In September 1912, a contingent of troops, from the Hampshire Cycle Regiment passed through Salisbury while making their way to Salisbury Plain.

Our archive photograph shows some of the men leaving Salisbury Railway Station shortly before setting off on an 11 mile cycle ride to a new base at Bulford Camp.

The military bicycles appear to have been fitted with an attachment to support a rifle and also a rack at the back to carry personal equipment, which presumably included a waterproof cape, bedding and a washing kit.

The regiment’s tents and other larger items of equipment were carried on motor/steam wagons provided by several local firms – Hardy and Sons (mineral water manufacturers) and Salter & Co. (caterers) among them.

Salisbury resident Fred Arnold, who served with the Royal Hampshire Regiment, believed the “Hampshire Cycles” alighted at Salisbury having travelled by steam train from Catterick Camp in Yorkshire.

In an article entitled ‘Military Cycling’, from the “Cycling” newspaper of 1908, the editor writes: “I am prepared to stake my reputation as a journalistic purveyor of truth that no reader of “Cycling” who is a keen cyclist will ever regret joining the Territorial Cycling Battalion.

“The work is enthralling and simulates the imagination. Let me appeal to each one of my readers to go to the headquarters of the nearest cycling battalion on any drill night, and by conversing with the members of the corps satisfy himself as to the truth of my statements.”

The primary roles of the military cyclists were reconnaissance and communications (or message taking). They were armed as infantry and could provide mobile firepower if required.

Those units that went overseas continued in these roles but also (once the mobile phase of the war had settled down into entrenched warfare) spent much time in trench-holding duties and on manual work.