Today’s afternoon run is dominated by the wind, or rather the strength of it. He claims to have struggled against the wind but later refers to it as a ‘boisterous wind’. Well at least he didn’t need to use his cape, that would have complicated matters. And what about his relief at being able to turn away from the Boxing Day traffic ?
This run was to cement Charlie’s Easter Holiday tour friendship with a Manchester CTC member Tom Idle. They had met and become pals whilst staying at a Bed and Breakfast address in North Wales over Easter. They spent lots of time together in the forthcoming years and were sort of founder members of the ‘We.R.7′, a rather select group of hard riders. All you need to know about this group can be gleaned in the Charlie Chadwick series of books promoted and published by the Veteran – Cycle Club (VCC) edited by me.
Here he has been off his bike for two weeks following an accident, he doesn’t say what sort of mishap, but the foundry business is very labour intensive.
This Tuesday afternoon December run takes place two days short of the shortest day of the year and is very descriptive of the area in which I am pleased to live. And his description is very factual apart from the state of the roads, they are many times better now. But nothing else has changed !
Another late start Charlie – this is no good ! I understand that in more recent years it has been researched and apparently teenagers do need more sleep than ordinary mortals. Nobody ever explained that to my parents !
Well at least Charlie did get to the Cross and meet up with quite a full cast of CTC members. And a tailwind home.
When you think that most of today’s ride took place on rain saturated roads you cannot always see the pleasure of it, but Charlie is nothing if not resilient and swears blind that every mile of it is a pleasure. And no one got lost today.
A fairly straightforward day with a wonderful tailwind. But here is a worry. In my youth, on clubruns, someone always had a football dangling in a net from their saddlebag, which was appreciated because we could play football on the road and as traffic was so scarce we never were in danger.
I think if some of our lady members were to have asked to play rounders instead of football the lads in my club would have jumped on their bikes and made off ! Or were the male gender in North Lancashire a bit macho !
Despite being the Charlie Chadwick books Editor, I have to confess that I struggle with our website, as some of you will testify !
However, on Sundays we have and still are following Charlie’s trips undertaken in the Spring of 1923. Last Sunday you will have read about his trip to Beeston Castle, a place Charlie was in love with. The following weekend in 1923 was a very early Easter and Charlie took advantage of the holiday for a 4 day tour of North Wales. As this Easter break of his already appears on this website elsewhere (I know, don’t ask) I am just directing you to it as you may not have come across it before. There seems little point in duplicating it here all over again, and I don’t know how to move those particular pages anyway. To find this Easter trip, go to our Home page, go to Writings, drop down to Touring, then across and down to ‘1923’ and ‘Easter’ where you will find a very full description of his travels. [Or click here :)]
Next week we will resume tracking his early 1923 wonderings with a visit to Copster Green, which took place on Saturday, April 7th 1923, just a week after the said Easter.
I personally have never had the pleasure of owning an acetylene lamp so I couldn’t possibly comment. The nearest I ever got to getting blown up with carbide was shortly after I was appointed ink monitor at school. (The duties mainly comprised keeping all the inkwells topped up in all the desks). Falling to temptation – and no doubt some ragging – one day, I was encouraged to put some carbide crystals into the teachers inkwell – which foamed mightily. That was the first time (but not the last) that my employment was terminated abruptly.
This is Charlie’s third visit – in two years – to Beeston Castle, and he is rapidly falling in love with the whole site. Of course in those days the slopes around the Castle weren’t full of car loads of people all having their picnic lunches and leaving litter.
But he does describe the very idyllic surroundings and paints a lovely picture of all that is desirable for country lovers to enjoy. I feel there are many more visits to Beeston coming up in the years ahead, we shall have to wait and be patient.
He has a great range of pals, our Charlie. He spends eight hours today accompanying a friend on an errand to Glossop. And he got his eventual destination wrong as well – it was Charlestown he went to – not Charlesworth. But I don’t suppose it matters now !
And to make matters more mysterious, we do not learn the purpose of the errand !