Shirley Hockridge picks me up from Kettering station in a Toyota SUV with no middle seat. She’s removed it, she says, so she can roll her bike in easily after rides with “the Thursday Club”. Yesterday, they went on a 25km coffee ride. When we get to Hockridge’s home – a neat, pretty bungalow with a drawing of Lizzie Deignan in the hallway and a shed in the garden for her bikes – there is a silver envelope sticking out of the letterbox. It’s a birthday card, she tells me. She’s turning 91.
Cycling regularly into her 90s is just one remarkable thing about Hockridge. Another is her racing career: in 1957, Shirley clinched both the national road championships and a podium place in a pioneering race few remember today, an early women’s version of the Tour de France. Fellow Thursday Club member Dorothy calls her “one of the most incredible people I’ve met.” Yet there is another side of Hockridge’s life, too, which any club cyclist can relate to: being part of a community of riders and friends – a support network that matters far beyond the sport.
