Cycling

Back in 2017 my wife and I decided that we wanted to start cycling, after not having done any for about 40 years. But we live on a hill, in a town full of hills, so we knew that a regular bicycle wouldn’t work for us.

That’s why we decided to invest in a couple of (folding) electric bicycles, and enjoyed using them so much that last year we invested in a couple of full size electric bikes encouraged by our friends to take the plunge.

It us probably too strong to say that these bicycles have changed our lives, but they have definitely allowed us to take more exercise than we used to and have enabled us to visit new places on our doorstep and beyond which we would never have discovered without them.

It was therefore a natural choice for this year’s exhibition to find some labels from my collection depicting bicycles.

Labels with bicycles

My labels show two distinctly different ways of riding bicycles : for sport and for pleasure (including the occasional “Road Safety” label). My cycling is definitely not sporty, it’s only for pleasure.

As you might expect, many countries issued labels, skillets and bookmatches showing bicycles, here are a few. All the labels measure approximately 35 x 52 mm unless otherwise stated.

Tandems

I have a bit of history with tandems. While at University in the 1980s my keen-cyclist friend suggested we cycled to a party about 20 miles away, which we duly did. On the return journey we were cycling through Eton when we approached a building with scaffolding outside it, at speed. My friend was at the front and looked as if he was going underneath the scaffolding, whereas I wanted to go around it. The two different approaches were not helpful.

We crashed into the scaffolding, bending the tandem and puncturing my friend’s leg with a scaffolding pole. Needless to say, I have never ridden a tandem since.

But that doesn’t prevent me from enjoying matchbox labels depicting tandems, or indeed any type of bicycle.

Click here to return to the Exhibition Catalogue.