Mehrhoog Village

So what happens if you find a postcard on your dad´s desk that shows some parts of the village you grew up in?

I imagine it´s about 90 years old – the road signs in the bottom left picture look that old. So what happens? You hop on the bike and take a look at what things look like nowadays.

It´s starting with a disappointment: The windmill was destroyed in WWII during Operation Plunder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plunder), the huge crossing of the river Rhine (about 4 km as the crow flies) by the allies in March 1945. Boats, gliders, parachutists – you name it. German resistance was fierce, especially in the area where I grew up, and literally no stone was left of most buildings in the surrounding villages.

This is a famous picture of the town of Wesel, about 10 miles / 15 km from my village. I went to school in the (re-built) corner building with the tower near the centre of the picture just above the crater field. (Public domain / USAAF – taken from the wikipedia article mentioned above.)

Original description: “Walls of houses of Wesel still stand, as do the churches, but a great part of the town was destroyed when the German commander forced the Allied troops to fight their way street by street through the ruins. Germany, 1945.”

But back to the village. Many villagers were killed, along with thousands of soldiers. I remember that the ruin of the windmill was still around, but now there is a built up area where it used to be.

Next, the train station. There used to be a 19th cent station building which I remember from my youth.

This is what the “station” looks like today, sidings gone, building gone:

Now the big crossroads, a few 100 m outside the village as such. Used to be Provinzialstraße (District Road), then Bundesstraße 8, now Landesstraße 7.

The school building mentioned in the postcard caption is still there, albeit enlarged and rebuilt.

Lastly a memorial to a battle that took place in 1758 where the village now is.

And for good measure another postcard, hanging on the wall in a restaurant, showing the village in the sixties I assume.

The school is the one I went to between ages six and ten; nowadays it is used as living quarters for newly arrived refugees. My mother taught there for more than 30 years. I know for sure that the swimming bath is no longer there, and you know the station already.

I will add to this post when / if I modern views of the school and Bahnhofsstraße.

Soviet Folder Project – Salyut Everybody!

Something I´ve had on the back burner for literally 20 years (or more) – A Soviet Salyut folding bicycle, made (I think) in the Perm Bicycle Factory ПВЗ. This factory also produced a relatively well made Fichtel & Sachs Torpedo single speed coaster brake hub, which had been a mainstay of transportation in many countries for decades. In fact, I still use a Torpedo near-daily.

So, my Salyut is quite badly worse for wear. Many parts are still missing (the original spoke reflectors, the tool pouch, the cute and useful user´s manual, an electric lighting set and much more). However, there are enough bits to get a working bicycle on the road. Here are a few pix:

The tires are still original Soviet ones, made in January 1990.

The folding mech is quite robust, if not safe enough for today´s ideas. However, the dropouts do not look very convincing.

And here are a few more bits and pieces:

Wish me luck.

An Errand Run in February

… and it´s been the wettest winter we´ve had for decades, so any break in the downpours is welcome.

The bike still is the Rohloff equipped city bike I´ve used (abused) for years. The pannier I´ve used since the late 1980s, and the camera was my fleamarket sourced Sony RX 100 Mk I. I think the eight Euro I spent on the Sony must rank highly on the most useful and enjoyable eight Euro I´ve ever spent on anything. But now the pix. (Don´t ask me where the geese came from in mid-February.)

Book: Joris v.d. Bergh, Te midden der kampioenen

It´s that time of the year, isn´t it? Sleet, rain, two deg C, ugh. No time for riding, but time for reading.

What do we have here? A fascinating book, for sure. Many people must have thought so, as it was first published in 1929, became an instant success, was edited in 1942 and my copy dates from 1964. There seems to have been yet another reprint in 1981, at least that´s what it says today on boekwinkeltjes. I got my copy about 20 years ago in a Dutch veteran bike market, and it was a lot cheaper than the 15€ people are asking on the net. For all of you who can read Dutch it must be remarked that Joris van den Bergh´s language is very distinguished, affording the reader 230 pages of pleasure.

Its author, Joris van den Bergh, can be called one of the founders of Dutch sports reporting. He had a huge knowledge of the cycle sport and also lead the first Dutch team to take part in the Tour de France, so he was quite multifaceted. His voice actually can be heard in the oldest (Dutch language) report on the TdF:

Het oudste Nederlandse radiofragment over de Tour de France is uit 1939

It´s not him in the picture, but this is:

Van den Bergh died in 1953, so his fame outlived him. As did Piet Moeskops (1893-1964, pronounced “Mooskops”), one of the most famous figures in 1920s track racing. Becoming sprint world champion five times (1921-1924 and 1926), and with his imposing figure that was untypically tall for a racing cyclist, he was a popular hero all during the 1920s, and Joris van den Bergh wrote the book I´m currently reading about him, two years before Moeskops finished his career in 1931.

Here are a few pix taken from the book:

Looking at the pictures I can´t help to notice that to my mind, Moeskops rode a frame that was a few cms to small for him. He had a special position on the bike for which he was known, and as in the 20s there was no scientific research on the dynamics on the bicycle, one just has to assume that he, the five times world champion, knew what he was doing.

