We ride with Huddersfield Star Wheelers
We head to Yorkshire to ride with stars of tomorrow and discover that ‘flat’ is a relative term
n a minute we’ll start climbing. It’s reasonably short, but a bit steep,” club member Andy Rigate tells me. The look I give him must say it all. “Oh, this isn’t a hill,” he chuckles, referring to the road that we’re currently on, which has most definitely been pointing in an upward trajectory for several minutes already.
“This is flat, this,” laughs Ash Raine, one of the three ride leaders out for today’s Huddersfield Star Wheelers club run. “Well, it’s what’s known as ‘Yorkshire Flat’.”
Raine is doing a sterling job of keeping the front group of riders together, as well as remembering today’s route, which takes us on a wiggly tour of the hills south-west of Huddersfield, just north of the Peak District National Park.
“We’re not intentionally trying to make it hard,” Raine continues, “it’s just very hilly up here! It’s a pretty standard club run loop that picks up some of our race and time trial routes.”
“You just get used to it living up here,” says Alex Raine, ladies ride secretary, pulling alongside me. “I always say to the ladies who join that if I can do it so can they. I only started four years ago and now I ride three or four times a week in all weathers, all year round.”
“Alex really picked up the pace of the women’s rides!” Alice Cooper, the club’s children’s welfare officer, tells me later. “She started a monthly women’s ride, and there’s now a core of females who always turn up, and Alex is always encouraging us to sign up for events and it’s regular enough to fit in alongside my role of looking after the children in the club. I say looking after, but some of the older ones look after us nowadays!”
Starry-eyed juniors
Cooper is referring to 15-year-old Ruby Boyes and 13-year-old Oscar Williams who have joined us on the ride today and are busy pressing on at the front — no mean feat considering the terrain round here, with 10km climbs and 20 per cent-plus inclines commonplace. Boyes has to cut her ride short ride today: having raced, and won, yesterday, she needs to get back to the books as she’s in the middle of exams. “I’m also racing all of next weekend too at the Screentek International North West Youth and Junior Tour,” she tells me.
Without the pressure of exams to rein him in, Williams is free to carry on for the full club run; as an outsider it looks like an
impressive ride but apparently it’s a regular occurrence and no big deal. “I’ve just stepped up to the under-14s category, so it’s tricky to get into the national races now as I’m racing older riders, but I still managed to come eighth yesterday,” Williams says. I’m even more impressed by his 1,220 metres of climbing now I know he’s got yesterday’s race in his legs too.
I wonder if I should have asked for the two youngsters’ autographs; knowing the calibre of rider Yorkshire has a habit of producing, I have the feeling that these two could be big-hitters in a few years’ time.
“But they’re not our only stars,” says Cooper, “we’ve got over 60 youth riders in the club now. We started off with the kids of coaches, then the kids of club members and now we have kids from non-cycling families joining as well. We’re finding parents are inspired by their children to start riding.”
It’s a remarkable legacy and one that gives me the sneaking suspicion that we might be hearing a lot more from Huddersfield Star Wheelers riders in the future. A lot more.