Somewhat faster than usual by Ron Trill

When I was at school I used to get out on Saturday afternoons on an ancient bicycle exploring the locality, not realising how lucky I was in living in a small town like Ringwood, where it was so easy to do this. Eventually I knew the roads and tracks quite well, in some directions up to twenty miles or so. During my last year at school, however, I seemed to be drawn towards the towns and found it interesting to explore the network of roads between Bournemouth Pier and Sandbanks and around Poole.

Thus it was that one Saturday afternoon in July, just before breaking up at school for the last time, I was riding up Old Christchurch Road towards the Landsdowne with the intention of going through Boscombe to Iford bridge and there turning left to Hurn and Ringwood. Having negotiated the Landsdowne safely, I noticed another cyclist in front, about a hundred yards or so, of vaguely familiar outline, and looking hard, yes, I was sure, it was Marguerite Wilson. I knew Marguerite quite well in those days because we were both in the fifth form at Brockenhurst County Secondary School. This was a cosy little class of just sixteen pupils and after a few years in a class of that size, a certain camaraderie develops. It seemed that it would be a decent and civilised act to catch up with Moggie, as she was known at school.

I could not see, at that distance, what sort of a bike she was riding, except that the handlebars were of the "Sit up and Beg" type, as were mine. However, she appeared to be pedalling rather hard. I was slowly losing ground. Down the dip by the Linden Hydro, I put the pressure on. The traffic lights at the bottom were green for Moggie. I prayed they would stay green for me. They did, but any ground I made up on the down slope was lost on the climb up to the crescent.

We went through a crowded Boscombe shopping centre at what seemed like the speed of light. Bobbing about somewhere at the back of my mind was the thought that riding a bicycle furiously was an offence roughly equivalent to riding after dark without lights. I was somewhat concerned about the old crock I was riding. It had been passed to me at least third-hand by an uncle some five years before. Never in its life had it been ridden so fast. Things had fallen off at much slower speeds than this.

It was now clear that I would never catch Moggie up. Perhaps I could hang on until I could honourably turn off at Iford. With great determination, I pedalled furiously down the hill after Pokesdown. Perhaps demoniacally would be a better description. There may have been only a couple of schooldays left, but I could not chance it getting around that I could not keep up with Moggie.

No roundabout at Iford in those days; Castle lane was a series of lanes through fields; so there was nothing to impede our progress as we flew down from Pokesdown. When I turned off at Iford any distance I had gained down the hill merely made up for ground previously lost and I was still a hundred yards behind as Moggie sailed towards Christchurch. At least I had held on, now I could enjoy a more leisurely ride home.

But this was something new! Moggie the tomboy we knew all about at school. Good with a tennis racket, formidable with a hockey stick, she excelled at athletics and would always earn points for the school at the County School sports at Winchester. But Moggie the fast bike rider was something beyond our imagining in our narrow world at school. Perhaps I should not have been surprised, knowing her as I did.

She was already a member of the Bournemouth Arrow. Soon she would hold her own with any member of that club. In a couple of years her name would be known to all cyclists in the country. In little more than six years she would have turned professional and captured every women's cycling record worth having, including the Lands End to John O'Groats. Other names may now be written against these records, but the name of Marguerite Wilson is still up there with all the other cycling greats.

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