Greaves, Walter

Walter’s obvious physical disability was that his left arm finished at the elbow. That didn’t stop him from brazing, filing, spray-painting, wheel building, repairing bikes and prams, or cycling. His claim to fame was that in the 1930’s he had established a world record for the highest mileage ridden in a year. This was as a pro for Three Spires Cycles, presumably of Lichfield. Establishing this in a British twelve-month, with an illness in February, was no match for Hubert Opperman’s subsequent ride in sunny Australia. (See report at end of page.)

The downtube transfers were, I think, a Times New Roman style in solid gold letters, with either ‘Walter’ or ‘WW’ small then ‘GREAVES’ large. Almost certainly ‘Walter’. The head and seat tube transfers escape me altogether, although I associate ‘La Victoire’ with an oval.  Pathetic, when I’ve seen them times without number.  When I went to order a new frame Walter was displeased that I wished to go conventional, but instantly realised on which side his bread was buttered.  I can’t even remember how it looked, but it was a Paris-style paint job using three colours.  I do remember that my brother’s ‘La Victoire’ was done the same way; a beautiful metallic turquoise frame with a silver ‘splodge’ then a flamboyant red one in the centre. How silly that I can’t remember what my own looked like, or what became of it.   I do remember that it was darned good, did a load of miles, had Stallard rear drop-outs with the long guide spikes, and a hanger for my Osgear – but no beautiful lugs.

Ian Peacock on Walter:

In his folk singing incarnation, Walter wrote a great song about the granting of the old age pension, entitled “What Lloyd George Gave Me”. The chorus goes:

He took me out of t’workhouse,
And he gave me life that’s free,
Five shilling a week for cheatin’ death,
That’s what Lloyd George gave me.

A  North Yorkshire trio called  “Castabella”  can be heard giving an authentic rendition to this day.

Walter’s world record – an extract from Bradford Telegraph and Argus 18 April 1978 Bradford cyclist Walter Greaves lived with his mother in Newlands Place Undercliffe, when he set out on January 6, 1936 to attack the world record of 43,996 miles cycled in a year. He quickly met a lot of bad winter weather.  On the first day he rode against the wind to York and for four of the first seven days he was soaked by rain.  Travelling to Doncaster he finished with ears and fingers frostbitten.   He completed a Leeds-York-Beverley-Selby circuit in driving snow and on roads glassy with ice.   One day, struggling through snowdrifts on the North Yorkshire moors, he fell off his machine eight times. Soon he was going further afield and finding better weather and by mid-June he had completed 21,500 miles.  He rode a lap of honour at a track meeting at Herne Hill.

Greaves, who had lost his arm in an accident as a teenager, had a specially constructed one-handlebar machine, and as a vegetarian kept to a diet of milk, brown bread, butter, tomatoes, apples, nuts and orange juice.

He broke the record on December 13 and did a lap of honour at Hyde Park followed by hundreds of other cyclists.  The Western Brothers then presented him with a trophy from the makers of his machine (Three Spires Cycles).  He said that his biggest mileage in one day had been 262 but that he went 374 miles at a stretch over two days without sleep.

It was mine! I’m prompted to write this because I’ve recently seen a few incorrect statements on the web. The frame in question was built around 1948. My father owned this Greaves ‘King of the Mountains’ and kept it after he gave up cycling. It stood in our garage as a complete bike with an Osgear, and cobwebs all over it, when I was a child. It was predominantly green, with a sort of rainbow effect overspray paint job. Round about 1970, Dad took the ’King of the Mountains’ frame back to Walter, thinking that he might like to have it. Dad knew Walter from the League days and had kept in touch, albeit infrequently.

When I became keen on cycling, around 1974, Dad took me out to The Forge, near Skipton, to see Walter, who gave us a performance of folk singing, accompanying himself with a small ‘squeeze box’ concertina. He used his shoulder and his one hand to play it. My other strong memory of that visit was the torrent of the most shocking and crude swear words which emerged from his mouth when, for some reason, the Royal Family was mentioned. It states on your site that Walter was not one for strong language, but he certainly excelled himself on that occasion. We ended up bringing the frame back with us: Walter had no interest in it. He also gave us a full set of the correct transfers.

My father got really keen about it on the drive home and instead of going to our house Dad drove straight to Geoff Clark’s cycle shop at Horton Grange in Bradford. It was left there for shot blasting and a re-spray – ‘Spanish Orange’ was the colour chosen. The transfers were to be fitted, the seat pin re-chromed and a new headset fitted. I built the bike up with current equipment – a single Campag chain-ring with a close ratio 5 block, a Shimano mech and a Unica saddle. I did use a pair of Chater Lea pedals, so there was a hint of original equipment there. There was some difficulty in fitting the rear derailleur because the ‘horned’ part of the dropouts (I think Stallard) interfered with it and we sawed them off at both sides, so that they matched.

I rode the bike in time trials, and later used it as a winter bike, with fixed gear and a French dynamo fitted under the bottom bracket. The seat pin was always a sloppy fit and occasionally came loose. This was nothing to do with its unusual shape, but it was thinner than it should have been because of excessive bead-blasting before being chromed – it had been very rusty. Of course, I couldn’t fit a normal seat pin… The ‘King of the Mountains’ was a good bike to ride and compared well with my main bikes, a Favori and a Pennine. It always attracted a lot of attention, and requests from other club members to ‘have a go on it’.

I gave up cycling (for the first time) in 1977 and the frame was sold. I was astonished some years later to see it in the Bradford Industrial Museum, presumably donated by the man who had bought it from me. It had been built up with equipment fairly correct for when the frame was built, but with fixed gear and a front brake only. These frames were intended for use road racing use and would have probably had four or five gears, with most likely an Osgear mechanism or similar. There the bike still stands, getting progressively more neglected as each year goes by. The placard in front of it states that ‘little is known about this bicycle’, despite the fact that I sent the museum a lot of information about it many years ago. You can still see where I chopped off the dropout horns, and where my dynamo and cable clips have left scratches on the now faded paintwork. I must contact the museum again and hope that they will take some action over this unusual bit of cycling history. I note that there is a Wikipedia entry now for Walter Greaves that doesn’t mention his frames or this unorthodox design but has managed to get it wrong about ’my’ bike. I hope that this is of interest to you.