Crispin's Guide to Stirling Cycling
Crispin
Bennett – Who’s he?
Born under a bad moon in the darkest days of 1967.
Having learnt the rudiments of road craft and discovered
the frustrations of travel by pedal car, I progressed from a yellow-wheeled
trike to my first proper bike at the age of 4.
This allowed me to experience the joys of two-wheeled travel and also
gave me my first scars and stitches when I lost control on a corner and crashed
into a garden wall. I’ve been crashing a
couple of times every week since then, and always because I was going too fast
and not paying attention.
I got the cycle bug seriously in 1991, when looking
for something to do for a summer holiday, I cycled between Inverness and
Glasgow. This allowed me to make every
mistake in the book, and some others that are only in the footnotes. It
was at this time I joined the CTC and rode with
the South Ayrshire DA on long, wet, windy rides into the Galloway hills. After two years in America, where I experienced the joys of freezing nose
hairs, being mobbed by redwing blackbirds and nearly prodding a venomous
snake with my bicycle pump - I thought it was dead, right – I returned to the
UK and undertook a 6000-mile, 4-month cycle tour round the coast of Britain and Ireland.
I’ve lived in Stirling for 10 years now and cycle
approximately 7000 miles a year, for fun, pleasure, pain - and to get to
work. A keen CTC member, I am
also the CTC Right-to-Ride Rep for
Stirling. For a social life I ride with
the MTB crowd at Stirling
Bike Club although I am also occasionally to be found riding and drinking
coffee with the roadies. My PB for
a 10-mile time trial is still 38 minutes.
Embarrassing photo’s of me and me school mates have been posted on the web too!
On June 11, 2005 I got married to Gwen and
now we have a bouncy son called Theo!!!
Relaxing on the deck of the Titanic.
Maritime Museum, Halifax, Nova
Scotia