My Earliest Memory
Up until I was 3 years old, we lived in a house in Buckingham. The garden was enormous! It was actually quarter of an acre which is still pretty big. I used to spend a lot of time out there. At the bottom of the garden there were metal railings that looked out over a road. Every year there was a bunch of cyclists that went past and Mum made a big deal about it so we all used to go down and stand at the railings to watch them go past. There were hundreds of them but they were going pretty fast so we weren't stood there for long. I didn't have a clue what it was all about, I just knew it was called the "Milk Race".
Have looked it up on wiki it is a pretty major event. It's the British equivalent to the Tour de France!
I found a picture on the net just to give you an idea of what it was like watching them all go past.
It was also called the Tour of Britain and started in 1945. It changed in 1958 when the Milk Marketing Board was asked to pay for "Drink More Milk" to be embroidered on every cyclists jersey. They wanted to sponsor a major international marathon so the Milk Race, Tour of Britain was born. This became the longest cycle sponsorship in the UK ever, lasting 35 years.
And there ends your history lesson for today. You are dismissed!
A much more interesting history lesson than any I remember at school!
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