He was born in South Wales, (near Swansea, I think) and moved north looking for work, probably in the early 1930s. He was a builder by trade, and had helped build the houses on Carleton Road, one of which he subsequently bought. Throughout his life, his wife, Sadie, managed his money, and when she died (in January 1974), Ted was apparently very surprised at how much money she had saved, about which he knew nothing. With his new-found wealth, he bought himself a new car (Austin 1100) and treated himself to luxuries never previously allowed. I was to be a recipient of this since he also bought a second-hand racing bike that I don’t believe he ever rode, but instead lent to me. I felt bad about riding it, because the bike was very valuable, and neither I, nor indeed my parents, could ever afford to pay him for it. Ted insisted that I was only borrowing the bike, however, and he encouraged me to ride it all the time. He was a great friend to me over the years, and it was a shock to me when he died in 1981 aged just 73. My dad told me that a few weeks earlier Ted had confided in him that he was ‘in queer street’, so his death may have been timely.
One problem with Ted’s bike was its running costs. This may seem surprising, but it was a serious racing machine with sprint wheels and tubular tyres. The latter were very popular with racing cyclists because the tyre and inner tube were stitched together as a single unit, and the whole thing was glued onto the very shallow wheel rim. The entire tyre could be replaced at the roadside in a matter of seconds which was invaluable if a cyclist suffered a puncture during a race. My problem was that tubs (as tubular tyres were known), were generally not repaired, but simply replaced. They cost about £4 each in the mid 70s, when an adult weekly wage would be about £40. In today’s equivalent prices, they would cost about £50, way beyond the amount a schoolboy could afford. Each time I got a puncture, I’d tell Ted, and he would simply hand over a new tyre. I felt dreadful at receiving such charity, but couldn’t do anything about it.
I occasionally tried to mend the tubs, but was never very successful. The process required the cotton stitches to be unpicked near to where the puncture was, extract the thin inner tube, patch it, then stitch the tyre back around it. This worked, but I could never get the stitches tight enough, so when the tyre was re-inflated to around 100psi, there was always a slight bulge where the new stitches were pulling. This could be felt as a rhythmic bumping as the tyre rotated, and was very unpleasant. I may have had six or more punctures per year, so you can imagine the size of the problem.
The bike itself was made by Peugeot and weighed about 21 lbs (9.5 kg). It had a very short wheelbase and was designed for speed. It used Reynolds 531 steel tubing, sprint wheels with Mavic rims, Simplex gears, Mafac ‘Racer’ brakes, Stronglight cranks and a Brooks Professional saddle. The gearing comprised a 52/45 double chainring at the front and 14-18 cassette at the rear, giving a 100 inch top and 67 inch bottom gear. For the hills round home, the bottom gear was hopeless, but for flat time trials, the close-ratio gears were great. The bike itself, although very lightweight and of great pedigree, had at some stage been in a crash because it never rode ‘true’. The steering always pulled to the left, making cycling with no hands almost impossible. It also meant that whenever anyone else rode the bike, they were amazed how I could ride it, but I just grew used to it. The bike wasn’t mine, and I certainly wasn’t going to complain to Ted that the bike needed repairing. To be honest, I doubt that it could have been repaired, since I suspect that the frame itself was twisted. I rode the bike until 1984 when my life began to change. I stopped cycling altogether in November 1985 and hardly rode again for over 15 years.
I started riding the Peugeot in March 1975 and would have spent the next three months getting used to the machine before my first time trial in June. Mick Sutton also entered and we cycled the Clitheroe – Settle – Clitheroe race on Thursday 19th June. At 32.5 miles, it was a non-standard distance and I completed the event in a time of 1:31:47 – 21.25 mph. This was a very good time for my first ever race. It was the equivalent of completing a 25-mile race in 1:10:35, and on a hilly course too! Mick didn’t finish, but I don’t actually remember what happened to him. He would have been riding on his normal bike, so it wouldn’t have been a fair contest. When I look back now, I am amazed that I was allowed to enter. My last O-level exam was on 26th June, yet I went off on my first cycle race a week before. It’s hardly surprising that I didn’t do very well in my O-levels with that level of commitment. As the quote goes, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”.
My first ‘real’ time trial was on 6th September 1975 when I returned a respectable 26:38 in the Larkhill Wheelers ‘10’ near Ormskirk. My next race was in March the following year when I entered a ‘25’ at Garstang. This day started badly, and didn’t improve. I was supposed to be racing at 08:09 (riders set off at one minute intervals), and Ted Kelly only picked me up at 07:45. It’s a twenty mile journey, so obviously, I was late. I managed to set off in place of rider number 20 (who failed to start) and quite soon had a puncture. I fixed this and set off once more but then made a very basic error. I was pedalling round a bend in Garstang village when I rode too close to the kerb and caught my pedal which launched me skywards. I landed on the front wheel, which promptly buckled and deposited me in a bruised and grazed heap on the tarmac. Obviously, I never finished the race since the wheel was ruined and I needed a replacement pedal, which was damaged too.
