A high bicycle race

Text 1: The Harborough Road Race, by Arthur Bellamy

An original article written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

It is not easy to describe, to those who have never sat upon one, the sensation of riding a high bicycle. You are perched some five feet above the road, upon a saddle the size of a slice of bread, with a wheel beneath you as tall as a man and a tiny wheel trailing behind like an afterthought. You cannot put your feet down. You cannot easily get off. Everything ahead of you, every stone and rut and wandering dog, is a possible disaster.

Such were the machines on which eight of us lined up for the Harborough Road race on Whit Monday, before a crowd of perhaps two hundred who had come, I suspect, chiefly in hope of seeing us fall off. The starter, a nervous curate, fired his pistol so close to my ear that I was deaf on that side until Tuesday.

For the first mile we went in a bunch, wheels whirring, spokes flashing, the dust rising behind us in a long yellow plume. Then came Gallows Hill. I had ridden it a hundred times in practice, but never at such a pace, and as the road tilted downward my machine seemed to gather itself like a horse that has seen the stable. Faster. Faster still. The pedals spun so wildly that I lifted my feet clear of them, legs stuck out on either side like the oars of a rowing boat, and simply clung on, and prayed.

At the foot of the hill a flock of sheep was crossing the road.

I shall not dwell on what followed. I will say only that the shepherd was very understanding, that no sheep was seriously hurt, and that I finished the race in fifth place, with a torn coat, a bent handlebar and a reputation in the district that I have never since been able to live down. The winner, Mr Drake, received a silver cup. I received a round of applause louder than his.

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