Life comes full cycle as rider makes final journey by bike

Friends from Doncaster Wheelers volunteered to pedal their former club secretary and president Bob Waddington to the town's crematorium in time for his funeral service at 2pm.

Around 20 members of the club escorted the coffin and rode the last three miles to the crematorium in a convoy.

Club official Trevor Siddons, who pedalled the coffin on a trailer attached to a tandem yesterday, said the send-off was "just what Bob would have wanted."

Mr Siddons, 65, said: "I'd never heard of anything like this before, but the Co-op provided the tandem and there were a lot of us there to see Bob on his way.

"He'd been virtually everywhere on his bike in his younger days.

"He thought nothing of pedalling 70 or 80 miles to the coast and back.

"He rode all the way from Doncaster to Blackpool one day in the 70s, and then came back, stopping off for a sleep on Saddleworth Moor on the way back."

Mr Siddons added: "He was riding his bike almost to the end. He'd go shopping on it virtually every day, and you wouldn't see Bob without it.

"If there was a funeral he'd turn up on his bike. It was part of him so I know he'd really appreciate going to the crematorium on the back of the tandem. Going in a hearse wouldn't have been the same."

Mr Waddington, who died aged 89, joined the Wheelers in 1946 after serving in the RAF. He spent every spare moment on his bike, and loved taking part in time trials, covering 432 miles in one day alone in 1955.

The former office worker, who was a widow, leaves one daughter, Diane.