Despite such an inauspicious start, I raced regularly for about five years, never reaching what I would call a good standard. I loved riding, but disliked the inevitable hard work and hours of training that I needed to complete to achieve the results I craved. My best times were 25:11 for a ‘10’ (23.82 mph) and 1:6:01 for a ‘25’ (22.72 mph) both achieved in 1979. I last raced in March 1984. I never raced in a mass-start event, sticking to time trials at either ten or twenty-five miles. I did race a fifty once, but I am too embarrassed to admit my time. Needless to say, I ran out of energy a long way from the finish and rode the last few miles barely above a walking pace.
I was a member of Horwich Cycling Club for over 12 years, joining in November 1973 with Ted Kelly. I never knew why he chose to join Horwich; I don’t think that he knew anyone there. Ribble Valley CRC was much closer, or even Preston CC. Horwich was a successful racing club and that is where Ted’s interests lay, so I expect that was his reasoning. Looking back, I must have been a disappointment to him since I made no impact whatsoever in the racing world. I used to go on training rides with the club, but I invariably got ‘dropped’ at some stage. I always felt that I was at a disadvantage, however, since Horwich CC generally started their rides from Horwich, or Rivington, so I’d often covered eight miles before they’d even started. I once did an early season reliability ride round the Trough of Bowland which was posted as 77 miles, but for me, it turned out to be over 100, and much of that I did on my own, because the ‘alpha males’ all left me behind. On a Thursday evening training ride I’d very often find myself alone in Southport, or Parbold when I couldn’t keep up with the group. I believe there are still some cycling clubs who act like that, but nowadays, someone will generally look out for the slower riders and accompany them home. Back in those ‘macho’ days, even though I was only 16 or 17, no-one was concerned whether I’d arrived home safely and wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere. The world has changed.
Overall, I enjoyed my time at Horwich, and one of the most memorable occasions was when I supported a club member, Mick Coupe, in his bid to beat the Lands End to John o’ Groats cycling record. The support team comprised five vehicles and about a dozen people since the Road Time Trials Council rules stated that only one vehicle per hour in the support team could pass the cyclist on the road. This meant that to provide regular food and drink, and if necessary give directions, the support vehicles needed to find an alternative route to get past the cyclist. This usually meant haring round side streets in towns, or finding lanes in the country that ran roughly parallel to the route.
Once we received news that Mick had set off at noon on 28th June 1982, I set off from Chorley at 12:30, in a yellow Toyota Hiace van to pick up two other support crew members and drive to the south of Bristol where we would take over from a crew who would then get some rest. After our first successful feed, we made a hectic dash through rush-hour Bristol to get in front once more in time for the next feed. We soon got into our rhythm, leap-fogging Mike through the night until we handed over to another team near Holmes Chapel in Cheshire. We then drove up to Chorley to sleep for a few hours. We were in bed by 05:45, and got up again at 10:50 to head north, making contact with Mick 15 miles south of Edinburgh. We supported him through the city, over the Forth Bridge and past Perth before shooting off to Pitlochry for some food. This was before mobile phones, but we had CB (citizen’s band) radios which served a similar purpose, but the messages were ‘broadcast’ rather than being personal to an individual.
We continued feeding Mick through the next night, and my claim to fame is that I was one of the first people ever to drive over the Kessock bridge near Inverness. The bridge was completed, but since it hadn’t been handed over to the highways authority, Mick had to gain special permission to cycle over it with his support crew. It was still like a building site, and I remember driving close behind Mick about 4am using full beam, side by side with the timekeeper’s vehicle to light the way through all the miscellaneous débris. I’ve never been over the bridge since, even though a cycling event in 2015 gave an option to cycle across. On that occasion, I chose a different route and missed it. (It was blowing a hoolie at the time, so I don’t really regret missing the experience.)
Mick beat the record, having finished the ride in 46 hours, 39 minutes and 50 seconds, 43 minutes faster than the previous record set in 1979. Sadly, he never made it into the Guinness Book of Records, since later that summer John Woodburn broke Mick’s record, and his name was entered into the record books until 1990.
Mick was a superb athlete. In 1982, there were no aerodynamics, no scientific training or nutrition and certainly no drugs. Just a lightweight steel bike and sheer bloody-mindedness. And a great support team, of course.
| Year | Rider | Time |
| 1958 | Dave Keeler | 51hr 9min |
| 1958 | Reg Randall | 49hr 58min |
| 1965 | Dick Poole | 47hr 46min |
| 1979 | Paul Carbutt | 47hr 23min |
| 1982 | Mick Coupe | 46hr 39min |
| 1982 | John Woodburn | 45hr 3min |
| 1990 | Andy Wilkinson | 45hr 2min |
| 2001 | Gethin Butler | 44h 4min |
[Mick Coupe gave an insightful interview with the Road Records Association in 2020. Click below to hear it.