The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of Old

XIV

CYCLING

The Portsmouth Road, from London to Ripley, has, any time these last twenty years, been the most frequented by cyclists of any road in England. The “Ripley Road,” as it is generally known among wheelmen, is throughout the year, but more especially in the spring and summer months, alive with cycles and noisy with the ringing of cycle-bells. On Saturday afternoons, and on fine Sundays, an almost inconceivable number take a journey down these twenty-three miles from London, and back again in the evening; calling at the “Angel,” at Ditton, on the way, and taking tea at their Mecca, the “Anchor,” at Ripley. The road is excellent for cycling, but so also are a number of others, equally accessible, around London, and it must be acknowledged that the “Ripley Road” is as much favoured by a singular freak of fashion in cycling, and as illogically, as a particular walk in Hyde Park is affected by Society on Sundays. But in cycling circles (apt phrase!) it is quite the correct thing to be seen at Ditton or at Ripley on a Sunday, and every one who is any one in that sport and pastime, be-devilled as it is now-a-days with shady professionalism and the transparently subsidized performances of the makers’ amateurs, must be there. The “Ripley Road,” now-a-days, is, in fact, the stalking-ground of self-advertising long-distance riders, of cliquey and boisterous club-men, and of the immodest women who wear breeches awheel. The tourist, and the man who only has a fancy for the cycle as a means of healthful exercise, and does not join the membership of a club, give the “Ripley Road” a wide berth.

The frequenters of this road became in 1894 such an unmitigated nuisance and source of danger to the public in passing through Kingston-on-Thames, that the local bench of magistrates were obliged to institute proceedings against a number of cyclists for furious driving, and for riding machines without lights or bells. According to the evidence given by an inspector of police, no fewer than twenty thousand cyclists passed through Kingston on Whit Sunday, 1894.

FAME UP-TO-DATE.

Coaching men hate the cyclist with a bitter hatred, and he will ever be to them a bÊte noir of the blackest hue. It may not be generally known that the contumelious expression of “cads on castors,” which has become so widespread that it has almost obtained the popularity of a proverb, originated with Edmund Yates; but he was really the author of that scornful epithet, whose apt alliteration will probably never be forgotten, though the “castors” be evolved into hitherto undreamed-of patterns, and the race of cads who earned the appellation be dead and gone. The expression “cads on castors” will, with that other humorous epithet, “Brompton boilers,” achieve immortality when cycling is obsolete, and the corrugated iron roofs of the Bethnal Green Museum are rusted away. The objectionable phrase of “bounders on box-seats,” which some cycling journalists have flung back at their coaching critics has not run to anything like the popularity of the other, and more apt, effort of alliterative conciseness; for the prejudices of the lieges have, up to now, been chiefly in favour of the whips and horsey men to whom the cycle is the “poor man’s horse,” and therefore to be condemned. Will the sport and pastime of cycling ever become aristocratic? It is to be feared or hoped (accordingly as you admire or detest the cycle) that it will never win to this regard: at least, not while the road-racing clubs and individual cyclists continue to render the Queen’s highway dangerous for all other travellers; not so long as that peculiar species of Fame, which is more properly Notoriety, continues to be trumpeted abroad concerning the doings of racing cyclists who strive, not for the English love of sport, but for the cheques awarded them by the long-headed manufacturers whose machines they ride—and advertise.

THE “ANCHOR,” RIPLEY.

RIPLEY

But cycling has brought much prosperity to Ripley village and its two antiquated inns, the “Talbot” and the “Anchor.” A few years ago, indeed (before cycling had become so popular), the “Talbot” was closed and given over to solitude and mice, but now-a-days one may be as well served there as at any country hostel you please to mention. The company, however, of the “Talbot” is not exclusively made up of wheelmen of the gregarious (or club) species, and a decent tourist who is neither a scorcher nor a wearer of badges, nor anything else of the “attached” variety, may rest himself there with quiet and comfort, except on high days and Bank holidays: on which occasions the quiet and peaceable man generally stays at home, preferring solitude to the over-much company he would find on the road.

But if you wish to see the club-wheelman in his most characteristic moods, why then the “Anchor” is your inn, for in the low-ceiled rooms that lurk dimly behind the queer, white-washed gables of that old house, cycling clubmen foregather in any number, limited only by the capacity of the inn. The place is given over to cyclists, and beside the road, behind the house, or on the broad common upon which this roadside village fronts, their machines are stacked as thickly as in the store-rooms of some manufactory.

HERBERT LIDDELL CORTIS.

At the further end of the village stands the ancient but much-restored chapel of Ripley, interesting to cyclists by reason of the memorial window inserted here to the memory of an early cycling hero of the race-path—Herbert Liddell Cortis—who died, shortly after reaching Australia, at Carcoar, New South Wales, on December 28, 1885. Interest of another kind may be found in the architecture of the Earl of Lovelace’s beautiful seat, Ockham Park, that borders the road, just before entering the village; and in the ruins of Newark Abbey, that lie on the banks of the Wey, across Ripley Green. But time and tide wait for no man, and the “New Times” coach is equally impatient of delay. Two minutes suffice for changing teams at the “Talbot,” and off that heir of the coaching age goes again.

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