Cycling Proficiency Test

[PeteXXX]

Thanks for posting the badge, as a 10 year old I would have worn it with pride and most probably pierced my thumbs when fastening the pin !

I still wear mine occasionally! 😂

 

[annedonnelly]

We were just talking about this the other day. Neither my brother or I did the test. I can't remember it being offered to me though I'd have thought others at my school would have done it. I wonder if my mum vetoed it. She didn't like us wandering too far.

I do wish that we'd had cycling sessions at school the way some schools do now. I was useless at all the sports offered at school and maybe I'd have got into cycling earlier if it was offered as an alternative to netball, rounders and cross country running.

 

[harlechjoe]

I wonder if you did the test twice - another contributor did so - hence the reasons for having two bar badges. The first was a triangle and in later years the handlebar triangle was stamped on a round disc.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I do wish that we'd had cycling sessions at school the way some schools do now. I was useless at all the sports offered at school and maybe I'd have got into cycling earlier if it was offered as an alternative to netball, rounders and cross country running.

When I was at school in the 70s the idea that cycling could be sport was garlicky foreign nonsense. Sport was rugby, cricket and cross country running. For at least half of us it was the most hated thing on the curriculum, and something to be avoided and disrupted, a challenge to find a way to sneak off for a fag.

Cycling was how you got to school and hung around with your mates. If the school had declared it a sport I expect we would immediately have discarded our bikes in horror.

Oddly enough it was cycling that eventually got me out of sport. I tore a muscle crashing my bike and that excused me from sport for a while and I never told them that I'd recovered and they never asked. And that was the end of it.

 

[HLaB]

View attachment 621610

Here's my really really dangerous badge. I honestly don't know how I've managed to live with it for the last 60 years!!

Not lethal for you but you can sharpen the corners and it makes a very effective throwing star

 

[PeteXXX]

Not lethal for you but you can sharpen the corners and it makes a very effective throwing star

For very small ninjas!

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

My Dad insisted that I went to lessons and did the test at a school up the road - until I passed I was not allowed to rice on any roads'

Not unreasonable as we lived on a busy main road and only 100 yards (or less) from a busy and complicated roundabout

 

[winjim]

For very small ninjas!

Ninjinos.

 

[Sharky]

When they started running the scheme, my dad was still the secretary of the town's cycling club, so he set it up with the help from the cycling club members. When I did the course, I remember that I could never do the close turns round the bollards in the playground. Still it helped me for doing those dead U turns when I started time trialling.

When I got my badge, it was presented by no less than Harold Wilson, who was our local MP and PM at the time.

 

[harlechjoe]

When they started running the scheme, my dad was still the secretary of the town's cycling club, so he set it up with the help from the cycling club members. When I did the course, I remember that I could never do the close turns round the bollards in the playground. Still it helped me for doing those dead U turns when I started time trialling.

When I got my badge, it was presented by no less than Harold Wilson, who was our local MP and PM at the time.

You were truly honoured; I always remember his calmness , pipe and grey mac. As a lad who visited my Aunty Brenda in Knotty Ash (close to Doddys home ) we used to go through Huyton and even to this day I think of it as his constituency. Happy days !

 

[DiggyGun]

Some 50 years ago the UK Government thought it would improve road safety for primary schools to train children how to ride bicycles on the public highway. Our class was trained by the village policeman whose hand signal instruction to turn left was 'Stick your right arm out and turn it anticlockwise 3 times'. The teacher reminded him that was a hand signal for motorists and we needed to use our left arm to signal left and right for right. We also had to learn our bicycle number that was stamped on the frame underneath what I now know as the chainstay. I still remember that number, 85883bf,

Eventually we all passed the test and received a RoSPA Cycling Proficiency Badge, one for our school blazer and the other for the bicycle handlebars. Amazingly it was in the shape of a triangle so the spiked top was a danger. The teachers were in uproar and the triangular badge was replaced with a round one that has the emblem for the aforesaid triangle stamped on it.

Happy days !

The Policeman was actually correct.

 

[Sharky]

You were truly honoured; I always remember his calmness , pipe and grey mac. As a lad who visited my Aunty Brenda in Knotty Ash (close to Doddys home ) we used to go through Huyton and even to this day I think of it as his constituency. Happy days !

Yep happy days. We lived just out side Prescot, close to the "Wellie" if you know the area. My dad worked for the BI, as did I for almost a year. My dad was transferred to the BI factories at Erith in Kent and the whole
family moved down.

It always amused me that we swopped Harold Wilson for Ted Heath and we left the land of the Beatles and entered the territory of the Rolling Stones!

 

[Dogtrousers]

I have a distinct memory of discussing with my dad the subject of starting to ride on the road, and saying "Facing the oncoming traffic?" (As I'd been taught to walk when there was no footway) and being corrected "You are the oncoming traffic"

 

[Electric_Andy]

I did mine in about 1990. At my school, you were only allowed to ride your bike to school if you'd done the cycling proficiency test

 

[Profpointy]

The Policeman was actually correct. View attachment 621667

The policeman was indeed right ... if you'd been on 4 wheels rather than two.