(Description by Diane Dobson)

My father, Harry ‘Vick’ Vickers, bought the frame at a cycling fair at York racecourse probably 30 years ago minimum.  My mum tells me that it looked to her like a bit of rusty old scrap metal but that he was thrilled with the find.  Several people stopped him on the way back to the car with it to take a look with a “wow!  is that a Carpenter frame?”.
My dad cleaned the frame up and took it to the Taylor brothers in Stockton-on-Tees, who renovated it and brought it back to its former glory.  My dad then built the rest of the bike up and it became the (3rd I hope behind my mum and I) love of his life.  It was used almost daily during the summer months and was never far away from the road in other seasons.

When he was younger he used to ride out from time to time with Stockton Wheelers.  
Until the Carpenter he always owned fixed wheel cycles. I do remember is going out for rides with him as a teenager and seeing him gradually disappear to a dot on the horizon after a hill climb that he’d powered up and I’d largely walked and pushed my bike up.  I then had to spend the next couple of miles catching up (while he I’m sure slowed down to let me :-)).
If he were here now he could tell you all the bikes he’d owned and everywhere he’d been on them but unfortunately our memories are more of him on a non-specific bike cycling the 15 miles to Marske from Thornaby a couple of times a week to see my mum on her work breaks, or him nipping out for an early evening  ride for an hour and arriving back 3 hours later having cycled through to Chop Gate or somewhere much further away than he’d originally had in mind.