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Carlton Reid, the guy who started the trade website BikeBiz, is my source for this, and his is a name to look out for, his writing is consistently good and his

Carlton Reid, the guy who started the trade website BikeBiz, is my source for this, and his is a name to look out for, his writing is consistently good and his advocacy based on a knowledge of history. I am just paraphrasing what I have learned from his telling of the early days of the CTC (Cycle Touring Club). There were many cycle touring clubs, and this was how men met women without their mothers being around! The trains connected communities as never before and what we call the 'A roads' that connect towns had nobody using them, simple as that. Why would you go on an arduous journey that would take all day when the train would get you there in twenty minutes? At the time there were no local authorities to look after the roads, it was each parish to its own, with the locals doing the work. Toll roads were the solution to the problem of maintenance, and toll roads were the 'A roads'. When they no longer had customers, due to the trains, they were done. As for the bicycle and the reopening of roads, this had a lot to do with men chasing women, before the bicycle you were somewhat restricted to the gene pool in your village, with the bicycle there were neighbouring villages. It wasn't all about getting to the factory for work, there was this huge leisure/dating aspect to early cycling culture. Trains were 10x faster than horses and men - at walking speed - on rough roads. The toll roads just withered and died. Confronted with a mountain, the train would just blast through, whereas the road would be a treacherous mountain pass, no tunnel, cutting or massive bridge provided. Trains were rocket ships. Before that, canals had their own quirks of geography, with much of it to do with feeding or resting horses. The signs are for the next horse stop, not the nearby town. With many a British town the town centre can be dated by when the canal arrived and when the railway arrived, since the buildings in the town centre start in local stone, then you get slate from the canal arriving and then brick, because the train made it to town. It is incredible that so much of the final mile was by horse and cart. Only with 21st century goggles on does your idea of induced vehicular traffic make sense, trains were just too good.

applfanboysbgon 1mo ago
> Carlton Reid, the guy who started the trade website BikeBiz, is my source for this, and his is a name to look out for, his writing is consistently good and his advocacy based on a knowledge of history. I am just paraphrasing what I have learned from his telling of the early days of the CTC (Cycle Touring Club). I'll just note if there's one thing I've learned from studying a lot of history writing, it's that being a good writer has little correlation with establishing a ground truth. Indeed, there may be a negative correlation. You're almost certainly more likely to perceive somebody who can craft a compelling narrative as a "good writer". Compelling narratives are entertaining and satisfying. Reality can be a lot more boring. I find that a very significant portion of history writing takes a few tiny scraps of real information from primary sources (which could itself be embellished!) and extrapolates to what society must have been like, and does so in a way that makes it sound interesting. This is not a commentary on Carlton Reid specifically. I have not read his writing. But I think this is a general principle to be aware and careful of. The reality is that in most cases we don't have a comprehensive historical record, especially for anything predating the 20th century, and history writing involves a lot of plausibly but not necessarily truthfully filling in the gaps. People telling you "this is what society was like" sates your curiosity a lot better than "we don't really know tbh".
benj111 1mo ago
>Only with 21st century goggles on does your idea of induced vehicular traffic make sense I live between Manchester and Bradford. 2 towns that didn't exist before the industrial revolution. 2 entire cities built, basically because of that induced demand. In fact I grew up next to probably what was the major road between the 2 judging by the number of ex inns. Yes. You will get less traffic going Manchester <-> Bradford on the road. But you have some guy in between those 2 points that wants to sell his cloth. He needs to get it to one of those 2 points. You need to get the wool to the factory. Etc, etc etc. that mill exists because you have those 2 cities, further they are connected elsewhere where. Yes Bradford had factories, manchester had factories. But any small village around here had factories. Where I grew up was nowhere near the railway, canal, Huddersfield and Halifax were miles away, it still had 2 mills. I'm currently in pecket well, a tiny village of less than 50 houses on the top of a hill, I can see it had at least 1 mill because I can see it, now flats. Yes, the stuff was only going to hebden bridge. But what was moving before that? Not much except wool and judging by the ratio of weavers cottages to mill cottages, a lot less than when the mill was here. Induced demand!
- Theodores 1mo ago
  Wool thief! That industry was ours, in Gloucestershire and in Devon. All that red cloth that native peoples the world over wanted, and clothed every soldier, that was our broad cloth. You meanies undercut us and put us out of business. We had teasels and Fuller's Earth, you had machines (and brains). Let's be honest, that was no 'heavy haulage'. That cloth that took whole families months to make did not need an articulated lorry convoy to take it away, to be sold by the East India Company. In Gloucestershire we had pack horses to collect the woollen goodies, which would not be finished cloth from villagers, the people in London had the cloth making sewn up, before then it was in Flanders. The public house was where it all happened, the merchant brought goods from outside and sold any old rubbish for a huge mark up to a captive audience. Journey times were huge for relatively short distances, when you see the old roads and how they remorselessly go over steep hills, you can see why, it is very much like hill climbing, where 20 miles a day is good going with a camping rucksack, but imagine massive wool sacks and some horse. 4 mph, is that optimistic? I should say so. Today, with mountain bike, a lot of pushing is involved, with descents being technical. Thinking of the inns and pubs that used to be inns, there are quite a few in small villages that make sense at pack horse speed, but no sense in today's world, blazing past at 70 mph, latte in cup holder, burger on seat, A/C on full blast, Spotify playlist also on full blast, sat-nav telling you about the hazards ahead, on your way for some clothes shopping in the big city that is another dozen miles up the road, to be there in fifteen minutes, in a car that is five thousand miles away from needing to be looked at under the bonnet, texting whilst driving. That inn might have had a heyday when everyone stopped by, to get hay, beer, a bed, advice from fellow travellers coming the other way regarding the road ahead, entertainment, specialist leather services, blacksmith services, a small shop, parlour games, female company, live music, the warmth of a fire and much else. Anyway, just to explain your local history, you guys STOLE our trade. This is why you went from nothing to mills, bypassing aeons of cottage industry. A few clearances later, you have got your labour force. Instructions to readers: mod parent down as he shows no remorse for his ancestors stealing the wool trade from the hard working people of Gloucestershire and Devon!

