A Hard Day in January

This is an anecdote I gathered when I was doing some Hounslow club history research in the 1980’s. Reg Schofield (born about 1915) is the narrator, and I reproduce his words as well as I can remember them. Although today not many current Hounslow members will be able to recall Reg with much clarity he was quite a well known figure in his time, and was given some coverage by ‘Cycling’.

I hope you will be able to see why. Here is his account of a winter Sunday about 1950.

‘The club had arranged to meet at Hampton Court Station to take part in a reliability trial to Brighton. It was a really cold morning – there was light snow, enough to be annoying, but not sufficient to make progress difficult. 

I can’t remember why but I was late leaving home (I lived in Kingston, no distance to the start – I just cut it too fine). When I got to the station it was deserted. Damn, I thought, I’ve missed them. But being a keen young man I wasn’t inclined to give up and I was fairly sure I knew where they would stop on the way down, so there was no problem – I’d catch them up at the café.

It wasn’t really a pleasant ride, with the snow flurrying around, but I stuck to it. By the time I reached the café (which was empty) I was committed, and having failed to find the club in Brighton there was nothing for it but to ride home. I had to admit to myself that it was a bit strange that in all those miles I hadn’t seen any groups of riders, or even any tyre tracks in the snow. I’d have to wait until club night on Wednesday to find out what had happened.

“You didn’t go on your own did you? Blimey, we all thought the weather was too bad to go anywhere!”’

Reg was a polio victim who had no use of one of his lower legs, which was callipered.

The attached picture is nothing to do with this story, it's just something to look at from last weekend.

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