Octogenarian Gordon Webber has been in the same Barnstaple street, mending bikes for over six decades – and he’s not long back from his latest European cycling challenge. Stewart Beer reflects on Gordy, a local legend
Novelist H G Wells wrote: ‘Every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the human race.’
I can put a parochial slant on this statement. Having lived in North Devon all my life, and Barnstaple for a large part of it, I say: ‘Every time I walk along Bear Street and espy Gordon Webber at work on the usual stack of bicycles requiring this artisan’s steady and enduring attention, I feel reassured.’
For me, Gordon’s pavement operation – with its sub continent air – is a welcome antidote to these fast-changing times. He has been a constant in Bear Street for more than 60 years.
Fifteen years have elapsed since I first wrote about ‘Gordy’. At that stage I was thinking this popular Barnstaple figure was reaching retirement. (That said, a long-time friend of his had already prophesied, ‘You will still be fixing bikes when you reach 70...’) Well Gordy has long passed that milestone, celebrating his 80th birthday back in February 2022, and he continues to fix the bikes of his many appreciative customers.
Something must be said for his lifestyle for he has in recent years competed in The Smuggler cycle race which starts and finishes in Barnstaple. It covers up to 80 miles with telling ascents and descents as it wends its way eastwards to South Molton then north to Brayford, Simonsbath and west to Bratton Fleming and back. It’s not only this testing event, he has been participating in the famous L’Eroica vintage bike ride traversing the white roads of Tuscany. With his cycling companions Geoffrey Everett-Brown and David Job, last October Gordon completed the 106km ride for the fifth time...
Time and again something eventful early in a person’s life can influence their future vocation. So what set Gordon’s course to a life devoted to bicycles and their repair?
‘It was the Lynmouth flood disaster that started if off,’ he says.
Gordon was raised in the village of Challacombe, located on the southern foothills of Exmoor. Above the village lies an area called The Chains. Normally the most impermeable of moorland, in August 1952 the Chains became waterlogged by weeks of continuous rainfall. Followed by a cloudburst of biblical intensity – five inches fell in one hour – which could not be absorbed. A raging wall of water careered down to cause death and destruction in Lynmouth. Eleven-year-old Gordon vividly recalls those nightmare hours for his family home, lying to the south of the moor and alongside the River Bray, did not escape the raging waters. ‘Like the sound of an exploding bomb’, the torrent of water swept through the outer doors to reach an alarming height up the stairs where the awoken family looked on in shock. In the following days Gordon came across beaten-up bicycles that had been swept away, hanging high and dry over the river bank. He had the idea to retrieve them, haul them home and try his hand at repairs. At this tender age the path to his working life was laid before him.
He attended Barnstaple Boys’ Secondary Modern School and on reaching leaving age asked what line of work he was interested in pursuing. ‘I quite fancy working with bikes,’ came the reply. A telephone call was made and an interview arranged. It was with Cyril Webber (no family connection) the owner of a busy bicycle and pram retail shop in Bear Street, a short walk from the school. Gordon found himself one of three applicants but nevertheless got chosen. Mr Webber senior doubtless divined Mr Webber junior’s rural ingenuity and work ethic.
Gordon worked for eight years at Cyril Webber’s in whose service he once contacted the maker of a certain bicycle model he had been working on to point out a design fault. He then decided to strike out on his own by renting premises in the Barum Arcade, further up the street. He was quickly in demand, so much so he was putting in monumentally long hours. After an 8am to 6pm day he would return again at 9pm and work through until 2pm. This became a pattern for more than 20 years.
‘I sometimes worked for a few hours on Sundays too, to catch up.’ he recalls. ‘But then people would still call and ask if I could possibly do this or that, there and then, for them. I wasn’t making much headway, so I more or less stopped Sundays!’
Bicycle styles have changed radically over the years and this hasn’t fazed him, though he says many of the latest attachments are commercial/showy and although not necessarily impractical seem not to be robustly tested. This, of course, means more work for Gordon and his store of tools. On a particular visit to Gordon I found him helping a gentleman unstrap the webbing holding a vintage bike to the back of his car. The bicycle in question was a distinctly solid and dependable Raleigh Rudge (a machine that would have been a staple model in Gordon’s apprenticeship days) with its original brownish livery, badge and chain-guard intact. It very likely stood forgotten and unloved for decades in the dark confines of a barn.
When the customer departed Gordon explained that the gentleman had called on him the previous Friday Market Day and asked if a few repairs (‘a new saddle and can you get the lights to work?’) could be done on it. Gordon duly obliged. Ponder on how many bikes have passed through Gordon’s hands, how many punctures sealed, derailleurs fixed, bent wheels straightened, brake blocks replaced? It must run to tens of thousands.
Working in Bear Street for 65 years, the tenant of three previous landlords and now in his 80 plus year - this fixer of the machines of the grandchildren of his first customers – is indeed the one constant we can all rely on. He was asked to switch on Barnstaple’s Christmas lights in 2018, and he is the subject of a poem written by Peter Cresswell from his title Welcome to Tarkaville (Edward Gaskell 2005) which sums up the man.
Here are the final three stanzas:
'from toddlers to pensioners
Gordon makes the wheels turn
of North Devon’s cyclists
asks little in return
offer broken gears, a bent frame
Gordon will purse his lips and say
‘come back in an hour or so;
I’ll do it today’
how much? Almost always not enough
for work that will last
for Gordon is an honest man
from an honest past
