I moved to Leeds from Bradford 11 years ago and I moved into a student house in an area called East End Park. Because I was studying at Leeds Uni I bought a second-hand bike which was around £66. It was a very good bike. I use to ride between the campus and my place...
The driving rain was starting to sting my face and my 6 year old son behind me on the trailer bike was starting to cry out with the cold. The clouds were low over the North Sea as we cycled into the wind. We had started out from the railway station at Malton,...
It was Shirley Watkins’ fault. Not that anybody ever knew it; she’d scarpered well before the drama unfolded, along with the other three lasses. My mam couldn’t understand why I wanted a bike. Bikes were for lads, she said, hinting in veiled words at the life-long...
Joseph Bates was born in 1853 in Yorkshire and was my great grandmother’s half-brother. His father was John Bates, who was a carpet-mill owner in Dewsbury and twice mayor of Dewsbury. One of Joseph’s brothers-in-law was Caleb Kilner, who invented and manufactured the...
On my first day at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts I arrived slightly hot and bothered; it was a warm September day and I had just cycled through five miles of South London streets with my oversized drawing board under one arm and an A-Z stuffed in my waistband....
