West Suffolk Wheelers celebrate 100 years of history - and they've come a long way
From heavy steel frames and tatty maps to light carbon fibre with on-board sat-navs and smart trainers, sports editor Russell Claydon profiles the West Suffolk Wheelers as they hit the centenary milestone.
It was the year the Irish Free State was established, Liberal David Lloyd George served his last year as Prime Minister, Huddersfield Town won the final pre-Wembley FA Cup final and the BBC was formed.
But of local significance, 1922 – May 5, to be exact – marked the inaugural meeting of what would become one of the area’s most successful clubs; the West Suffolk Wheelers.
Back then the bicycle collective was strictly for men – and largely prominent businessmen – who were forbidden from wearing shorts and would meet, and ride out, from various ale houses.
Fast forward 100 years and the wheels of progress are very evident, and not just in the bikes themselves.
For the last decade the club has also incorporated runners and swimmers due to the popularity of triathlon – it even rebranded as West Suffolk Wheelers & Triathlon Club before the wordy title was dropped after proving an issue to fit on entry forms and stationery. The last 10 years has also seen the club, following a fund-rasing process driven on by the likes of Barry Denny, find a home in the grounds of The Priory School in Bury St Edmunds.
Furthermore, a 350-strong membership now spans the age and abilities spectrum from under-10s to over-80s including 49 females and 39 juniors. Disabled athletes have been warmly welcomed and gone on to flourish, with Brian Alldis taking his hand cycling all the way to the Paralympic stage.
What is very evident 100 years on is a club which really reaches out into its community. As well as its regular charity fund-raising, it uses facilities at the town’s rugby club and leisure centre as well as hosting its biggest events at West Stow Country Park and the village roads through Ixworth.
But in its landmark year, it is looking to keep the wheels very much turning to achieve an even deeper reach.
Paul Callow, the centenary co-ordinator, explained they would love to use the extra events they have planned to attract another 100 to the membership on their modest £30 yearly fee to improve more people’s health, both physical and mental.
“We set up some core themes at the beginning of the year and one of those was around becoming more inclusive,” he said.
“People see us primarily as a cycling club but we would love to introduce a lot more newcomers to cycling.”
The first step is always the hardest, so on May 7 the club will hold an open day event where people are asked to bring whatever bike they have along to their HQ on Shakers Lane to be taught some basic road skills. It will then be followed by two-hour rides, mainly for novice riders, on Saturday mornings.
The club kicked off its centenary calendar on February 6 with its Suffolk Punch Reliability Trial, held over routes of 75, 60 and 36 miles – the first chance for people to show where their winter training is at. But as is tradition, it also raised money for charity with the East Anglian Air Ambulance benefiting from the full £5 entry fees on a day where the weather was far from kind.
Fund-raising is also in the core themes for the landmark year.
“We are going to support two charities this year,” said Callow, whose own Wheelers’ journey began after he got back on a bicycle as part of a Cycle To Work Scheme aged 40.
“Normally we support one but we are doing it with Suffolk Mind for mental health and also JDRF which is a specialist charity to do with diabetes (funding type 1 research).
“What we were keen on doing was not just providing financial support but also practical support.
“It is obviously a well known fact that doing exercise can improve your wellbeing and mental health.
“So we thought if we can encourage Suffolk Mind to embrace the club and encourage people to come along to some of the events that would be a real benefit.
“In addition to that we have also got quite a few club members – 10 to 15 – that have got diabetes.
“Even on an easy family ride right through up to competition, it can be very difficult to maintain your insulin levels.
“So we are really trying to get the message out to young people that just because you might have diabetes it is not really a barrier to enjoying sport.”
There is no doubt the club provides a community that nutures good health, not just through its rides, runs and swims but also by holding twice-weekly free yoga classes, kindly put on by Robin Taylor. Thursday evenings also see Ray Reeves give up his time to do strength training to help the triathletes who can also benefit from transition sessions.
The roots of a bicycle collective in Bury actually go back as far as the 1880s, known from a picture of men with penny farthings on Angel Hill.
