You may remember some footage that did the rounds a year or so ago of a CTC cycling trip in the Engish Midlands. Here are a couple more bits of old footage of hardy British ladies and gentlemen cycling around Birmingham in the 1930s: http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=3932
Note how beautiful the city looked before the planners and the motorway builders finished what the Luftwaffe started, and before cars blighted the place. You can hear the voices of people around the cameraman, little kids with Brummie accents who may still be alive, in their 80s. And another clip from the 30s of people dressed in Victorian costumes and riding Victorian bikes. http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=14668 This one says "Happy days, when modern traffic was an undreamed of horror". Happy days refers to the age of rail, between the death of the stage coach and the rise of the motor car, when probably the only people on the roads were pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders and horse-drawn carts. What I find interesting about it is that the road in the film, and the pub, the church with the lych gate, all appear very little changed from Victorian times, despite their horror of modern traffic. Of course in 1931 the Victorian era was closer to them than the 1960s are to us now. The London street that features at the end is Kingsway; they are cycling from Aldwych up towards Russell Square and Bloomsbury. The building in the background is Bush House, headquarters of the BBC. Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
