Life after the record of Walter Greaves
Greaves became a member of the British League of Racing Cyclists, an organisation which broke away from the National Cyclists Union during the Second World War to promote massed racing on the open road. Ron Kitching said:
“He went and joined the BLRC and started road-racing. I always remember, you’d ease up a bit and mop your brow and look round and there would be Walter, just behind, with his one arm. What a man![15]
Greaves founded the Airedale Olympic cycling club and in 1949 organised a race from Bradford to Morecambe and back. The Bradford Telegraph and Argus reported:
“He painted a white arrow from Keighley Road into Swadford Street to take competitors out on the A59 via Broughton Road but that lasted for some months, bringing complaints from drivers who thought it signalled a new road system.”[16]
Greaves had a cycle shop in Bradford. It burned down and he moved to Craven Forge, then known as Winifred’s Café. The Telegraph and Argus reported:
“He struggled to make a living in the café and took a job at Water House Pressings but later changed the café to a forge making and selling garden ornaments. He also took to writing and singing songs in clubs and pubs in the area.”[16]
Tim Teale said:
Walter bought a place at the side of the Leeds-Liverpool canal halfway between Keighley and Skipton. This he made into a forge. He asked the club to call on our way back from Upper Wharfdale one Sunday and he would put us some tea on. This we did, and on going in there were some sandwiches on the table and a large jelly. But when we looked closely at the jelly we saw in the centre a very large monkey turd, so I’m sorry to say we declined the invitation and rode back to Skipton.[17]
Greaves kept the monkey as a pet in the flat above the café, where he lived with his wife. He seems to have had an interest in exotic animals: the minutes of Yorkshire section of the British League of Racing Cyclists show that members had to talk him out of his plan to have a dancing bear for the annual dinner.[18]
Greaves contracted Parkinson’s disease in 1979, and died in 1987, aged 80.
Peter Duncan, an official of the Vegetarian Cycling and Athletic Club to which both belonged, said:
I stopped my car in the lay-by near the café about three years ago waiting for a friend to catch me up. As I waited, a frail, ragged scarecrow emerged from one of the huts and tottered laboriously up the steps to the house. With a chock I noticed that the left sleeve of the ragged overcoat was empty and I realised that this walking skeleton was all that was left of the robust, fanatical Walter that I had known in the 40s or 50s.[7]
Greaves had been a single-minded, determined man described as reluctant to give way in arguments. The friendship between him and Duncan ended at a club meeting in 1951 when the two disagreed at an annual meeting and Duncan reported that Greaves said:“ “I’ll punch your head in and do it publicly.”[7] ”