The Tour de France took place in Essex earlier this month, but it wasn't welcome news for everybody. Old and Grumpy columnist Derek Threadgall laments the rise of the Lycra lout:
Clearly, the Tour de France route through Essex gave pleasure to many people – but not for me.
Now that the last Tour de France lycra lout has left our shores, I can relax. A pity our homegrown lycra louts didn't follow them to France.
Let me be clear: I am not anti bicycle, I am anti what some cyclists have become today. There are three main groups: Lycra louts, those who cycle to work and other necessary trips, and those who cycle for fun.
Lycra louts jump lights and get rather upset if a driver overtakes them too close for their comfort; I write as a victim of a lycra lout's verbal and physical attack on my car's passenger door and on my wing mirror.
What is up with these people? Here I must declare a peripheral interest. My father, like many thousands of other men, found it difficult to readjust to civilian life after serving in the forces during the Second World War.
A carpenter by trade, he made a bizarre decision to run a bicycle sales and repair shop; this was fun for me as a nine-year-old, especially when packing and selling fireworks in November.
Bicycles then were nothing like the monstrosities sold today. Eons ago, the best birthday or Christmas present a young boy could have would be his first two wheeler bike, in some cases a result of parental bribery concerning an imminent 11-plus examination.
For the record, I passed my 11-plus – just (no bribery involved I must add). Acquiring a new bicycle opened a new world of adventure and freedom to roam. Of course, those golden days were different to today's cycling nightmares.
We didn't need helmets, we didn't need hi-viz jackets, we didn't need cycle lanes, we didn't ride on the pavement and we employed a high-tech answer to avoid long trousers getting enmeshed in the cycle chain; we used a humble pair of cycle clips or tucked our trouser bottoms into our socks.
Best of all, we didn't need to chain our bikes to a railing to avoid them being stolen; we propped them on a kerb or against a fence or a tree aware that they would be there when we returned.
We took cycling seriously but sometimes, would do something silly and exciting, and a little bit dangerous.
A local open air roller skating rink closed during winter providing an opportunity for a scary football match between skater friends and we cyclists.
American football was child's play compared to our bizarre match. Inevitably I graduated to my father's personal bicycle – a whizzy Humber with a Sturmey Archer three-speed gear change and front and rear lighting generated from redistributed energy from the rear wheel when in motion. On many occasions, I cycled some 20 miles to have tea with my maternal grandmother and be home in time for supper.
In the late 1940s as new cyclists, the local council offered a free on road Cycling Proficiency Test which I passed and have my pass certificate to prove it (somewhere).
I have to smile when I see a modern family, dad, mum and 2.4 children all togged out with space helmets and hi-viz jackets cycling serenely in line – and illegally on the pavement.
Cycling on the road is far too dangerous; sadly, they are right. Much as I enjoyed cycling, there is no way I would take my chances on our congested roads. The culprit for this, is, of course, the rise and rise of the motor car, an irreversible impediment to safe cycling.
Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to when the lycra louts abandoned the race track to commandeer an unhealthy expanse of our highways. Maybe, the lycra louts never used a racetrack, in which case, why do they ride on public roads dressed for racing? It's a funny old world.
