This year marks the 125th anniversary of one of the town’s longest running sporting clubs.

Colchester Rovers began life with a meeting in a pub in 1891 but today it has more than 300 members, and in particular a strong youth section.

Keith Clarke, who is beginning the process of writing a book based on the history of the club, says before the club started there were three groups in the town.

Six years before, in 1885, inventor and industrialist James Starley had invented the revolutionary Rover Safety Cycle which is widely considered the first of the modern bicycles.

Geoff says the new club took its name from this new machine, and looked to break away from the other clubs which were mainly using the Victorian Penny Farthing bicycles which preceeded it.

The first meeting took place in the Royal Mortar pub in Colchester and started off well, although women were not allowed to join at that time.

But its membership, as with others, was decimated by the First World War which broke out in 1914.

Geoff says: “In 1919 a few surviving members had a reunion and decided to try to get the club together again.

“As racing was out of the question at that time, it was decided to admit lady members.

“1920 saw us manage to run an open 25, won by Paul Gusher.”

Sixteen years later ladies were invited to the annual club dinner and this year, along with the 125th anniversary of the club, marked the 80th year of that practise.

The Second World War also led to the club’s activities being scaled back but member Jack King, explains Geoff, was instrumental in resurrecting it again after peace was declared in 1945.

“He raced at a high level and with his good friend Harry Haines, mapped and measured the original E72 (A12) made famous when Alf Engers because the first man to ride a 25-mile time trial at over 30mph”

Time trials are one of the disciplines the club covers along with road racing, cyclo cross, mountain biking and club runs at the weekend when the entire club can get together.

The year before Colchester Rovers formed the National Cyclists’ Union banned racing on UK public roads in fear of a ban not just on racing cyclists, but all cycling.

It came about because although the events were taking place on quiet country roads, police were constantly interrupting them and clubs were then asked to run their races on closed tracks, now known as velodromes.

Since there were few of these rebel races began and to avoid the attention of the police they would start at intervals and race against the clock.

Riders meeting on the road were not allowed to race against each other.

Unsure of the legal situation, they dressed from neck to ankle in black to make themselves less conspicuous, never wore numbers but always carried a bell.

Races started in the countryside at dawn on courses referred to only in code.

Even the cycling press was asked not to say where a race was taking place and details to competitors were headed "private and confidential" up to the 1960s.

This is where the names for the routes came from.

Geoff says another well-known member from the club’s history is Jock Wadley, at the time the world’s leading cycling journalist, after whom a memorial race is run every year.

“He was one of the first to publish accounts of the Classics and the Grand Tours and he was also the owners and editor of the sporting cyclist magazine.

“The Jock Wadley Memorial is a national B road race for professional and elite riders run around the Abberton reservoir circuit in March.”

A cycle path was named after another Rover legend, Stan Raby, in Colchester’s Castle Park, after his death.

The club has also been involved in a number of community events and quirky races over the years including the carnival.

In 1936 the Carnival Society sponsored the first of the club’s Errand Boy Derby races for heavy trade bikes around Colchester and in 1964 Colchester Rovers again teamed up with the carnival to organise a 30 mile continental style kermess race, a type of road race, around Abbey fields.

Keith adds: “The strangest of all perhaps was the Christmas Day Penny Farthing Race held at the kinks Arms in Elmstead Market.

A gala dinner was held to mark the anniversary, presided over by current chairman Geoff Keeble who at 17 years is the second longest serving in its history.

He was just 17 when he first joined the club, taking a break for national service, and during his time has been involved in the top level of time trials as an official.