INTRODUCTION
THE ‘GOLDEN AGE’ OF CYCLING – THAT’S RIGHT NOW, ISN’T IT?
Cycling has certainly experienced a striking renaissance at all levels of riding in the last two decades. The unprecedented success at the Olympics and World Championships, and dominance of the Tour de France, has catapulted cycling to new heights of popularity and made household names of the cycling superstars of Hoy, Wiggins, Froome, Trott, Kenny and Boardman. Who would have thought 20 years ago that a cyclist would have the same marketing status as a Premier League footballer and would lift the coveted BBC Sports Personality award three times in the last decade?
This success has filtered down to all levels from the resurgent home Tours and an increase in amateur club cycling to a huge upturn in leisure and commuters cycling for the pure exhilaration of being on the open road or track. According to a British Cycling report over two million Britons cycle every week, a level never seen before. The Tour of Britain has really captured the imagination of the public who have given enormous support to a Tour which previously had been and gone through towns without much of a fuss. The Tour of Britain finishing in my home town of Blyth in Northumberland was the highlight of the year and brought the town to a standstill.
The only downside to modern day urban cycling in Britain is the perceived danger of cycling with the high level of motorised road users. Cycle paths have certainly helped but there’s nothing like taking to the open road and cycling along the highways and byways of this beautiful nation. This was the utopia that Charles James Pope experienced in the years after the First World War to the middle of the 1930s. The perfect storm of more leisure time due to changes in the working week, improved and more reliable bicycles and an upsurge in the popularity of exploring the country alone or in a club creating the first golden age of cycling.
Charles returned from his service during World War One and fell in love with the ability to leave the stress of the working week in London behind and head out to adventures and exploration of the unspoilt beautiful towns and villages of rural England. The simple pleasure of cycling on a three gear bike with a Bartholomew map and the latest copy of the Cycling Tourist Club handbook to hand was all Charles needed to be happy and content. Charles’ love of cycling was shared by the masses and the popularity of being part of the emerging cycling clubs made cycling the recreational craze of the time.
There was something quaint and romantic about the freedom of cycling from village to village only interrupted by a beer and a feed at a country pub at a pace you could appreciate the rustic rural life. The only horsepower Charles usually came across was the loyal Shire ploughing the fields or pulling the carts along the country lanes. However, the increased pace of life and ‘advancement’ is never far behind and Charles knew this life was changing with the advent of the increasing numbers of motor cars and the apparatus and support network the combustion engine needed.
Charles, throughout his diaries, made no secret that he greatly disliked the motor car and usually those who drove these vehicles. The need for new roads, stronger bridges, petrol stations was changing the land Charles knew so well and that it would change his cycling paradise forever. Looking back Charles was fortunate that he was the last generation of cyclists who could cycle without the noise and pollution the combustion engine brought upon the land. The freedom that cycling gave the working classes was soon to be taken over by the popularity of car ownership.
This interwar period was definitely the first golden age of cycling and Charles certainly made the most of it. Not only was it his route to freedom but it became his social life and would eventually be the catalyst to leave his bachelor days behind and married his beloved Doris.
I am grateful that I managed to find Charles’ diaries and photographic albums at an auction a few years ago and began the journey getting to know the man through his cycling tours of England and Wales in the 1920s and 1930s. I think anyone who has cycled will appreciate his writing and observations of life on two wheels. I am fortunate enough to live in an outstanding area of countryside and have cycled many thousands of miles through Northumberland on, at times, quiet and peaceful country lanes watching the change of seasons and vistas from my Raleigh Pioneer saddle. Although we are many years apart, I feel a certain kinship with Charles, and I hope after reading Charles’ accounts of his cycling adventures you will too.
Shaun Sewell
Northumberland