Map Man and The English Roadster

A new television series on about the history of various maps started last week on BBC 2 last week. Presented by Nicholas Crane, the first episode of Map Man featured a bicycle ride around the middle of the Lake District using a 100 year old St. Bartholomew’s Half Inch to the Mile Series of maps for cyclists. Not on a gleaming new mountain bike, but on a rickety old boneshaker that looked to have been rescued from a skip, or at least Mr. Crane's Granddad’s shed.

The modern cycle mechanic that Mr. Crane took the seventy years old Hercules roadster to for him to cast his eye over, looked slightly bemused, pronounced the rear rod brake ineffective and the tyres too bald to get much grip on the “technical route” (whatever that means) it was about to attempt. Nicholas asked if the very loose fitting seat wasn't some kind of “primitive suspension system, then?”. The mechanic offered to tighten the saddle, but didn't offer (at least in the programme) to adjust the rear brake (had he worked on one before?), and awarded the bike 2 out of 10 for it's suitability for the intended bummel through the hills.

Now, dear reader, the members of the Beverley Tweed Bicycling Club think Mr. Crane may just have been having a little fun at the expense of our bicycle mechanic! Now Nicholas is best known for his walking nowadays, as seen in the television series Coast, but he happens to know a thing or two when it comes to bicycles. Our dear presenter is the veteran of several bicycle expeditions and the author of a number of bicycle books. In at least one of them, he has written about how one of his long distance (and “technical”?) expeditions was completed on a Phillips roadster.

Mr. Crane knew something about roadsters only too well (and probably also knew very well that the bike mechanic didn't). The roadster may have had ineffective brakes, it may have had a loose saddle, it may have had rather balding tyres, but Mr. Crane knew from before his journey even started that the bicycle was more than capable of completing the “technical course” even if it was “50 % heavier than a mountain bike”, didn't have mountain bike tyres nor its 27 gears, and he might have to get off and push occasionally.

Mr. Crane knew this because he knows that for the first seventy years or so of the modern bicycle's existence, the roadster was the bicycle of the world, and was used for expeditions from weekends in the Lake District to, (literally), around the world circumnavigations. Every weekend, thousands of bicyclists left our towns and cities (where they used their roadsters for their daily commute to the factory, shipyard, or coal mine), rode their sturdy steeds to the Lake District (or the Highlands or the Yorkshire Dales), and then rode them over the hills, through the mountain passes, and across the flooded streams, even if they had to get off and push them occasionally. The “rough riders” and the “pass stormers” (members of the Rough-Stuff Fellowship formed in 1955) and their predecessors did this every weekend for the seventy years before the mountain bike was invented. The very first crossing of Iceland's Sprengisandur wilderness was completed by an Englishman on a Raleigh threespeed roadster complete with chaincase before it was crossed by a motor vehicle.

 

Mr. Crane may have joked about the state of an Edwardian bicyclist's bottom at the end of such a ride, the members of the Beverley Tweed Bicycling Club wager that a seventy year old sprung leather saddle is more comfortable than that of a modern seat on a mountain bike.

Members also wager that there won’t be many seventy year old mountain bikes being ridden in the future, around the Lake District or anywhere else.

"Don't sneer at old 3-speeds. They are serious bikes, built for serious use. They are meant for utilitarian cyclists, and they are still extremely appropriate for riders who don't usually go more than a few miles at a time. They are particularly at home in stop-and-go traffic, because they can be shifted even while stopped. Their English heritage: full fenders, oil lubrication, and totally enclosed gear system makes them relatively impervious to wet conditions. They may be heavy, but that is not because they were built to be cheap, but because they were built to endure extremely rough usage and neglect. Properly cared for, they will outlast us all. "

Sheldon Brown