Bathwick Hill Stores

All of you who have ridden the Kennet & Avon canal over the last ten years or so will be familiar with the Bathwick Hill Stores, as we used to stop there on every trip for no real reason other than it was an old-fashioned type shop with a real character of an owner, Ken Smith. It was really too early in the ride for a stop but we always enjoyed going in there for the banter.

I do believe that Paul White and I stopped there for the first time when we rode a really horrible version of the ride from Reading to Bristol around 2002. I had a sore arse and Paul was feeling knackered. Ever since then we stopped there on every trip from Bristol to Reading.

There used to be a Jaguar showroom a few doors up which closed. Tesco applied to turn it into a metro and Ken managed to hold them off, with the support of the Bathwick community, for a number of years, but eventually Tesco succeeded and Ken, like so many other small traders up against the big boys, had to close down last year. Sadly he he passed away last September. This is the newpaper write-up:

http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Bathwick-mourns-shopkeeper-Ken/article-1321239-detail/article.html

Help! Great Pub Conversations...

Paul White recently sent out an email with a plea to help him remember when he first joined the club...

"The debate on when I joined the club came up when Ev and I were in the pub last night. Ev believes I joined the club a lot younger than I thought. It appears I may have been in for more than thirty years. I'm trying to work out the exact month and year that I joined the cycle club. Does anyone in the club have any records or diaries that could possibly pin this down?"

Also requested were (1), that if anyone has old Bourton-On-The-Water weekend pictures that show Paul riding in it, to get in touch with him and (2), the possibility of a "Days gone by" link on the new website where people could put old photos of club events. What do you think?