RSF - The Off Road Cycling Club

The Adventure Starts Here

1968

“Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.” - James E. Starrs, editor of ‘The Literary Cyclist’

 

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The foot-and-mouth disease which struck so much of the country towards the end of last year has been described as the worst on record. Members are urgently requested to refrain from rough-stuff, rambling or any allied pastime while the epidemic continues. Our wheels, our shoes, our clothing, may be a carrier for this terrible disease, so keep away from the infected areas, and unaffected areas if you have been in foot-and-mouth disease zones recently.
What of the future ? The highway planners admit that they have been overtaken by the rapid growth in vehicular traffic, and that plans of ten years ago have had to be drastically revised. They are now working on the assumption that the number of vehicles on the road in 1965 will double by 1975, treble by 1985, and quadruple by the turn of the century.
Members listening to “Down Your Way” on BBC Radio 4 on 21st April will have been surprised to hear the voice of Bill Houston, who was interviewed when the programme visited his home town. Auchinleck. recently. The interviewer, Franklin Englemann, asked him the number of countries he’d cycled in — the amazing total of 34. which Bill said ranged from Iceland to Morocco.
As I came off the tarmac and hit the loose rubble that is the start of Pockstones Moor, a blue sky was flecked with fleecy mini clouds racing westwards away from some ponderous thunder banks lumbering and chuntering around the distant Cleveland Hills. The track over Pockstones leads from the head of the Wash burn Valley across to Wharfedale near the artist’s dream village of Appletreewick.
“Bill”, said Nellie, in that voice wives use when they have decided something must be done, “when are you going to sort out all those old slides beneath the airing cupboard and in every corner of nearly every drawer in the house ? The trouble with you”, she went on, “is that you are trigger happy ; if you get a bit of sun shine and anything to photograph you are clicking away as if film cost twopence a roll!
When we left, the A.G.M. was still going strong and, with the comforting knowledge that we each had a K.O.R.A. front lamp, we set out fairly confidently. When we turned into the track it was dusk and pretty wintry up there on the moor, with extensive patches of snow on the heather. The evening had been dull, darkness fell rapidly and there was no moon ; but our lamps lit a wide track — or they did until mine failed,

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