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My Report

https://www.velouk.net/2024/08/30/report-victor-berlemont-trophy-race/

I'm beginning to wonder whether I should put this material in the Pro Racing thread, since this thread seems to be almost abandoned for lack of interest, and because St Piran (and many of the other riders) seem actually to be professional.

Look at all the old Tour winners, they all used to smoke.

Yes, and here's an example, but Gino didn't stop 'a couple of weeks before competition'.

According to the caption he's 'relaxing' before the start, and I think it's a Tour stage

NB I've only just noticed this, but the caption mis-spells his name - it is, of course, Bartali.

Almost Certainly Unpublished Letter to The Guardian

Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the hospitality industry and political opponents after signalling plans for major curbs on outdoor smoking. (Guardian on line, Thursday evening)

Long ago, when I was young, it seemed that almost everyone smoked, but no one had a psychotherapist.

Now the situation is the opposite - could there be a connection?

I haven't smoked for half a century and I'm certainly not going to start now, but I do miss all the pubs that have closed down - this proposal could easily kill off a few more.

2025 will be all about externally cabled rim brakes and butyl tubes

I'm still there 👴

Me too!

I'm also still back in the days when we thought light tyres were important. If a latex tube is about half the weight of butyl, say two ounces as opposed to four (50/100 grams), a pair of latex tubes would save up to four ounces on your tyres which might well be noticeable.

But this would only apply if you have very light tyres to start with.

So, since my days of worrying about this sort of thing are long gone, I'll be sticking with butyl.

Victor Berlemont RR

Rowan Baker of the St Piran team was the winner.

A report will follow, but here's a photo of the finish. The credit for this excellent photo goes to Judith Parsons.

How can anyone look like that after 112 miles round the Chilterns?

At least some of theHippy.net can be found with the Wayback Machine.

Menhir Products

I've enjoyed a few trips to Brittany and spent quite a lot of time looking at standing stones. I found myself asking - why go to all that trouble? What can you do with a big lump of stone except look at it?

Here is a possible explanation: the purpose was to demonstrate the owner's wealth. It must have taken a great deal of effort to get those stones into position (Obelix can't have delivered all of them!) and nobody works for nothing.

In a word, they were status symbols.

So I would like to coin the phrase 'menhir product' (MP) The essential qualities of an MP are expense and uselessness; examples are very common (especially in the West End): flashy cars and wrist watches, designer handbags - I'm sure you can all add to the list.

How about super expensive bikes?

It's Victor Berlemont time again!

Last weekend there were only 45 entries, so I guess you could still get a ride now.
However, it's a tough event - over 100 hilly miles - so perhaps spectating is a more attractive option.

Interestingly, the organiser tells me that he contacted riders from the past couple of years to solict their entries, and found that a lot of them were racing on the continent (Belgium and France, mainly). If you have the strength to get round the VB race, it's not surprising you can make out in Europe, but this is a sad comment on the British racing scene.

John Miller 1942-2024

John was a very promising young roadman (old meaning) and a successful vet in the 80's and 90's. The reason you've probably never heard of him is that, as a young man, he retired from racing before his career really got going.

West London Junior RR Champion in his year, he had a super successful first year as a senior (riding for his original club, the Edgware RC) and then turned pro for Wally Green. Unfortunately he then stopped racing until he became a vet.

I've been asked to write an obituary which I'll post here when it's done.

A Different Take

This is an article I wrote some time ago for the Veteran Club newsletter. I hope its relevance can be seen as the opposite approach to the desire to have the latest bike. I can only hope that it won't be TL;DR.

I'm well aware that this Dragonfly Roadster wasn't ever a very good bike. However, if you're not racing the important question is whether you perceive the bike to be satisfactory.

A Dragonfly

My Mother was the proud owner of this Dragonfly. (see pics. below)

A completely standard rod braked roadster, it was never really a great machine but my Mum was very attached to it, and rejected more modern and apparently superior machines that were offered to her. There are two aspects which I believe are worth recording, but I’ll describe the bike first.

It arrived as a twenty first birthday present in 1934, although I understand it was a 1933 model which my Grandfather acquired for her at the discounted price of 3 guineas (reduced from 4 ) as it was old stock. It has a 22” frame with 26 x 1 3/8th Westwood rims, bolted up seat stays and ‘North Road’ upturned bars with an expander bolt stem. The Williams chainset shown in the photo is a late addition (I reduced her gearing slightly as she approached eighty). The original gearing was 66.4” The head badge was a transfer of a dragonfly, but there is only a tiny fragment remaining.

One small adjustment my grandfather (a former track rider) made for her was to put the handlebars down as far as they would go, which gave her a slightly more efficient riding position than most users of this type of machine. It is not especially heavy – about 30lbs if you removed the remains of the child seat, and this is probably its best feature.

This brings me to the first point of interest. Nowadays we generally think of these roadsters as just utility machines, only suitable for shopping or commuting, but originally they were also used for recreational riding. My Mother certainly used hers as a touring mount – I don’t know how much she did, although cycling was not her main sporting interest. However, there is a story I think will bear repeating.

One summer in the late 1930s she went on a youth hostel trip with a friend which took them from London into Wales, and what was intended to be their penultimate night was spent at the newly opened Wilderhope hostel. They got a good start in the morning which was necessary since their next intended stop was Oxford, about 100 miles, quite an ambitious target for anyone carrying luggage and using a single gear. Luck was on their side and they had a good tail wind which got them to their destination by mid evening, only to find the hostel full. This was a blow since money was clearly not plentiful – there was some discussion and in the end they decided that with the wind still favourable and some moonlight, they would push on home to Teddington (Middx.), about another 55miles including the ascent of the steep side of the Chiltern ridge to Stokenchurch. They arrived, still in good spirits, at 2 am.

Perhaps it was the memory of this ride that made her so keen to stick to her Dragonfly, or possibly sheer bloody mindedness, but I believe the second point of interest is that many people of my Mother’s generation expected things to last, literally, a lifetime. They did not feel the pull of retail therapy: they had acquired the tools for life which they felt were necessary and they were jolly well going to keep to what they had. For example, at some point about 1980 my Mum complained to me that her bike didn’t feel quite right, and that the chain had become much too tight.
It didn’t take long to diagnose two broken chainstays – the chain was all that was holding the bike up! I told her the machine was knackered, but she insisted she wanted it mended. Some third world style patches were brazed onto those chainstays without even doing much dismantling, and as you can see in the photograph they are still holding the bike up. Faced as we are with the problems of debt and global warming perhaps there is a lesson here.

The Dragonfly now hangs in my garage and is unlikely to get much more use. Everything about it is worn out, excepting that C34 chainset I fitted near the end. All the same I do have a small hope at the back of my mind that some day, probably after I’ve gone, some one will see fit to restore it.

Great subject!

About to go away for a week, will comment at greater length when I return, but I'll leave this:

Dave Russell (bike shop owner & frame builder, Slough, very old school) once said to me: 'Bloody CTC, they buy one bike and expect it to last a lifetime.'

Sorry for slow response - I've been in France which means I'm off grid.

My guess is that it's a Holdsworth. It's not those 'tongues' I'm going on, but the shape of the cut outs on the down/top tubes - I'm only guessing though.

The frame is 24.5". I doubt that my friend will ever ride it again (age and ill health), so if anyone wants it, let me know.

Well done!

PB?

Second Cat.

I've just had the following message from my Team Africa Rising contact:

'Trhas has just been bumped up to second category due to her brilliant run of results'

A Pre-War Hounslow Club Run

I thought this pic to be relevant to this thread as it shows pre 1950's bikes as they were actually used.

Not much is known about the photo, but it's been suggested that the figure sixth from the left is Albert Derbyshire who was the first post war BBAR Champion.

Derbyshire won that Championship in Calleva colours (well he would have done if everyone had not still been restricted to black!), but this is clearly not a Calleva group since there are women present.

It's striking that everyone looks young and happy.

, is it fully restored?

The Singer

Thanks for your comment.

I don't think it's restored in the sense of being left in a barn for fifty years and then taken to pieces and rebuilt - it's been a running money pit for at least the past 40 years. There is a magazine article (The Automobile 1988), which reports it as being in similar condition to how it is now.

