The evidence is that the WFCC started up circa 1982 as we have in the archives newsletters dating back to June 1983 and the indication is that things were set up before that. The newsletters called ‘The Pedaller' which had a prominent chainset logo on the front were a fine mixture of articles, events, adverts, correspondence from a number of contributers and are fascinating reading. There was clearly a lot of humour around and the newsletters make good reading. Special artwork was developed, all drawn by hand in the days before PCs.

Many of the cycle facilities we blithely use everyday, e.g. the Glenthorne Road crossing, the Lea Bridge Road cyclepaths and the Billet Road underpass were hammered out by campaigners in the early group who had to wage all sorts of battles. The group did pioneering work to get cycling recognised by the Council (this was well before the era of Gina Harkell !). It ran strong campaigns, did a lot of survey work noting the numbers of cyclists and organised plenty of rides, including short tours abroad. There are also interesting stories of schemes which might have been but never happened.

The early contributers to the group who we should pay tribute to include:
Andy & Helen Morgan
Steve Lowe
Nigel and Pam Cooper
Peter Ludmon
Clive Baulich
Helen Griffith
Angela Bennett
Frank Blewett
John Nicholson
Rosemary Johnson
Yvonne Miller
Bill Owen
David Leslie

We should give a special salute to Steve Lowe and Nigel Cooper as Coordinators and tireless campaigners who did masses of vital work for cyclists in Waltham Forest. (Nigel was notable too for impressive sideburns in those days!)

Judging by the newsletter, the group suffered a serious decline at the end of 1986 with the Coordinator role left vacant and then the newsletter stopped being produced. Somehow the group soldiered on mainly due to the solo work of Angela Bennett who had been acting as Coordinator in the mid 90s when Wendy Wilson, Robert Vaughan, Geoffrey Whittington and others relaunched the group in September 1997.

There was a special meeting assisted by people from central LCC in September 1997 and in a packed meeting, Robert Vaughan was elected as Coordinator. Since then we have a had a very stable group operating with regular meetings of a committee of around 7 – 10 people and organising monthly rides, quarterly liaison meetings with the Council and maintenance workshop sessions. Membership has grown since 1997 from around 160 to 230 in 2005.

The archives are resident with Geoffrey Whittington and any members interested can peruse them. Do contact us if you have more information on WFCC history.

Some sample pages from 'The Pedaller' dating from the 1980s:

Pedaller Sample 1a

 Pedaller Sample 1b

 Pedaller Sample 2

 Pedaller Sample 3