Norman Ellis Gregory says that longevity runs in his family. But having recently celebrated his 93rd birthday, the Suffolk war veteran is not counting on that good fortune alone to keep him ticking over. That’s why, almost every weekday, Gregory is out on his bicycle clocking up the miles.



Last year he totaled 3,500.

“Most mornings I come downstairs to have breakfast, wash and shave and am out cycling by nine o’clock,” he told me. “Under normal circumstances, I’m off cycling with the intention of going for two hours. If the going is good, I’ll go for three.”

Living in the lightly rolling Suffolk countryside, Gregory’s local lanes are quiet, pretty and favourable for a gentle spin. While he might not be setting any world records, the nonagenarian regularly does 10 or 20 miles each outing and tots up his distances in a log. But as much as he finds enjoyment and satisfaction in cycling, it is the exercise it offers that drives him out so regularly.

“I firmly believe human beings, whatever their pretensions, are animals,” he said. “You’ve got to exercise your body and your brain – within reason.

“It’s a dreadful, dreadful thing to see someone who’s big, strong and healthy who’s had a broken arm in plaster. When you see the pathetic arm out of the plaster afterwards, it’s just shriveled away through a lack of use – and in such a swift time too.

“You don’t have to go to Belsen to see how the body deteriorates if you don’t look after it.”

Gregory first started accumulating mileage on two wheels when, as a lad, he rode 100 miles a week between the village where he lived and his grammar school in Sudbury.

His first 100-mile day ride was a round trip to Huntingdon and back. A regular with the West Suffolk Wheelers, the mileages increased further when he went to college in York. “I’d cycle there and back, most terms,” he said, “although I’m afraid I haven’t been in that league for a long time!”

In 1939 he made a spontaneous 1,700-mile cycle tour around the country.

“I was originally just going to Northumberland to visit relations,” Gregory explained. “But when I got there I decided I may as well go and have a look at Edinburgh. From there I thought I might as well go and have a look at John O’Groats. I just kept going.”

It was quite an adventure. In the Cairngorms, Gregory recalls getting hold of a wild rabbit and cooking it up for other guests at the Tomintoul youth hostel. He was in the Highlands at the same time as Neville Chamberlain was on a fishing trip just weeks before the war broke out – although it was the swarms of bugs there that really left an impression on him. After riding along the north coast, his route home took him across the Trossachs then via more relatives in Carlisle and Merseyside.

“I left Birkenhead which was about 200 miles from home and arrived back on the second of September – the day before war broke out.”

Even during the second world war, where his primary mode of transport was a Lancaster bomber until it was shot down over Dortmund, bicycles continued to play a part in his life.

Gregory considered the Dawes cycle he owned as the apple of his eye. He had parted with £8.15, “the equivalent of a month’s wages”, for the bike and fitted it with a powerful dynamo light.

To his great regret he lent the machine to an Australian crewmember who left it unattended outside a dance.

“When you’re young, you’re stupid,” rued Gregory. “I never saw it again. I had to acquire an RAF bike after that which was a bit of a come down after my Dawes I can tell you!”

The loss of his bike was nothing compared to that of his plane and five crewmates just after a raid on May 23 1944.

It was one o’clock in the morning when the bomb aimer jumped out of the escape hatch at 23,000ft. The plane had yet to have dived but it was on fire while the target area below was a “sea of flames”.

“I remember saying [to myself]: out of the frying pan and into the fire,” recalled Gregory.

Ten seconds later, after pulling the ripcord, he was out cold. His spring-loaded chest-pack parachute had caught him under the chin as it opened. However, he came to while still descending and sustained only a knee injury from an awkward landing in some woods.

It was because of this injury that when Gregory was turned in to the authorities (he would spend nearly a year as a prisoner of war and survive the 1945 marches), he was transported to them on the handlebars of a compassionate policeman’s bicycle.

Gregory’s prized possession was a Dawes cycle, which he had bought for £8.15. Photograph: Courtesy of Hugh Gladstone

It was only after Gregory retired from teaching in 1981 that he really started to ride a cycle again. The deterioration of his parents’ health saw him cycling to and from their village up to three times a day. Although just a couple of miles, he soon found himself clocking up 50 miles a week.



After Gregory’s wife died, 12 years ago, he picked up his cycling a little bit more. Fifty miles a week gradually became 100. The very morning I first ever met him in late December 2009, he’d just recorded his 5,000th mile of the year and had pulled up at the roadside where I was mending a puncture to tell me so.

“It was a bit of an accident,” he said when I called around his house a couple of days later to interview him. “I’d been going around trumpeting that I’d done 4,000 miles last year, so one of my friends in the village said: ‘well you’ll do 5,000 miles this year then’. But I thought that was too much.

“I certainly didn’t set off last year at any time to say I will do it.”

Despite such protestations, the distances he logs from his handlebar computer are justifiably a source of pride for him. On our most recent meeting, he said he also has a few tricks up his sleeves to achieve his tally at this cold, grey time of year.

“I’ve got all sorts of wet weather gear,” he said. “But I’ve never found a satisfactory pair of waterproof trousers. They’re fine for the first 10 or 12 uses but then the coating goes.”

Upstairs, he told me, he had a £300 Musto jacket, but one of his most valued bits of kit is a quilted hi-vis anorak he picked up for £18 from Argos (his £130 Muddy Fox mountain bike came from there too).

“All these breathable materials are a bit of myth, really,” he said.

“I know I’m getting crafty in my old age,” he added with a laugh. “If I’m out cycling and it’s a windy day, you just need to find a long hedge which is shielding you from the wind and you do a mile up there and a mile back and so forth. It’s an easier option but you’re still doing your mileage!”

Since 2009, Gregory said he’d been exceeding the 5,000-mile mark each year. Or at least he was until last year, when even 50 miles, then 40 miles a week started to become a struggle.

“I got to the point in April where I couldn’t get on the bike,” he recalled. “Or if I could, the only way of getting off was to fall off or find a high verge. Eventually I just couldn’t cycle at all.

“What was equally bad was I was having trouble getting up and down the stairs. Bed was the most uncomfortable place there was.”

After eventually getting an appointment at his GP, then a series of X-rays, scans and blood tests, Gregory was diagnosed with polymyalgia – a form of rheumatism.

“I was put on steroids, three tiny little white tablets, and in 24 hours I was a new man,” he explained. His 2014 mileage would take a hit, but, he said, “I was back on my bike and haven’t looked back.

“I now just have to take one of those tablets a day.”

Already by the end of January, he had tallied 350 miles for 2015.

Now there’s spring to look forward to and, although only too aware that “nothing lasts forever”, he asserts there still is a bit more mileage in the old boy yet.