Brian Alexander – multiple times former club champion and now Westerley’s oldest living member – writes about some notable riders from the early days of the club.

As a long-standing Westerley member I would like to highlight some of the amazing achievements of some of the very many outstanding Westerley riders of previous generations

My Dad (Reg) was one of the very first members, He broke the 25 club record in 1926 with the first 1 hr 5min ride in the club, just two minutes slower than Frank Southall’s competition record at the time.

I was introduced to club riding with the West Middlesex CTC section at the age of 12 and made my first contact with the Westerley boys at the delightfully primitive Manor Farm at Little Hampden for tea.(lots of mud, slurry and doorless outside toilets!). They had been riding in the Bon Amis 25 that morning, and, mounted on the back of my dad’s tandem we joined in a fantastic tear up along the Amersham Road afterwards and I was hooked for life!

From then on I was out riding with the section every weekend and not long afterwards the club run visited the Star at Waltham St Lawrnce for elevenses (close to White Waltham airfield, the home of the ATA – famous now as the as the base for the female pilots delivering warplanes from their factories to bases all over the UK, but of which we were completely oblivious of at the time.

Here I was to meet George Strong a pre-war star of the Westerley who was on weekend leave from the RAF. I  felt  privileged when he seemed so friendly towards me ,a thirteen year old kid at the time, and I was so impressed, not only with his obvious bike handling skills (he was captain of the pre-war club bicycle polo team) but his generally soft spoken, and humorous demeanour.

George was Westerley’s Club champion in1941 and his club record 25 of 1:03:40. in 1942  was a quite outstanding performance, being less than 3 minutes off comp record at the time. This record was unbeaten till the sensational achievement of an eighteen year old  Dennis Pearce in winning a WLCA 25 five years later.

I had no idea of his activities in the air force at the time as such things were kept highly secret in wartime of course.  Tragically however very soon after this meeting I learnt that George had been killed in action, robbing the club of one of its best ever riders.  Recent research revealed that Flight Sergeant George Strong was a navigator on a bomber squadron. It appears that he had  just completed his first tour of operations and had been transferred to a training or conversion unit  in South Yorkshire. On a training flight, maybe with a novice pilot, his Handley Page Halifax B3,looking for the airfield in bad visibility, crashed into high ground near Brough. The pilot and the crew of six including George did not survive.

George, together with the other members of the crew were apparently buried in a churchyard near the accident (as was the norm at the time) at Brough, near Kingston on Hull, S. Yorkshire

The other great but often-overlooked hero of the Westerley pre-war who I never met was Bobby Biggs, who as a 17 year old in 1939 entered his first 12 hour and, not only broke the club record by a large margin but won the WLCA 12, with an amazing ride of 235 miles which was probably the West London course record and only sixteen miles off the then competition record!

Sadly, Bobby joined the RAF very soon afterwards and, after being trained as a pilot in South Africa. was sent to Italy, flying American B25 Mitchells, and was killed in action. So I – and most of the wartime Westerley members – never had the privilege of meeting him.