Number plates were put on cycles but the old mudguards have gone

The town was full of bikes mostly rented by students but with the same rule for ordinary people, that every bicycle had to have a registered number on the rear mudguard, traceable to the renter or owner via a council register.

Of course, in those days youngsters didn’t own cars, so a bicycle was ‘the way to go’.

The scheme was apparently a great success, one oddity being that students sometimes left their bicycle ‘somewhere’, either because they had forgotten exactly where or had to get back to college by xxx time and hadn’t left enough time to get to their bicycle first.

Again, from memory, students had to be back by a specific time. Universities had their own ‘police force’ whose job it was to catch malingerers and report the naughty students who would/could be fined by their university.

Needless to say, rented bicycles were treated abominably.

The whole town was permanently awash with bicycles, parked any-old-where and any-old-how but with few cars around (petrol was rationed so owners didn’t waste their petrol with in-town shopping) the scheme was a success.

I wouldn’t mind betting the scheme is still basically in force as there were very strict rules for the few car-owning students of the postwar days.

Of course, the scheme as seen in Cambridge wouldn’t work now.

Who has got a bicycle fitted with a rear mudguard?

Mind you, the old fashioned number plate used on the front mudguard of all motorcycles....er.....er abandon further information, we are back to modern bicycles with no front mudguards fitted.

Bob Metson, Chestnut Way, Henfield