As it was on the Wheelers’ 75th anniversary in 1997, members are looking to re-create that group scene outside The Athenaeum on May 8. It will include those in centenary jerseys – 100 produced and sold at cost price – with the red and white striped sleeves and three shades of blue in the body chosen to represent ones from through the years. Neck buffs in similar colours have also been given out to the whole membership.
The bank holiday in May will see the Ixworth Cycle Races – eight in total set to attract 300 to 400 riders – return after a two-year Covid hiatus.
The popularity of cyclo-cross, described by Callow as ‘like the Badminton Horse Trials but on bikes’ in recent years has led November’s West Stow leg of the Eastern Cyclo-Cross League to be their other premier event.
Between the two, on October 9, the club is set to hold what has been a popular event in years gone by with a family cycle ride to coincide with mental health week and involve Suffolk Mind.
The grasstrack event has also been a big hit, with the club having held a couple of rounds of the national championships a few years ago.
Going back further, the Wheelers were at the forefront of Bury St Edmunds hosting the popular amateur Milk Races through the town as well as the National Criterium Town Centre Cycling Championships in the 1990s.
It was an era that also juniors come flooding into the club – with membership reaching a high of almost 500 – as they honed their skills on what become Bury’s ‘flat velodrome’ in the grounds of the British Sugar factory.
Then manager Brian Horrobin allowed the club to benefit from use of a 1,224 metre flat pan area they still collect the sugar beet deliveries on as a circuit for racing. Indeed, a certain former Olympian in Ross Edgar, started out there.
Former president and long-time member Justin Wallace recalls: “The 1990s was probably the club’s halcyon days. That was when we got permission from British Sugar to put a flat pad down which is still there.
“It was a multi-million pound construction and it was like an airfield where they bring in all the sugar beet, tip it up in the air and then it gets put into sort of a gulley and then it floats into the centre and into the factory.
“The manager was very affable and community-minded and he let us use that on Tuesday nights in the summer when there was no traffic from the sugar beet.
“We were able to use that like a flat velodrome which was a massive fillip for the club as we brought so many youngsters up from the school who came here to race. And a number of them went on to big things such as Ross Edgar (Beijing Olympic silver medallist) who started there on a mountain bike thrashing everyone. He was just one of the kids that benefited from that flat pad.”
The closed off track also allowed the club to gain grants from various local and national organisations but a change in management and health and safety regulations is said to be why it has not, sadly, continued.
Wallace, who joined the club in 1974 but had 10 years out after moving to Lincoln, is nearing completion of bringing former Free Press sports editor Ken Hoxley’s ‘Where There is a Wheel’ history of the club – which contains the first 75 years – up to date with a 100-year condensed summary.
The early part chronicles how town centre shops would close early on Thursdays to allow their owners, such as names including Sneezums and Glasswells to go out on group rides.
It was not until 1936 that ladies were invited to the club.
“They put an advert in the Bury Free Press for a meeting held at The Eastern Counties Restaurant – which was probably the old Eastern Counties Bus Station – stating letters of invitation were sent to the Young Women’s Christian Association, The Sanitary Laundry, The Victoria Laundry, The Hand Laundry and Horringer Ladies Sports Club.
“All those laundries, I’m not sure what they were up to, maybe they thought they washed the kit for them or something!
“Around 20 ladies decided to join and on reflection I think they did the right thing.”
He hopes to be able to publish the full summary next month and circulate it in digital format, possibly through their website.
So why does Wallace think being part of the club is so special?
“I suppose it is a family club,” he said. “You make friends with people for life who have the same interest and you roll on every year with them.
“It has changed so much over the years.
“If you wanted to find your way around you used to have maps and now they have got computers to download the route before they go out in case they get lost.
“Whereas years ago, if we got lost you find your own way home.”
Winter training has also significantly changed with the club now housing watt bikes as well as smart trainers for members to use with a Swift connection to allow people to ride online against others in the world’s most famous races.
Anyone wishing to find out more about the West Suffolk Wheelers and their calendar of centenary events should visit www.westsuffolkwheelers.org
