Its 7.30 am on a Sunday morning. Darkness has given way to light as I open the back door and walk down the short path to the coal house where the bike is suspended from a hook, like a dead carcass waiting, like a dog to be taken out. Sunday was cycling day and I lifted my most prizes possession down full of anticipation for the day ahead.
The coal house was flanked by its replica, the outside toilet, both rather grim and utilitarian. Breakfast had been a simple affair and I was eager to get off for a day with my pal's at the cycling club. Foot in the peddle I swung onto the bike turning right and right again into the road, past the twelve houses connected to each other in a so called terrace, down Park Road and onto the main road to Shipley and Bradford.
Our meeting place was always outside the Lister Park Gates. The road Manningham Lane was the route to the dales, it led through the small towns of Bingley, Keithley and on to Skipton where the Dales started their patterned work of fields and open moorland, criss-crossed by dry stonewalls each following the contour of the hills and valleys, enclosures, built back in time by the farmers to stipulate which belonged to who and regulate the livestock.
Which ever way you looked these walls snaked up and down dale, disappearing into the mist,a marvellous creation of man's endeavour, each stone fitted with rough symmetry into each other without need for cement or any other binding element save the interlocking strength and weight of each stone. The people who constructed these walls bare no recognition for their labour but we all owe them thanks, for it is the stone walling which identifies the Dales as much as the land and the scenery.
The wait whilst the cycling group (Bradford Elite Cycling Club) assembled was enlivened by the jaunty tales of the night before. Perhaps at the Mecca Dance Emporium where those of us who could, danced the Quickstep or the Foxtrot to some of the best big dance bands the world has ever heard Joe Loss was my favourite when they could be enticed away from the Hammersmith Palais in London. The opening phrase of "In The Mood" still has the juices
flowing and the ageing bones willing a step or two.
With the club assembled we set off at about 8.30 swinging easily onto the bike, stretching down to tighten the toe strap securing the cycling shoe onto the peddle, we loosened our limbs for a days exercise and healthy conversation. The road swung right and left up and down as we entered the lanes and country roads which wheedled their way through the valleys and over the top into new valleys. The farmers hamlets, built out of the same stone as the walls, spotted the landscape and as we crossed a bridge (the same stone) a village a centre for the farmland around came into sight. Whirling our way through these villages in the early morning we felt alive with our own fitness and the conviviality and friendship around us.
At one of these villages about lunch time we would stop to have a mug of tea (or a beer from the local pub) and eat our sandwiches. What's on yours, fish-paste ug, Mums put ham in mine, jam, yes I prefer jam !
None of your high carbohydrate meals and vitamin enriched drinks for us. We survived on a packet of home-made sandwiches and a cup of tea.
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