A Penny-Farthing For Your Thoughts

The dinosaur of the bicycle world is back in the spotlight with the help of the Penny Farthing Club and its intrepid members, finds Madeleine Silver

IT’S like riding a horse—but one without a temperament,’ says keen horsewoman Melissa Eisdell, as she hurtles along in a howling gale aboard a penny farthing. It’s early on a Sunday morning and half a dozen members of the Penny Farthing Club—a cleaner, a lawyer and an engineer among them—are on a strip of AstroTurfin West Sussex for a practice chukka of penny farthing polo. ‘We try to make it a non contact sport, but that doesn’t always happen,’ smiles the club’s founder Neil Laughton, a former Special Forces Office returned-entrepreneur. ‘When the whistle blows, the adrenaline starts and there’s certainly a bit of jeopardy cycling around trying to avoid each other.’ Something of an understatement, perhaps, when you consider that the towering contraptions have no brakes, gears or suspension and their wheels are made from solid rubber.

It was 2013 when Mr Laughton spotted a letter in the pages of COUNTRY LIFE proclaiming a resurgence of interest in the penny-farthing, a device that had begun to slide into insignificance with the advent of the ‘safety bicycle’ in the 1880s. ‘Pennyfarthing racing had been a big thing, almost like football is today,’ he says. ‘Thousands of spectators would come to places such as Herne Hill to watch the cyclists of the day. It was extremely popular—and dangerous. Racers would go hell for leather around the track, but without helmets, which was crazy. It was a time when expressions such as “breakneck speed” were born…’

The letter sparked an idea for Mr Laughton, who had played bicycle polo and has a penchant for the eccentric (last year, he hosted the world’s highest black-tie dinner party near the summit of Mount Everest). Thus, the Penny Farthing Club was born, open to anyone over 5ft 4in, weighing less than about 15 stone and in ‘good physical shape’.