I was seven years old when I had my first bicycle. It was a sturdy, very old-fashioned heavy tricycle that had been my father’s. My paternal grandparents brought it with them when they moved from Harpley in Norfolk, to live opposite us in a large house, then known as Ard Rua. I used to ride up and down the lane that led to their house, past the farm of Old Joe Collins and do skidding turns on the gravel slope outside their my grandparent’s front door.
When I was twelve, my father bought me a second-hand bicycle. It has no gears, but then I never ever knew anybody who had any. My great uncle Bill Douglas used to visit our farm almost every week day. He used to push his bicycle up the hill and freewheel the one mile back down to Glenmanus. If you have ever ridden a bicycle with no gears, you will know that going uphill is no picnic.
I used to sit on my bicycle on the road outside our house at Islandflackey, and without making any effort, see how far I could go into Portrush. I used to sail down the first hill past Carnalridge school, slow down to a crawl before the crossroads at Magherabuoy, and fly down the hill past Glenmanus, past Glenvale Avenue, until slowly grinding to a stop shortly after. No matter what I did to lower air resistance and in spite of the weather, I always ended up within spittle distance of the house of Reverend Perrin, just before the Metropole.
Shortly after the limits of Portrush, was the house of David Hunter. We had both gone to Carnalridge Primary School and then on to CAI. In our summer holidays I used to glide down on my bicycle and we played cricket against his parent’s garage door, using a tennis ball. We were usually joined by a combination of Dennis Green, Derek Aiken, Martyn Lewis, Michael Moore and Nicholas Stevens-Hoare, all of then living within a short distance.
One summer, Derek Aiken’s father bought a rowing boat, and berthed it in the harbour. What fun it was to row around the harbour. Once, on a sea-calm day, we decided to row to Portstewart, a rather long way across the bay. After we exited the harbour mouth, we had not gone far before sight of land disappeared with the swell in the trough of a wave, to reappear on the peak of the next. We did not go very far until we decided that it might not be such a good idea and returned.
On other occasions we use to ride our bicycles to the parking area beside the East Strand. There we would race around the marked course that was used for occasional Go-Kart races. Or we played football on the packed sand of the beach. Afterwards, I had the gear-less struggle back up the hill to our farm. But the memories of that era are fond.
After I dropped out of grammar school in 1963, I lost touch with my summer friends. David Hunter went on to Oxford to study law and ended up as a QC in Belfast and Dennis Green studied dentistry. I was once told that his practice was in Derry. After university, Derek Aiken joined his father’s timber business in Coleraine, but sadly died in 1991, at the much too early age of 44. I always visit his grave on my infrequent visits to the area. Martyn Lewis became a household celebrity, reading the BBC evening news for many years and later hosting his own television programs. Michael Moore qualified from Queens University with a PhD in Marine Biology and later became Professor Moore. I don’t know what ever happened to Nicholas Stevens-Hoare. I seem to remember that his father was in the military, so perhaps he relocated.
And I don’t know what happened to my old bicycle. In the unlikely event that I should ever have another, I will insist on its having adequate gears, sufficient to enable a relatively easy ascent from Portrush up the hill to Islandflackey or the equivalent.
Or perhaps I will just stick to my lifetime habit of walking.
The Irish Rover 