Veteran rider Felix Ormerod takes a nostalgic trip back to the early days of Audax in out-of-the-way Essex, where the county’s many windmills provided ideal landmarks for long-distance cycling “steeple-chasers”
Happy returns… Felix outside Great Chishill, no longer a control, this year, with the same bike (and lights) he was using in the 1980s
Arrivée154Winter2021
The only way is Audax…
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IN 1983, LONG BEFORE Audax Club Mid-Essex (ACME), the secretary of the Essex District Association, Dot Sharp, received a letter from CTC headquarters with guidance on how to organise a randonnee under Audax UK rules. I’m not sure what prompted the letter. Keith Matthews had organised the very first National 400 the year previously. Perhaps the CTC had their eye on future organisers of that annual event. Indeed it was staged in Essex again in 1990. Keith had been running the classic Dorset Coast 200 since 1978 but the Audax seed still hadn’t been sown in Essex – the scope for gatherings of the Essex CTC sections didn’t extend beyond long-established reliability rides, off-road rides and map-reading competitions. The suggested ride may well have been 200km. There was little emphasis on the shorter populaire event at the time –
that wasn’t really “long distance cycling”. But 200km in almost 14 hours didn’t seem too onerous a task for cyclists used to completing day rides in the dark or 100s in eight hours or 150 miles in 12 hours. What did start the head scratching was how to manage the long opening hours of the necessary controls due to the large spread of minimum and maximum speeds. In addition, the birth of Audax UK seven years before had gone almost unnoticed in insular Essex. This was not the first randonnee to start in Essex. Herman Ramsey of Colchester Rovers CC desperately required a 400km brevet in 1979 in order to qualify for PBP that year (which he completed) so he ran one himself at short notice. Back then, a phone call to John Nicholas was all that was required for him to get out his gothic type and printing press. Herman continued to run an annual
300 or 400 from that date – rides that still operate in the safe hands of ACME. So it was perhaps unsurprising that the most enthusiasm for running a 200km ride came from members of the soon to disband Colchester section, Len Harris and Terry Harding. Havering CTC also showed interest – Brian Phipps had completed Windsor-Chester-Windsor in 1979, following in the wheel marks of his brother Len, along with a good number of other shorter randonnees. Other sections were somewhat dumbfounded but went along with the idea. Brian must have been one of the very few AUK members riding in the 1984 event. Perhaps for that reason, Charles Comport never bothered to list who belonged to Audax UK in his “results sheet”. After discussion at committee level, the die was cast and the randonnee would go ahead the following year, 1984.
