Rob couldn't remember the date this campaign began (though he remembered
how)and he initially dated it much later in the 1980s. It was only
when two Bricycle calendars were unearthed from Rob's loft that the
actual date of the first meeting was shown to be September 1980
Rob describes how the idea came about:
It was in the pub one evening with a couple of friends a chap
who used to run the resource centre which at that time was in a tatty
church hall at the top of North Road and another mate, a keen cyclist
- the three of us cooked up the idea of a cycling campaign and after
some thinking decided to call it Bricycles and that took off really
well. We rapidly got rising membership, up to 300 by the simple expedience
of handing out leaflets when the lights were red. People wanted cycling
facilities; at that time there wasn't a cycle rack or a cycle lane
in the town and initially we were beating our heads against a brick
wall.Then the tide
began to change and we found ourselves, as the group does now,
working closely with the council. At that time the council didn't have
a cycle officer and now it does and now regular meetings are held
From the beginning there were tensions between two 'styles' of cyclist:
Yes,as I said there's the fast traveller - head down, go for it, wishes to use the road network as it exists; and then there is the leisurely traveller, the one less inclined to mix with traffic who would rather have a network of routes that's separated from the road and this has always been a barrier within the organisation. For instance, the cycle route out to the universities- quite a group of people wanted to plan a route which went round the back of Saunders Park, round the back of the barracks etc, but there were others who said that there was no way they'd use such a rambling route. They wanted a separate cycle lane on the Lewes Road - which is where it ended up, largely for pragmatic reasons because it was easier to achieve (all being under one authority.
