The First Seventy Years: 10 An Exhilarating Experience
...I got carried away by the exhilaration of the experience. "I'm riding a boy's bike," I must have been saying to myself. This was a new experience quite unlike anything else I had ever had before. It was sheer magic. I kept on riding. I was loving it. Before you could say "bicycle clips" I was riding into Sherwood some two miles distance.
It began to rain. I didn't care. I had no waterproofs. I wasn't even wearing a jacket. There I was, in shirt and short trousers soon to become sodden. Did I care? I wasn't even aware that my clothes were wet. I kept on peddling; taking me even further away from home and, more importantly, the owner of the bike...
Eric Biddulph recalls the day he became a keen cyclist.
To read earlier chapters of Eric's life story please click on The First Seventy Years in the menu on this page.
Sometime during the War my father had the idea that it would be useful for my mother to have a bike to get around. There was little traffic on the roads. The few civilians who had been wealthy enough to own a car during the 1930s could not get any petrol to run them so they had been mothballed for the duration of hostilities.
This was therefore the golden age for cycling. It was against this background that my mother acquired a ladies' bike. I went with my father and mother down to The Forest to give her a first lesson in riding; she had never been on a bike before.
There was an area which was tarmaced over about the size of a football pitch with a slight slope and a stone wall at the bottom. My father took my mother to the top end of this vast expanse of smooth hard surface and, after giving her basic instructions about peddling and braking, held her until she had gained sufficient momentum to keep upright. He then let go of the bike, continuing to provide instruction whilst running alongside.
I remember seeing my mother holding the handlebars rigidly and never veering from the straight line the bike was taking. Belatedly my father realised that she was making no attempt to change the direction of the bike. Neither was she making any attempt to slow the rapidly accelerating machine by applying the brakes. "Put your brakes on," I heard my father shout. It was too late; the bike, by now travelling at a fair speed, hit the stone wall with an almighty crash depositing my mother on the floor in a somewhat bruised and battered state.
She was never to sit on a bike again. It was a sad episode and in retrospect, an extreme irony that she should come to grief with a method of transport that was, in later years, to become a major part of my life. Although my mother's bike was too big for me I did manage to ride it in Birrell Road and the surrounding streets. I was not hooked on riding a bike at this stage but merely experiencing the thrill of freedom which all children enjoy when they find they can remain upright for the first time on two wheels without the steadying hand of a parent.
It is difficult to identify the precise circumstances which led me to become a lifelong cyclist. Perhaps it was a somewhat bizarre experience at a point in my life to which I cannot put a date. Suffice to say that it came about between 1947 and 1951. A boy from out of the area was a friend of another boy who lived near me. He had a boy's bike with a lot of seat-tube showing, being far too small for him. I asked him if he would let me have a go on it.
He agreed and I set off for a ride round the local streets. I got carried away by the exhilaration of the experience. "I'm riding a boy's bike," I must have been saying to myself. This was a new experience quite unlike anything else I had ever had before. It was sheer magic. I kept on riding. I was loving it. Before you could say "bicycle clips" I was riding into Sherwood some two miles distance.
It began to rain. I didn't care. I had no waterproofs. I wasn't even wearing a jacket. There I was, in shirt and short trousers soon to become sodden. Did I care? I wasn't even aware that my clothes were wet. I kept on peddling; taking me even further away from home and, more importantly, the owner of the bike.
At some point - I think it may have the realisation that it was getting dark - I made the decision to make my way back. I eventually got back to Birrell Road but could not find the owner of the bike or anyone I knew. I went home to be confronted by my mother who said, "Look at the state of you. Where have you been? Whose bike have you got there?"
Soon after my return the owner of the bike appeared at the door accompanied by a policeman. He had assumed I was intent on stealing his bike. I burst into tears when the officer of the law began to ask me questions. He let me off with a warning. It was of course a humiliating experience, made worse by my parents anger at my foolish behaviour. After a cleanup I was sent to bed without anything to eat. I spent the remainder of the evening and the early hours of the morning sobbing into my pillow.
