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Oliver Schick
I cannot understand why the first picture loaded perfectly but the second one won't work. Maybe I'll try later on.
In the meantime, here's the text to go with the photo:
Willesden to Kislingbury (near Northampton)
A main road bash, onto the Watling Street (A5) at Edgware, and just keep going for 60 miles, with another 5 miles of lane at the far end.
You’re probably thinking ‘The old boy’s gone off his rocker – why on earth do such a hellish ride?’
Well, I knew I was going to get a lift home, and this gets me away from the rather over familiar territory where I normally ride. Apart from that I have a feeling at the back of my mind that cycling is something to do with transport, so making a journey to a place some distance away can feel better than going round in circles, as we so often do (Minet/ Regents Park). The A5 is not the worst main road to ride on as it runs close to the M1, so traffic is relatively light, and it’s not monotonous since it rolls up and down through some attractive country and ancient towns (Dunstable, Towcester). Unfortunately it also goes past Milton Keynes, but you can’t have everything.
I wouldn’t bother writing about this except that I thought some of you might be interested in the bike I used (see photos). There’s a lot more collecting and restoring of old bikes than actual riding of them, and this is partly because many ancient machines don’t ride very well, even when smartly repainted. This ‘Duckett’ is an exception and I think it’s quite an interesting transitional machine because it has some roadster features (Westwood rims) and some more modern attributes (brazed up seat stays, 3” handlebar stem extension, forward opening rear dropouts). Also it was clearly a quality machine with a lot of BSA fittings.
It does ride surprisingly well, although only after turning the handlebars forward – I first rode it with the bars facing backwards as originally intended, but I found this hopeless because my knees hit the bars as soon as I got out of the saddle. I guess that when this machine was new (late 20’s I think) people thought that climbing ‘en dansant' just wasn’t British, and so shouldn’t even be contemplated. I can still climb reasonably well (for an old bloke, that’s to say) but not without getting out of the saddle, and I really don’t understand how they used to manage – it must have involved a lot of stiff upper lip (and, I suspect, walking).
I got this bike out of storage to use for a club’s seventy fifth anniversary ride – I thought it appropriate to use a machine that would have been more or less current in 1941, and this was the nearest thing I had. I haven’t ridden fixed much in the past couple of years, and I must say it was a pleasure to go back to it, enough to encourage me to use it for Saturday’s ride. My gear was 67” (44 x 17, 26” wheels) with six and a half inch cranks – this was the original set up, and I find it suits me pretty well.
If people are interested I could provide a few more pictures of the bike and dig out a bit more information on the maker.