applfanboysbgon 1mo ago

> Carlton Reid, the guy who started the trade website BikeBiz, is my source for this, and his is a name to look out for, his writing is consistently good and his advocacy based on a knowledge of history. I am just paraphrasing what I have learned from his telling of the early days of the CTC (Cycle Touring Club). I'll just note if there's one thing I've learned from studying a lot of history writing, it's that being a good writer has little correlation with establishing a ground truth. Indeed, there may be a negative correlation. You're almost certainly more likely to perceive somebody who can craft a compelling narrative as a "good writer". Compelling narratives are entertaining and satisfying. Reality can be a lot more boring. I find that a very significant portion of history writing takes a few tiny scraps of real information from primary sources (which could itself be embellished!) and extrapolates to what society must have been like, and does so in a way that makes it sound interesting. This is not a commentary on Carlton Reid specifically. I have not read his writing. But I think this is a general principle to be aware and careful of. The reality is that in most cases we don't have a comprehensive historical record, especially for anything predating the 20th century, and history writing involves a lot of plausibly but not necessarily truthfully filling in the gaps. People telling you "this is what society was like" sates your curiosity a lot better than "we don't really know tbh".

benj111 1mo ago

>Only with 21st century goggles on does your idea of induced vehicular traffic make sense I live between Manchester and Bradford. 2 towns that didn't exist before the industrial revolution. 2 entire cities built, basically because of that induced demand. In fact I grew up next to probably what was the major road between the 2 judging by the number of ex inns. Yes. You will get less traffic going Manchester <-> Bradford on the road. But you have some guy in between those 2 points that wants to sell his cloth. He needs to get it to one of those 2 points. You need to get the wool to the factory. Etc, etc etc. that mill exists because you have those 2 cities, further they are connected elsewhere where. Yes Bradford had factories, manchester had factories. But any small village around here had factories. Where I grew up was nowhere near the railway, canal, Huddersfield and Halifax were miles away, it still had 2 mills. I'm currently in pecket well, a tiny village of less than 50 houses on the top of a hill, I can see it had at least 1 mill because I can see it, now flats. Yes, the stuff was only going to hebden bridge. But what was moving before that? Not much except wool and judging by the ratio of weavers cottages to mill cottages, a lot less than when the mill was here. Induced demand!

Theodores 1mo ago
Wool thief! That industry was ours, in Gloucestershire and in Devon. All that red cloth that native peoples the world over wanted, and clothed every soldier, that was our broad cloth. You meanies undercut us and put us out of business. We had teasels and Fuller's Earth, you had machines (and brains). Let's be honest, that was no 'heavy haulage'. That cloth that took whole families months to make did not need an articulated lorry convoy to take it away, to be sold by the East India Company. In Gloucestershire we had pack horses to collect the woollen goodies, which would not be finished cloth from villagers, the people in London had the cloth making sewn up, before then it was in Flanders. The public house was where it all happened, the merchant brought goods from outside and sold any old rubbish for a huge mark up to a captive audience. Journey times were huge for relatively short distances, when you see the old roads and how they remorselessly go over steep hills, you can see why, it is very much like hill climbing, where 20 miles a day is good going with a camping rucksack, but imagine massive wool sacks and some horse. 4 mph, is that optimistic? I should say so. Today, with mountain bike, a lot of pushing is involved, with descents being technical. Thinking of the inns and pubs that used to be inns, there are quite a few in small villages that make sense at pack horse speed, but no sense in today's world, blazing past at 70 mph, latte in cup holder, burger on seat, A/C on full blast, Spotify playlist also on full blast, sat-nav telling you about the hazards ahead, on your way for some clothes shopping in the big city that is another dozen miles up the road, to be there in fifteen minutes, in a car that is five thousand miles away from needing to be looked at under the bonnet, texting whilst driving. That inn might have had a heyday when everyone stopped by, to get hay, beer, a bed, advice from fellow travellers coming the other way regarding the road ahead, entertainment, specialist leather services, blacksmith services, a small shop, parlour games, female company, live music, the warmth of a fire and much else. Anyway, just to explain your local history, you guys STOLE our trade. This is why you went from nothing to mills, bypassing aeons of cottage industry. A few clearances later, you have got your labour force. Instructions to readers: mod parent down as he shows no remorse for his ancestors stealing the wool trade from the hard working people of Gloucestershire and Devon!