HOME | DD

Cycle Rally — Description

Captured at Beamish, the Living Museum of the North in County Durham, this series celebrates a gathering of early bicycles, tricycles and motorcycles from the dawn of personal transport. A replica 1869 boneshaker, with its bright yellow spoked wheels and simple crank pedals, sits beside a Victorian tricycle laden with wicker baskets. Elsewhere, an ornate Premier Roadster tricycle of around 1884 stands next to a hand-cranked invalid tricycle from the early 1900s, complete with a padded wooden seat and hinged pedal bar, and a soaring penny-farthing, labelled a Coventry Machinists' Company Club Special, towers over the parked machines.
The motorcycles are equally fascinating. A green and black BSA sits between a 1920s Ner-a-Car and a sidecar outfit registered PE 7029, while a smart Triumph in pale green and black, registration SV 6051, leans on its stand against a stone wall. Nearby, a Rudge-Whitworth with a distinctive brass exhaust horn stands beside an early motorised bicycle carrying a wooden auxiliary engine box marked "Powerful, Coventry". Rows of period motorcycles with acetylene lamps and leather saddles fill the yard, while visitors, some in vintage dress, browse among them.
Together, these images offer a wonderful cross-section of transport history, from muscle power to the earliest motorised machines.