1973–1988 · Story
Ivy Thorp and the work behind the club ride
The young riders were due in Windsor at 5.20 pm. The invitation named Ivy Thorp and the club secretary as the people who would lead them in.
A time in the members' magazine
The arrival in Windsor was scheduled for 5.20 pm. CTC was celebrating its centenary in 1978, and young members from local groups across the British Isles were to complete a relay beside the Thames. The invitation in the members' magazine asked other members to come and welcome them.
Ivy Thorp, chairman of the club's Council, was to lead them with national secretary Les Warner. President William Oakley would help welcome the riders. That was the plan as printed in Cycletouring: a short programme containing names, a meeting place and a very definite time.
Five years earlier Thorp had gained a place in CTC's history. In 1973 she became the first woman elected to chair its Council. The club had existed since 1878. Women had been members for many years, but the chair at the head of the Council had previously been occupied by men.
CTC's own timeline records its first woman member in 1880. Ninety-three years separated that admission from Thorp's election. Women had long taken part in the rides and the club community. In 1973 a woman also took responsibility for chairing its Council at national level.
Her official position was chairman of Council. The presidency was a separate job, as the Windsor programme also makes clear: Thorp and Oakley had different roles. She would later become president herself. Keeping the titles distinct makes it possible to see the different responsibilities she undertook over the years.
Finding a way through a club
CTC brought together cyclists who used the roads for club rides, travel and everyday journeys. Such a community needed more than a good route suggestion. Local groups had to remain in touch, information had to be published, and someone had to work on the conditions members encountered beyond the clubhouse.
The organisation's timeline records insurance schemes, access to routes and efforts to get bicycles carried on trains. That was part of the organisation Thorp came to lead. The timeline does not make her personally responsible for every scheme. It shows the sorts of matters that could share a table with the ride programmes.
The 1978 relay made those connections visible in another way. Junior members from different groups were to finish in the same place. The Council chairman and secretary were named as their companions for the final part. An anniversary could have a ceremonial finish while remaining a practical job involving meeting times, roads and riders who had to find one another.
Thorp came from local club life, which she did not abandon when she took national office. In Devon, members later remembered her work on Exeter club evenings, slide shows and the annual carol service. Those are concrete jobs which rarely occupy much space in a short list of chairmen.
Back to Devon
From 1981 to 1988, Ivy Thorp served as CTC's national president. She had now held both posts which the Windsor programme had divided between her and Oakley. The first woman to chair the Council had become a familiar figure within the organisation.
When she died in 2005, the Devon group wrote about her many years of work. They also noted that she had continued supporting the club while caring for her husband Gordon after his stroke. These recollections came from people who knew her through the everyday business of the association.
They remembered a national president, but also the person who helped when members gathered to see photographs from a tour or attend a regular social event. There was no account of a particular speech in 1973. Instead, they recorded some of the smaller tasks which kept coming round.
Ivy Thorp's name appears against 1973 in CTC's historical timeline. In the old magazine invitation it stands beside Les Warner's. The young riders were to be led into Windsor. Other members were asked to be ready to welcome them at 5.20 pm.
