Simpson's bike and other memorabilia
Memorial Stone, Harworth and Bircotes Sports & Social Club
The Tom Simpson Memorial Race is one of the best attended LVRC events of the year. It wasn't my day this year though, high training mileages had caught up with me and I was far too tired to race. I climbed off at 40 miles went to take these pictures. The Harworth & Bircotes Sports and Social Club is in Harworth village and next door to a large colliery. In the club there is a shrine to Tom Simpson, a glass cabinet full of jerseys, cups, certificates, his bike and various other memorabilia. The engraved stone stands by the road (I seem to remember that it was vandalised the other year and had to be repaired), it is a smaller version of the one on Mount Ventoux. Apparently Simpson's remains are in the local cemetery, I must make a point of going to find them at next year's event.
Seeing these items in the place where Simpson grew up brings home his background. This is the North Nottingham coal field, once a dirty, lucrative industrial area though now only a shadow of it's former glory. It was deep mining country where the men were tough and would have only ever expected to work in the mines. Simpson's escape and subsequent triumphs in the world cycling arena were testament to the grit that would have been instilled in him from birth. Today the mine has been mothballed and the village looks what it is, an ex-coal mining village, but still the place where Simpson was known as "Mr Tom".
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