After more than 650,000 miles cyclist George Hugill has had his last accident

As an adult he’d recorded 654,000 miles in the saddle, suffered numerous injuries – broken neck, three broken hips, two broken collar bones, broken wrist, ribs – lost his beloved wife, Doreen, in a still-unexplained cycling accident.

Then, four years ago, there were the heart attacks – three in quick succession which left him in a coma. “It finished his racing, but not his cycling,” recalls his friend and fellow rider Burt Clayton. “As soon as George could stand he was riding his bike again. He always talked of getting the miles in.”

SHARED PASSION: Burt Clayton

On January 31, on a country crossroads between Darlington and Northallerton, George was also killed when his bike was in collision with a horsebox.

“The doctors had asked him once or twice if he didn’t think all those accidents were trying to tell him something, but a lot of them weren’t his fault,” says Burt. “George just asked them what he would do if he didn’t ride his bike.”

A good way to go? “He was a little bit if-it-happens-it-happens. I’m quite positive that if he had to choose a way to end, that would have been it.

“Lots of people will be thinking that they haven’t seen that old feller on his bike for a few weeks but, if you believe in that sort of thing, then George and Doreen will be cycling round heaven all day.”

George Hugill was 82.

HE and Burt had been friends since Burt’s parents moved to Darlington from Lancashire in 1949. Burt – Hubert really, but Burt Lancaster was a big name back then – became a member of Spartan Wheelers, while George was in the long-established Darlington Bicycle Club.

The clubs merged. The two men – Burt a year younger – became firm friends.

“I was the weaker of the two,” he insists. “If it was raining hard I wasn’t out, if it was very windy I wasn’t out. George would go out in anything except ice, out there every day.”

Both also became members of the Three Hundred Thousand Mile Club, for which qualification simply began at that extraordinary total and escalated apace.

George had the sixth highest total mileage, Burt is 17th – 501,000 miles – and Burt’s brother Geoff 22nd. “We were about the same total when we joined. I only managed another 200,000,” says Burt, who gave the eulogy at a packed funeral service at St Matthew’s Church, in Darlington.

Perchance I bump into the verger. “Brilliant eulogy,” he says. “I was standing at the back and could almost feel myself riding a bike again.”

Burt talks of the side aisles being filled, and not only with cyclists. “George was a fanatic, of course he was, 100 per cent biking mad. He may have ruffled a few feathers, but in all those years he and I never had a wrong word.

“He’d still be talking of getting the miles in. What happened is terribly sad, he had a large measure of bad luck, but he managed quite a few miles as well.”

BURT Clayton lives with his wife Pam, herself a cyclist, in Sadberge, near Darlington. His summer bike – “my best bike” – hibernates upstairs, his winter bike’s locked in the shed. Unlike his friend, he has never had a serious accident.

The appeal, he says, is both sporting and social. “We’d go out every Saturday morning to meet the lads – a lot of them were 80-odd like us, lasses too – at Barton lorry park or Catterick or somewhere for a cup of coffee and a catch-up.”

He and George had also cycled to John o’ Groats and back – 1,760 miles in 16 days – and to Britain’s other geographical extremities.

“I’ve been lucky because my wife was also a cyclist. I could go away for two or three weeks and she’d know I wasn’t womanising or anything, just enjoying the cycling and the company.

“We liked to get on the country lanes, down the tracks.

“We must have known every road within a 30-mile radius of Darlington. It was just the fresh air, the exercise, the putting the world to rights.

“There are quite a lot of cyclists our age on Teesside, but not so many now around Darlington.

“It’ll not be the same without George.”

GEORGE Hugill was born and raised in Darlington, took to cycling when his half brother failed to return from the war and left behind his Dayton Elite.

Save for his own National Service, George spent his working life in the railway industry – most of it in the Stooperdale offices in Darlington, where he became senior audit officer.

“He lived less than a mile away, but he’d still cycle to work in his suit,” says Burt.

“When he was sent to Shildon for a while, he cycled there too.”

He rode in time trials, joined Spartan Wheelers, took the sport more seriously and contested everything from 10 miles to 24 hours.

In his 50s he covered 25 miles in 57 minutes, in his 60s became national vets’ 24-hour champion and in his 70s would still head off on Saturday mornings with his pal. “We could do 70 miles and still be back for dinner,” says Burt.

George and Doreen had a son and daughter – Alan and Anne – who also took up cycling.

Doreen’s death in 1993 has never fully been explained. George had started a staggered Isle of Man race in front of his wife and waited for her at the finish. When she didn’t appear, he retraced the route and found her with serious head injuries by the side of the road.

“He never got over her loss, but just threw himself ever more into cycling,” says Burt.

“Even 23 years later, he’d still fill up when he talked about her.”

His ambition had been to rise yet further up the ranks of the Three Hundred Thousand Mile Club. It ended on a winter Sunday in North Yorkshire, but George Hugill had still got an awful lot of miles in.