Pumped up though not (of course) well oiled, Ferryhill Wheelers Cycling Club celebrated their 75th anniversary - and never off the roads - at a splendid dinner on Friday evening.

They'd begun humbly, if not quite sit up and beg. They charged 3/6d a year subs, met in sundry scout huts and in Mr Pickering the barber's, rode - according to club rules - with "strict decorum" at all times.

Members lined up at four notes of the bugle, mounted at three, eased off at two, got off again at the bugler's single blast.

He was an officer of the club and, like the herald angels, it was a much sought after appointment.

By 1973, however, the Wheelers were down to eight members. The following year's bank account showed a balance of only 95p. Just when it looked like being downhill all the way, or uphill as a cyclist might suppose, the club found a force ten second wind.

They boasted Olympians and world champions, Commonwealth Games medallists and panniers overflowing with national titles.

Darlington insurance broker Steve Davis - to whom salutations, 50 today - won four silvers in national track championships this year, beaten each time by 52-year-old Ian Hallam, MBE.

Mr Hallam, in the spirit of the sport, was Friday's guest speaker - and since he is a dentist, allowed to get away with the excuse for perceived lateness that he'd been dealing with an Irishman's emergency.

"He wanted a wisdom tooth putting in."

Primarily, however, it was an occasion for memories. They recalled hard riding men who could open a tin of beans with a spanner, happy days at Brian Excell's superlative caf in Tow Law, disturbed nights at Mrs Barr's Snowdrop Hill guest house at Seamer, near Stokesley.

Mrs Barr had little regard for overcrowding regulations, it is said, whether dinner plates ("the more you ate, the more she appreciated it") or double beds.

They remembered Buck Slater, whose father had sawed his bike up after Buck was involved in an accident; Jim Rodgers who bought a new bike in the same colours as the old one in the forlorn hope that his wife wouldn't notice the extravagance; Barry Shotton whose wardrobes were fitted only so that they might accommodate his bikes.

Sadly, however, there were apologies for absence from an 80-year-old unavoidably detained (in hospital) after falling from his bike.

"Fallen off?" someone said. "I don't know how he ever got on."

We sat opposite 69-year-old club president Bobby Douglas, who fuelled himself on solid rice pudding, is credited with Mel Littlefair with being the seventies' cycling saviour and who reckons anything under 100 miles is a "babbies' race."

Once Bob rode 243 miles in 12 hours. This year he still rode 73 miles in a day, though he can hardly walk 100 yards. "Your knee doesn't work the same way," he explained.

Ian Hallam recalled that his first bike was £8, second hand, and that the present fibre glass flier cost £6500. Steve Davis, familiar with the chief guest's rear wheel and dressed as if to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, challenged him to pull a Christmas cracker and ended with the bounteous bit.

"Thank God," he said, "I've beaten Hallam at last."

Bryan Bliss had 40 years out of the saddle before returning, overweight and overdue, in 1998.

This year he won the national veterans' road race title, 61 miles in two and a half hours and just 11 seconds behind the hurtling Mr Hallam.

"I still feel that I can get better," said Bryan, having shed three and a half stones from his 13st 12lb frame. (The bike's was lightweight to start with.)

As a Redcar-based youngster he'd won 30 races with Teesside Clarion, gave up the sport to pursue a no less successful business career in the Midlands, returned North - to East Cowton, near Northallerton - on retirement.

Now he rides 300 miles a week, has won 14 other races this year and took bronze in the world vets' pursuit championship.

"As I approached retirement I got a day off each week and wondered what I should do with it. When we moved to East Cowton I rode over to the Catterick caf to see if they still got cyclists in, and after 40 years they still did."

He's now a wheel within the Wheelers. "I'm just so happy to have discovered the pleasure of riding a bike again," he said. Sheer heaven for Mr Bliss.

Last Tuesday's column saluted Shildon lad and world champion raffle ticket seller George Elliott, 65 that day and still a Sunday morning football referee.

In the Timothy Hackworth on Sunday lunchtime, the crack underlined the view that George is to red and yellow cards what Ebenezer Scrooge was to the Christmas sort.

On one occasion, however, things seemed about to change. "He'd refereed me hundreds of times and usually no more than a word in me ear," recalled Ian Dawson, the landlord.

"On this occasion, I'd committed a fairly mild foul but I thought I'd had it when George was straight to his top pocket.

"Instead of a card, however, he pulled out a bunch of raffle tickets and asked if I wanted to buy one. You couldn't say no after that."

Sixes and sevens as ever, we'd recalled (Backtrack, November 20) some confusion over Shildon's 11-1 win over Stanley United, just 48 years earlier.

The Northern Echo reported that the redoubtable Keith Hopper had scored a double hat- trick; the Northern League's hitherto unimpeachable millennium history made it seven.

Keith, still an NYSD League cricketer for Bishop Auckland, has now belatedly claimed the seventh.

It could have been eight, he says, because one of the goals came about when he and Jim Ramshaw - the future Federation Brewery chairman, who died in October - kicked the ball simultaneously.

"Gentleman that I've always been, I let Jim have it," he says - and it wasn't 11, Keith adds, it was 13.

The Northern League magazine, Christmas edition just out, reports a day to test the patience of a saint - or even League chaplain the Rev Leo Osborn, chairman of the Newcastle Methodist district.

Leo planned an overnight break in London with his wife Charlotte, arrived at Newcastle airport on the day that Gill Air went into receivership and was quoted £350 (each) by British Airways.

Instead they drove to London, spent two hours in a jam on the M25 and after seven and a half hours on the road booked finally into their Kensington hotel.

Outside, the car was quickly being clamped - and cost £90 to free. The minister remains stoical. "I've had better days," he said.

Before we again forget, congratulations to the Cooper Hall under 13s team from Witton Gilbert, near Durham, who two Sundays ago beat Chopwell 3-0 - their first win after two years of generally cumbersome defeat. The lads, it's fair to say, were on an incentive bonus. "They were brilliant," says proud dad Michael Davidson. "We bought them all a hot dog on the way home."

THE North-East footballer who scored a hat-trick on his Premiership debut against Liverpool (Backtrack, December 7) was, of course, Fabrizio Ravanelli.

Pugilistic readers may today care to name the only man to have fought for the world heavyweight title in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

We're sparring again on Friday.

Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2001