Walter Greaves (cyclist) - Life After The Record

Life After The Record

Greaves became a member of the British League of Racing Cyclists, an organisation which broke away from the National Cyclists Union during the Second World War to promote massed racing on the open road. He also founded the Airedale Olympic cycling club and in 1949 organised a race from Bradford to Morecambe and back, and his prominent 'route markers' became a renowned distraction to normal traffic.

Greaves had a cycle shop in Bradford and built cycle frames in the late 1940s. He was a talented and innovative frame builder. All of his frames were sif-bronze welded, for lightness and strength. No lugs were used. The ‘La Victoire’ was of conventional design, while the ‘King of the Mountains’ was an unconventional short wheelbase type, built to his own design. It featured an almost upright seat tube with a specially formed seat pin which placed the saddle over the back wheel. There is a ‘King of the Mountains’ on display in Bradford Industrial Museum. The frame was built in 1948 and has nothing to do with his record ride, which was achieved on a Three Spires 'King of Clubs' bicycle.

Later, after a fire at his shop, he moved to Craven Forge beside the Leeds-Liverpool canal, halfway between Keighley and Skipton, it was then known as Winifred's Café.(53°54′32″N 1°59′20″W / 53.909°N 1.989°W / 53.909; -1.989) According to the Telegraph and Argus, Greaves "struggled to make a living in the café and took a job at Water House Pressings. The café was later converted into a forge, making and selling garden ornaments. He also took to writing and singing songs in clubs and pubs in the area.

Greaves kept a monkey as a pet in the flat above the café, where he lived with his wife. He seems to have had an interest in exotic animals: the minutes of Yorkshire section of the British League of Racing Cyclists show that members had to talk him out of his plan to have a dancing bear for the annual dinner.

Greaves contracted Parkinson's disease in 1979, and died in 1987, aged 80.

Peter Duncan, an official of the Vegetarian Cycling and Athletic Club to which both belonged, said:

I stopped my car in the lay-by near the café about three years ago waiting for a friend to catch me up. As I waited, a frail, ragged scarecrow emerged from one of the huts and tottered laboriously up the steps to the house. With a shock I noticed that the left sleeve of the ragged overcoat was empty and I realised that this walking skeleton was all that was left of the robust, fanatical Walter that I had known in the 40s or 50s.

Greaves had been a single-minded, determined man described as reluctant to give way in arguments. The friendship between him and Duncan ended at a club meeting in 1951 when the two disagreed at an annual meeting and Duncan reported that Greaves said: