Fab Foodie
hanging-on in quiet desperation ...
- Location
- Kirton, Devon.
Go the whole hog just to be sure .... this was taken on yesterdays 'Mellow' ride in conditions referred to as 'Mildly Moist' ....
FNRttC FNRttC Christmas Ride " Reach for the Stars' Monday 28th December 2015
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I know the stated aim for the next yuletide season was to run a friends and families ride as a nighttime ride around London (so that people could bail out easily) and I think that is a great idea. It would also be brilliant if this ride (or similar) could be repeated. It was a very enjoyable day out and has piqued the interest of more than a few friends.
mmmmartin
Random geezer
Oops, sorry, @hatler there has obviously been a miscommunication for which the responsibility lies with me. Two rides are planned at Christmas.
The current plan is to repeat the social, pootley, ride in the daytime and perhaps on Tuesday December 27 which is the day after Boxing Day and a Bank Holiday (probably not the route by @AKA Bob) but possibly the route of a few years ago that included a fascinating talk on linoleum that had been walked over by Lenin and how @ianmac62 wished he'd bought a square inch of it.
December 16 overnight into December 17 may (or may not, depending on decisions by The Little Helpers) be the time for a ride departing at midnight from Wellington Arch and riding overnight to look at the Christmas Lights of London. (There may be a proper curry
in an all-night proper curry house.) This ride is designed firstly as A Larf 
and also as an introduction to overnight riding in a benign setting - it'll be possible to get out of the weather as we'll be in London and the trains home will start quite early so it'll be an overnight ride but not a long ride. OK it'll be winter but it won't be like winter on the moors out of Morecambe 
on the ride by @Andrew Br. More of a soft southerner's winter
.
Finally, of the two rides, the third your chums might be interested in is the introduction to cycle touring, July 2 & 3, which goes through East Anglia (we also visit the coast, cos that's what we do, innit. Current plan is a few ride to Ipswich on Friday July 1 while some take the train, overnight in Ipswich, we leave Ipswich at 10am on Saturday July 2 (time chosen to some can get the train out of London on Saturday morning) and ride to Lowestoft, stay there on Saturday night, and ride to Norwich on the Sunday - route to include the Reedham ferry twice in an entirely gratuitous manner then train(s) home from Norwich late on Sunday afternoon. Route is 50 miles, flattish on quiet roads on Saturday, coffee stops and lunch stop, and 35 miles on Sunday. You pick and book your own B&Bs. Ipswich and Lowestoft are not high-end tourist destinations but we think they'll be OK.
Emails will be sent nearer the time.
Hope this helps.
The current plan is to repeat the social, pootley, ride in the daytime and perhaps on Tuesday December 27 which is the day after Boxing Day and a Bank Holiday (probably not the route by @AKA Bob) but possibly the route of a few years ago that included a fascinating talk on linoleum that had been walked over by Lenin and how @ianmac62 wished he'd bought a square inch of it.
December 16 overnight into December 17 may (or may not, depending on decisions by The Little Helpers) be the time for a ride departing at midnight from Wellington Arch and riding overnight to look at the Christmas Lights of London. (There may be a proper curry
in an all-night proper curry house.) This ride is designed firstly as A Larf and also as an introduction to overnight riding in a benign setting - it'll be possible to get out of the weather as we'll be in London and the trains home will start quite early so it'll be an overnight ride but not a long ride. OK it'll be winter but it won't be like winter on the moors out of Morecambe on the ride by @Andrew Br. More of a soft southerner's winter.Finally, of the two rides, the third your chums might be interested in is the introduction to cycle touring, July 2 & 3, which goes through East Anglia (we also visit the coast, cos that's what we do, innit. Current plan is a few ride to Ipswich on Friday July 1 while some take the train, overnight in Ipswich, we leave Ipswich at 10am on Saturday July 2 (time chosen to some can get the train out of London on Saturday morning) and ride to Lowestoft, stay there on Saturday night, and ride to Norwich on the Sunday - route to include the Reedham ferry twice in an entirely gratuitous manner then train(s) home from Norwich late on Sunday afternoon. Route is 50 miles, flattish on quiet roads on Saturday, coffee stops and lunch stop, and 35 miles on Sunday. You pick and book your own B&Bs. Ipswich and Lowestoft are not high-end tourist destinations but we think they'll be OK.
Emails will be sent nearer the time.
Hope this helps.
Nigel182
Guru
- Location
- Chafford Hundred,Essex
The East Anglia Tour sounds good could well be interested in this could you possibly add me to the email list
mmmmartin
Random geezer
As yet there is no "email list" for the East Anglia ride, @Nigel182 but if you follow the link in my sig line you can find the place to sign up for all Fridays emails and you'll receive an occasional reminder of all upcoming rides. You don't even have to join The Fridays but if you wanted to there's a link there as well and it's a massive two whole pounds per year. But you then get a huge discount on CTC membership that is massively more than the Fridays subs. Once a CTC member you then often receive discounts when buying gear in shops.
What's not to like?
What's not to like?
Ob. Marxist-Lenism, did anyone else on this year's ride spot the Blue Plaque commemorating the fact that VI Lenin lived here, here being Tavistock Place, next door but one to Jerome K Jerome?
StuAff
Silencing his legs regularly
- Location
- Portsmouth
True, but the nom-de-plume/disguise clearly stuck & he was happy for it to do so. The mausoleum says `Lenin' not Ulyanov.
Nigel182
Guru
- Location
- Chafford Hundred,Essex
Thanks Martin
will keep an eye out on the Fridays Site am already a member and it looks like my girlfriend will be joining soon once her CTC membership card turns up.
Fab Foodie
hanging-on in quiet desperation ...
- Location
- Kirton, Devon.
Did you write it down on your slate?
ianmac62
Guru
- Location
- Northampton
Sorry, @mmmmartin, I've not been paying attention.
It is not surprising that, even twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the history of Lenin and the Bolsheviks remains hotly contested. The plaque you spotted in Tavistock Place was only erected in 2012 by the Marchmont (Square) Association. Immediately, some people resigned from the association and some locals objected. This was a faint echo of the enormous row over the Lubetkin bust of Lenin commissioned by Finsbury Council and displayed publicly at the height of British-Soviet friendship during the Second World War. As soon as the war finished, the council regularly debated its position and it was moved many times. It is now in Islington Museum where it has pride of place!
During the Cold War, ideologues on both sides stressed their own versions of October 1917 and so did academic university historians. History teachers in secondary schools also got hot under the collar about the topic and whether you called it a popular revolution or a coup d'état was of immense importance. Of course this trickled down into asides about the calendar change (the anniversary of October was held in November) and even what name and initials to use for the Bolshevik leader.
I'd suggest that it's worth looking at how he termed himself on the occasions he was living in London:
When he first arrived in April 1902 he was best known in revolutionary circles as the author of What Is To Be Done? He signed the introduction to this book as N Lenin - possibly his first use of the surname as a nom-de-plume and a way of avoiding the Tsarist secret police. Russian initials are strictly regulated and a reader would assume his first name was Nicolai. (My copy was published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1947 - reprinted 1978.) Among his first acts in London was to get a ticket for the reading room of the British Museum. This was in the name of Jacob Richter. This was also the name by which he was known by his landlady in Holford Square. He and wife stayed there until May 1903.
When he returned for the month of August 1903 which saw the Bolshevik / Menshevik split, it's not known where he lived or what pseudonym he used. During his 1905 visit in April and May, he and his wife lived in rooms at 16 Percy Circus. I don't think there's a record of his pseudonym. He visited again, without his wife, in May 1907 and stayed at the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square.
In May 1908 he visited again. This was the visit that saw him stay at 21 (now 36) Tavistock Place. He applied for a reader's ticket for the British Museum again and signed his letter of application, dated 18th May, Vl Oulianoff. It's "Vl" for Vladimir. While living in Tavistock Place he wrote Materialism and Empirio-Criticism so mind-numbing a read that Progress Publishers stopped printing it and my copy is from Foreign Languages Publishing Press, Beijing - they've probably given up on it by now too.
His last visit was in November 1911. In a letter dated 10th November, he gave his address as 6 Oakley Square and signed it, again, Vl Oulianoff.
If you're thinking, "Why don't we have a bike ride around the theme of Lenin in London?", it gets more complicated. The first-hand witnesses to the events, if they recorded any details, were more interested in recording who spoke, and who was on who's side in debates, than in recording the places where the debates happened or where the participants lived. Even the doyen of modern British historians of Lenin's life, Robert Service, makes mistakes. The author of Lenin: a Political Life (3 vols, Macmillan, 1985, 1991, & 1995) and the one-volume Lenin: a Biography (Macmillan, 2000) makes an error in giving the place of the 1903 Bolshevik / Menshevik split as the Brotherhood Church, Southgate. When he repeated this on Radio 4's Today programme on 29th August 2003 - the centenary of the birth of the Bolsheviks - I emailed him and he acknowledged this footnote was incorrect. It had allowed him to point out the irony that the birthplace of Bolshevism had been destroyed by its arch-enemy: the Brotherhood Church was a victim of Luftwaffe bombing in 1941.
The record of Lenin's visits to London from which all later writers take their information - and which they cite in footnotes - is a Communist Party pamphlet Lenin in Britain published in 1970 to celebrate the centenary of Lenin's birth. The author was Andrew Rothstein. His father, Theodore Rothstein, was a Jewish exile from Russia who lived in London and who had befriended Lenin during the latter's visits. Lenin met the 13-year-old Andrew Rothstein on his 1911 visit.
The pamphlet brings us full circle to the ride on which I spoke about Lenin's linoleum. Here is a scan of the front of my copy of the pamphlet:
and you may recognise the building in the old engraving - it's now the Marx Memorial Library on Clerkenwell Green where we stopped on @dellzeqq's Christmas 2012 Windows & Death Ride.
It is not surprising that, even twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the history of Lenin and the Bolsheviks remains hotly contested. The plaque you spotted in Tavistock Place was only erected in 2012 by the Marchmont (Square) Association. Immediately, some people resigned from the association and some locals objected. This was a faint echo of the enormous row over the Lubetkin bust of Lenin commissioned by Finsbury Council and displayed publicly at the height of British-Soviet friendship during the Second World War. As soon as the war finished, the council regularly debated its position and it was moved many times. It is now in Islington Museum where it has pride of place!
During the Cold War, ideologues on both sides stressed their own versions of October 1917 and so did academic university historians. History teachers in secondary schools also got hot under the collar about the topic and whether you called it a popular revolution or a coup d'état was of immense importance. Of course this trickled down into asides about the calendar change (the anniversary of October was held in November) and even what name and initials to use for the Bolshevik leader.
I'd suggest that it's worth looking at how he termed himself on the occasions he was living in London:
When he first arrived in April 1902 he was best known in revolutionary circles as the author of What Is To Be Done? He signed the introduction to this book as N Lenin - possibly his first use of the surname as a nom-de-plume and a way of avoiding the Tsarist secret police. Russian initials are strictly regulated and a reader would assume his first name was Nicolai. (My copy was published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1947 - reprinted 1978.) Among his first acts in London was to get a ticket for the reading room of the British Museum. This was in the name of Jacob Richter. This was also the name by which he was known by his landlady in Holford Square. He and wife stayed there until May 1903.
When he returned for the month of August 1903 which saw the Bolshevik / Menshevik split, it's not known where he lived or what pseudonym he used. During his 1905 visit in April and May, he and his wife lived in rooms at 16 Percy Circus. I don't think there's a record of his pseudonym. He visited again, without his wife, in May 1907 and stayed at the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square.
In May 1908 he visited again. This was the visit that saw him stay at 21 (now 36) Tavistock Place. He applied for a reader's ticket for the British Museum again and signed his letter of application, dated 18th May, Vl Oulianoff. It's "Vl" for Vladimir. While living in Tavistock Place he wrote Materialism and Empirio-Criticism so mind-numbing a read that Progress Publishers stopped printing it and my copy is from Foreign Languages Publishing Press, Beijing - they've probably given up on it by now too.
His last visit was in November 1911. In a letter dated 10th November, he gave his address as 6 Oakley Square and signed it, again, Vl Oulianoff.
If you're thinking, "Why don't we have a bike ride around the theme of Lenin in London?", it gets more complicated. The first-hand witnesses to the events, if they recorded any details, were more interested in recording who spoke, and who was on who's side in debates, than in recording the places where the debates happened or where the participants lived. Even the doyen of modern British historians of Lenin's life, Robert Service, makes mistakes. The author of Lenin: a Political Life (3 vols, Macmillan, 1985, 1991, & 1995) and the one-volume Lenin: a Biography (Macmillan, 2000) makes an error in giving the place of the 1903 Bolshevik / Menshevik split as the Brotherhood Church, Southgate. When he repeated this on Radio 4's Today programme on 29th August 2003 - the centenary of the birth of the Bolsheviks - I emailed him and he acknowledged this footnote was incorrect. It had allowed him to point out the irony that the birthplace of Bolshevism had been destroyed by its arch-enemy: the Brotherhood Church was a victim of Luftwaffe bombing in 1941.
The record of Lenin's visits to London from which all later writers take their information - and which they cite in footnotes - is a Communist Party pamphlet Lenin in Britain published in 1970 to celebrate the centenary of Lenin's birth. The author was Andrew Rothstein. His father, Theodore Rothstein, was a Jewish exile from Russia who lived in London and who had befriended Lenin during the latter's visits. Lenin met the 13-year-old Andrew Rothstein on his 1911 visit.
The pamphlet brings us full circle to the ride on which I spoke about Lenin's linoleum. Here is a scan of the front of my copy of the pamphlet:
and you may recognise the building in the old engraving - it's now the Marx Memorial Library on Clerkenwell Green where we stopped on @dellzeqq's Christmas 2012 Windows & Death Ride.
Fab Foodie
hanging-on in quiet desperation ...
- Location
- Kirton, Devon.
Blimey ... You don't half know some stuff!
Watch that building, it's got a red door ....