How much needs doing now? Well, it's had a lot of money spent on it recently, but there's still some fettling to do. However, I'm hoping to get some use out of it this summer.

Photo with this post shows the driver's eye view - you may notice there's no fuel gauge, and that is because the tank is over the driver's knees feeding the carburettor by gravity - so you check the fuel level with a dipstick (the filler cap is visible just in front of the windscreen, pic in first post).

My 'New' Car

I sold my 2CV, so this is a bit of a replacement, although it's a lot slower and less practical.

It's a 1930 Singer Junior.

More photos and info if anyone is interested

Trhas - First Win in Britain

I didn't think it would take very long! She won the 3/4 cat women's Via Criterium at Kings Cross - see her blog:

https://teamafricarising.org/teamtrhasblog/

As mentioned above, Trhas looks as though her main strength would be climbing, so she's not really in her element at Kings Cross, or Minet Park where she's done most of her racing so far.

She is scoring points, so once she is in the higher categories, she should get more chance to show off her ability as a grimpeuse (a lady climber)

I don't think there's any such thing as a fan of Cyclo Benelux!

Anyone recognise this lugwork?

It's not mine, I'm just asking for a friend, like.

I can make a guess, but I'm interested to see whether anyone else makes the same guess.

I believe the original owner lived in Kent.

It might be possible to use a five block and set the mech to work on the bottom four sprockets.

Four speed blocks are pretty rare since fives came along quickly. You 'd be lucky to find a four with the sprockets you want, whereas a 14-22 five is probably the commonest size, the problem would be getting your mech to reach the 22, but it does seem possible.

Hmm, 48 x 22 with 27" wheels comes to 58.9". Not great for the Chilterns, but that looks like it's as low as you'll get with the 48 ring.

Benelux

Have you got an 1/8th or 3/32" chain?

If 3/32, all I know is that the Simplex TdF (fairly similar) claims to be able to go up to 24 teeth, but these 'plunger' type mechs always seemed find big sprockets challenging!

If 1/8th, I doubt if you will be able to find much above 21 teeth - three speed blocks 16/19/21 are still around, but I couldn't find anything bigger when I was looking.

It seems riders were tough back in the fifties - I suppose if you started your cycling life on fixed, having a (bottom) gear in the high fifties seemed perfectly reasonable.

those smallish pedals did not help for sure

Just looked back at the photos in post 5277.

Those are quill pedals which are, in effect, single sided - so they can only comfortably used with toeclips. It's difficult to turn them to the correct side when riding if there are no toeclips.

I didn’t think they had the capability to do it in the 50s.

The evidence suggests that Dayton thought they did have the capability......but they were wrong.

Didn't Peugeot use internal lugs? I'm no expert on Peugeot, but I seem to remember hearing this story.

Amalgam

As I understand it 'Amalgam' was Dayton's word for what was more usually called 'flash butt welding'. The main tubes were mitred, pressed together, an electric current passed through the assembly, and.... bingo, it was glued together!

Sometimes it stayed together, but sometimes it didn't. I guess the quality control wasn't great. Dayton certainly sold a lot of bikes in the fifties - many going to children as a reward for passing the eleven plus exam ( subtext - now you can get yourself to school ).

Amost every one I saw was canary yellow - I've got a feeling this may be an early version, since the finish is more elaborate than the ones I remember.

Some other little facts: Dayton were based in Park Royal, London NW10, the cast head badge with the micrometer motif weighed a good two ounces - I know this because I used a Dayton badged frame as a TT bike which served for all my PBs. I replaced the badge with a transfer. My frame wasn't Amalgam - it was a track frame built with conventional lugs and silver soldered, quite probably by an outside builder, nothing to do with Dayton. They once had a pro track team.

Since this nicely finished bike has lasted so long I guess it must be one of the better ones - I suggest reducing the gearing and just enjoying it.

I would be tempted to put some more comfy bars on there though

Thanks for your comments @kjlem, @Glws and @Thrasher.

I find the bars perfectly comfortable although I rarely hold the below the brake levers.

That flooring cost much more than all the bikes I own. It also caused a great deal of trouble because the kitchen was out of action for such a long time. There was some rot on the joists under the original 90 year old floor which had become undesirably bouncy.