WHERE ARE THEY NOW? COLIN AND VERONICA SCARGILL FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATION BY TANDEM, 1975

Fifty years ago, the couple set a cycling record that will never be beaten. Trevor Ward hears their remarkable story

- Trevor Ward

The story of the first couple to ride a tandem around the world begins with a car crash on the banks of Loch Lomond in 1970. Colin and Veronica Scargill had married the previous year, and were on holiday when a car ploughed into their van. Veronica, who was 25, suffered a broken femur, and her leg was in traction for the next 12 weeks. “She couldn’t bend her knee at all during that time,” says Colin, who was 29. “But cycling was recommended for getting it working again, once the plaster was off.”

As a member of Stevenage Cycling Club, Colin had previously raced time trials on a Hetchins fixed-wheel track bike, but his wife had barely done any cycling. “While out riding one day, I was overtaken by the Pendletons [Max and Pauline, later parents to Olympic gold medal-winning track cyclist Victoria] on their new tandem,” recalls Colin. “They told me the boy who'd bought their old one was now selling it - so I bought it from him for £18.”

Shortly after becoming the owners of the 1934 Selbach machine, they attended a slideshow about a father and daughter’s tandem trip to Yugoslavia and were inspired to take their own cycling holiday to that country the following year. “We'd also read Dervla Murphy’s book Full Tilt [about her 1963 bike ride from Ireland to India] and decided we'd like to do something similar but longer - a ride around the world,” Colin says. “We had no idea whether it had been done before, we just wanted to do it. To get some more practice with camping and cycling, we went to France, and by the next year we were ready.”