• John Parr WW1 Cyclist

    A Sunday trip to visit a friend in Finchley, London saw me walk from Woodside Park Tube Station and along Lodge Lane. Although I nearly missed it, I spotted a plaque placed on the pavement in front of a modest house flagging up that the first British soldier to die in World War One spent… Continue Reading

  • Mud larking on the Thames

    Along the River Thames In London there are the obvious signs of its industrial and global shipping past. Redundant machinery, abandoned wharfes and slipways point to this industrial and commercial history, but if you look hard enough at the foreshore you can find more personal items associated with the people who lived or worked on… Continue Reading

  • Cable Street London 1936

    In October 1936 Sir Oswald Mosley attempted to lead the British Union of Fascists (BUF) along Cable Street into a London East End community and take control of the streets and enflame not only the local community, but also the country against Jewish people. Oswald was following a tactic that had worked in Germany and… Continue Reading

  • Lost Velodromes – dash for cash

    English Victorian’s seem to have invented everything, whether this is true is debatable, but what we can say for sure is that they were mad on sport. Historian Christopher Hill described it as the ‘World Turned Upside Down’ – the period when the UK moved from an agrarian economy to being one of manufacture and… Continue Reading

  • I found a velodrome, but didn’t, but I did….

    London is full of seemingly forgotten stories that can come alive if you have an enquiring mind and if you look beyond the obvious. Whilst I was hunting for a lost Victorian velodrome in east London I came across a rather nice mural painted close to where the velodromes northern banking would have been. Looking… Continue Reading

  • Earlsfield Cemetery – let’s create the NHS

    My post about the Gottingen Stadtfriedhof in central Germany and the sense of abandonment I felt whilst there, got me thinking. It made me think closer to home and so now I stand in Earlsfield Cemetery in Wandsworth, south London. At the dawn of the 20th Century European nations were tied together by many separate treaties, which… Continue Reading

  • Gottingen StadtFriedhof – abandonment

    Separation, abandonment or ‘left behind’ are words that will scare most of us. These thoughts came into my head as I stood in a Stadtfriedhof in deepest central Germany. Before me stood two grave stones and a third not in sight but close by of three soldiers of the ‘Great War’. What sparked a reaction… Continue Reading

  • London Lost Cyclo-Cross Courses

    The London Cyclo-Cross association came into being in the 1950’s and a league has run ever since, although in the 2000’s we added ‘South East’ to the League title as many races are not actually held in London. In those early years it was oh so much simpler for the LCCA to promote at venues… Continue Reading

  • A2 – Cyclopark

    The 3rd January 2016 saw a heroic cyclo-cross race held when heavy rain fell and high winds lashed Round 12 of the London/SE Cyclo-Cross League at a venue that was created in 2012 on an abandoned section of the A2 road. Route 66 is an iconic highway that once spanned the USA and is probably the most famous road in the… Continue Reading

  • Betteshanger Cyclo-Cross – England

    Most of the time, we tend to think in the moment without making much reference to our surroundings and how they have been shaped or formed. Nonetheless and despite our indifference – every place has a story to tell, and under our feet (or wheels) is history aplenty. For many years the Velo Club Deal… Continue Reading

  • Riding the Kemmelberg Fahrradtour

    2014 saw the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War One and this caused a rekindling of interest in the long, bloody fighting line that straddled Europe between 1914 to 1917. To mark the occasion the 2014 Tour de France visited many of the major battlefields and stage five began at the Belgian town… Continue Reading

  • 19 Years and Out – Beastway Grassroots MTB

    For 19 years I, Rod, Andrea, Tig, Bill, Grahame, Sarah, Ray, Gary, Andrew, James and scores of others ran the Beastway MTB Series in London, but in 2013 we called it a day, Nicknamed ‘Beastway’ because it was a bit of ‘Beast’, we as the ‘Structureless Tyranny’ enjoyed almost two decades of turning out in… Continue Reading

  • Belgium Cross Experience 2008

    Belgium is the heartland of cycling, especially cyclo-cross and much of the action is accessible to us Brit’s from the channel ports or the Eurotunnel. So I and Julian from London’s  Cyclefit did so in 2008. Belgium Cross Experience It may be a running British joke to try to name a famous Belgian and although the… Continue Reading