To the New Bike:

You are a beauty! I have tried you out, and what a difference I have found from the old faithful. You are as light as a feather and jump forward at the slightest touch of the pedal. At first, I felt little advantage, but now, after a few weeks, I find out what I have been missing. Truthfully speaking, you are a revelation to me in ease and smooth, free running, and incidentally a credit to your maker. As I now write (June 1 – five weeks after taking delivery) I am looking back over the rides you have given me, and I find such places as incomparable Dovedale, bleak Moel Famau, the sylvan beauty of Nant-y-Garth, the cyclist’s shrine, Meriden, and all its associations have already been made into past rides. Five Sunday runs, and four of them centuries – and all of them covered in hitherto unknown ease.

I have not got you for an ornament, for I intend to get as much out of you as I can – and you will not always look clean and neat, for the kind of riding that Tom Idle and I do makes that impossible. Anyhow, let’s see how you go on, and how you stand the rough tracks, river-beds, sewers – and all that is not a road !

The present specification is as follows: