Rob Ainsley

Nothing’s new under the sun – or rain. Rob Ainsley time travels at the National Cycle Museum

His old bike is a museum piece!

“Crumbs: my first touring bike is now a museum piece. Thrilling but unsettling at the same time”

Cymru am byth: Wales forever. I’ve just done the Welsh End to End from Chepstow to Holyhead, aka the Lôn Las Cymru. I did it once before, in 2000. It proved an authentic Cambrian experience: it rained all the way.

So here I was doing it again, with the cloud base above head height this time, to see what Wales actually looks like, to enjoy a view of rugged hillscapes, rather than my sodden shoes.

This time, I worked in a visit to Llandrindod Wells. It’s a mildly interesting Victorian spa town, complete with boating lake, period shopfronts and impressive early Art Deco buildings. But to cycling, the place is what Florence’s Uffizi is to Renaissance art. What London’s British Museum is to Egyptology. What Wigan is to pies. Because Llandrindod Wells is home to the National Cycling Museum.

Housed in one of those Art Deco showpieces, the collection – of 250 bikes, countless pieces of memorabilia and several charmingly makeshift mannequins – covers the whole 200-year history of pedalled transport.

The early days are lavishly well represented. Some machines are plain weird, like results of speculative genetic experiments. Extraordinary Ordinaries, unsociable Sociables, dangerous Safeties. Even a bike made out of a bedstead. BSOs – ‘Bicycle Shaped Objects’, that standard dismissal of supermarket bikes – are nothing new.

In fact, it seems little is new in cycling. There’s a replica of Drais’s 1817 velocipede, next to a modern kid’s balance bike. They are, in essence, the same thing. Think of anything ‘modern’ – step-through frames, bamboo bikes, shaft drives, handcycles, cargo bikes, recumbents, bikepacking... There are century-old examples galore in the museum.

There are folding bikes from the 1940s, designed for trips to work – if your trips to work were parachuting behind enemy lines, that is. There are bicycles used by RAC patrolmen in the days when it was quicker for reaching stranded motorists than a car; perhaps they’ll have to reintroduce the idea on today’s ‘smart’ motorways.

Racing and time-trial buffs have plenty to admire. Eileen Sheridan’s Hercules is here, the one she rode from London to York in 10 hours. You can hardly drive it in that time these days. And there’s even a 1980s electric job, when the age of the ebike was just around the corner. Funny, it still is.

Among the countless adverts and posters, my favourite was one for Raleigh’s All Steel Bicycle. To judge by the illustration, it ran so smooth you could refill your pipe while cycling, The tobacco-toting rider is a dapper silver-haired gent in suit, tie and boater, looking like a nonchalant Edward Elgar en route to Henley. MAMILs in 1910 evidently had a touch of style.

My Lôn Las Cymru in 2000 was on a Raleigh, too: a 1980s Record Ace. So I was thrilled to see one on display, virtually identical to mine, right down to the foam handlebar grips that were great in the dry, but like car-wash sponges in the wet. Which it was, every day. Thrilling, but unsettling. Crumbs: my first touring bike is now a museum piece.

I had mostly sun for my cross-Wales trip this time. The scenery is superb, the quiet lanes delightful, the climbs and descents fabulous (go Gospel Pass: that’s a cracker). Lôn Las Cymru am byth! Add the route to your bucket list. And take in the museum.

Talking of (kicking) buckets, also on display is the gravestone of Maurice Selbach, killed when caught in tramlines (‘HE DIED AS HE LIVED. A CYCLIST’). It sports a bike carved out of the stone.

I might go for something similar myself. Not for a while, I hope, though. Carpediem, as they say in Welsh. We won’t be around forever.

But bikes will. Beiciau am byth!