Dear to this anthropologist's heart are the ways in which bits and pieces of the past pop up today.  So it was with hand-rubbing glee that I discovered the Knutsford Great Race. 

This was held two weekends ago in the Cheshire town of Knutsford (once home to Bobby Charlton and Mrs Gaskell.  Not simultaneously.). 

What is it?  A penny-farthing endurance race, that's what.  Entrants have three hours to clock up as many laps as they can around a 1km course through the town.  Solo winner Jim Brailsford clocked up 107, so we're not talking a bit of sedate wheeling about: he was getting that baby up to around 22mph, according to Matthew Sparkes in the Guardian's Bike Blog.  There's a definitive account of the race up at Bicycle Slut. 

Penny-farthings are danger on two unequally-sized wheels since if you hit something (like a pothole, a squirrel, or a suffragette), you'll be pitched forwards off the big wheel.  Head first.  And the Victorians certainly didn't have helmet laws.  Fortunately, as Howard Barlow's rather good photos show, most Knutsford nuts were well protected.  The Guardian have a photo gallery too.  (I love that the cozzies on show range from athletic lycra to dapper Victoriana.)

Unfortunately MMRMTL will have to wait some time to report live from the event, since it's only held every 10 years.  It remains to be seen whether, in 2020, Knutsford will still be represented by the delightful George Osborne.