What the book is not is a source for historic research; van den Bergh writes it like a long feature in a Saturday sports newspaper. He expects the reader to believe him and gives no sources, also not for the parts in which he describes Moeskops´ early life in which he still was out of the limelight and which v.d. Bergh did not witness.

But, you know, on a rainy January Sunday “Te midden der kampioenen” is a great way to spend the time waiting for spring.

Tubes and Coffee 2023

After a few years due to Corona and other issues I was able to visit Marten again last Sunday. I simply loved the whole atmosphere, the bikes on display (Barra!) and of course the food. Here are a few impressions:

A Bicycle Leaflet

During my summer holidays in Normandy I attended a fleamarket in which I scored a leaflet for one Euro which I think was printed in the late 19th century.

The owner of a cycle shop in the South of France, Auguste Ramondou, advertises a large delivery of Svelte cycles which he recommends with the usual 1890s pomp to the public. It is mentioned that cycles Svelte are the best bicycles in the world, which must be very far fetched. But who, where and what is all of this?

First, checking on the net the name Ramondou seems to be relatively frequent in the Tarn and Tarn-et-Garonne Départements. The death register on the net does not show an Auguste though. The tiny village of Roquecor is in Tarn-et-Garonne (82) and and does not seem to hold a bicycle store today.

OTOH the Societé Manufacturière d´Armes et Cycles at Saint-Etienne is relatively well-known, and their Svelte Cycles seem to have been manufactured in large numbers. The bad quality illustration on the leaflet is one that is seen frequently in better quality on contemporary posters, like this one:

The primitive woodcut (?) in the leaflet is quite obviously a copy of the illustration above. Here we also see some more info: It seems that Cycles Svelte were used by the cyclists in the Garde Républicaine, an élite corps of the French army in existence to this day. My suggestion is that the motif was that well known to the public that it only took a bad, cheaply printed copy, like the leaflet, to evoke the emotions in the viewers that the seller and manufacturer wanted to evoke.

So, even if the fleamarket in Normandy did not show much more interesting stuff, this leaflet was worth going.

A Very Special Photo Album

Some time ago I was offered a quite special photo album in a fleamarket, not because of my involvement with bicycles, but with photography instead.

Already the exterior, leather spine, art déco linen envelope, appealed to me, and when the seller mentioned the price of 10€ I just could not resist.

Opening the album on the first page I saw a very promising and personal beginning.

Of course the first thing I did when arriving back home was to enter the author´s name in an internet search engine, but to no avail. Herr Immink seems to have been either an very advanced photo amateur, or this album was part of his education as a photgrapher.

What makes the album so special is that it is crammed with examples of any variation in photography the 30s knew, and most pictures show that he had the eye. For example: Immink compared results of using different lens designs…

… or chemicals, or plates, or negative materials:

Or, indeed, papers, and this is why I´mentioning my find in this blog:

Look a that bike, taken from real life, with a near-flat front tire, doubtlessly underinflated because of the cobblestones. The very sporty short, narrow bars contrast with the rest of the well-worn and packed bike. The front fender either was sacrificed to the sporting ambitions of the young rider, or simply fell off after having been exposed to vibrations for too long.

Another Series of the ca 1941 Swiss Condor

Little Mermaid

… well, sort of. Taken in Le Tréport harbour in France, the photos look as if the bicycle had spent considerably more time under than above water. The design scheme of the tiny cockles actually look quite attractive to me.

And perhaps somebody remembers the post I wrote about the much too small bicycle I found in France and which had served me so well for two holidays? Add the third one this year. Again there was not much space in the car so I took it along. It´s amazing what a long seatpin and a Brooks saddle from the fleamarket will do for you.

A New Long Distance Cyclepath in France

The new Chemin Vert (green path) between Heudelimont and Eu in Normandy is a mixed blessing. Cycling along I met a few people who liked it for “ballades”, leisure time on the bike or on foot, but could not imagine anyone using it for commuting for instance. Relatively big parking spaces for cars at every intersection show the cyclepath`s main purpose, and an official speed restriction of 20 km/h isn´t too tempting for daily runs either, especially not on electric bikes.

Also a cyclist remarked that a great number of trees had been felled, so she preferred to cycle on the old chemin, not more than a small path in the jungle (see picture below) that had grown on the railway line which had been disused since 1982. It had been built 97 years before that, necessitating a great number of bridges, a large viaduct and a lot of deep incisions into the hilly countryside.

Very few railway artifacts remain, for instance the old station houses were torn down decades ago.

Here are a few pix, hopefully largely self explaining.

The border between jungle and civilization

Crossroads are well marked, but planners obviously didn´t dare giving cyclists right of way

One of the few junctions of cyclist traffic; the path from the right coming from a road joining the Chemin Vert

Not everything is ready yet

“Don´t jump off the bridge” – it seems that some peple need to be told that

Not even all the roads crossing the railway line are still in use

The large brick bridge crossing the…

… Rue des Canadiens in EU

And here we are. Eu. The journey ends here. All passengers are requested to leave the train. No gap to be minded.