Review of FN 174

Published June 2008

This edition carries a number of presented photographs including the group of Mike Peers, Jack Williams  and Harold Binfield, with a nice inclusion of a Bates frame with the diadrant front forks. There is also a picture of Frank Armond  our first president  at the Bidlake Memorial Gardens (Sandy, Beds) to which all cyclists should make a pilgrimage at one time in their lives.

Also pictured are Derek Buttle, Bob Maitland, Rex Coley, Jack Lauterwasser, Joan Bridge and George Kessock, who rode for my favourite frame makers “PARIS”. All these are stalwarts, past and present of cycling and it’s nice to put a face to names one has merely seen in print.

The current issue is well patterned with various line drawings and to conclude there are a series of cyclists watering holes, as they were in the past and what they appear as today.

The usual range of matters are discussed including the itchy one of National Service uniform, speaking of which the helmet controversy seems to have taken a back seat in this issue. The editor recounts his ride on an old Sunbeam from Birmingham to Barrow on Furness. The League boys and NCU stalwarts  have ceased or at least called a truce.

The previous issue (FN1173) contained interesting information regarding the all ladies club, Rosslyn Wheelers, sadly like so many clubs merely a memory, just like the “Big Teapot” otherwise Macs café on the Bath Road., where many of us spent fitful nights before and event.

There are proposals, to have some colour photographs in a forthcoming issue, perhaps the Christmas one and to this end the editor is doing his best to keep issues down to 100 pages, thus saving postage and print costs.