MICHAEL Rhymes remembers the day when a fellow cyclist came to grief on the rubber road in Cornmarket Street, Oxford.

He was cycling to work from his home in North Oxford with a young woman called Holmes (he believes her first name was Jean).

He writes: “One wet morning, we cycled into Cornmarket Street together heading towards Carfax traffic lights when the lights changed to red.

“Miss Holmes slammed on her brakes and disaster struck as the bike went from under her and dumped her on to the rubber surface very unceremoniously.

“I went to her assistance but, fortunately, because the rubber surface was much softer than tarmac roads, she was fairly unscathed, apart from her loss of dignity.

“The rubber surface had its good points but NOT in wet weather – it became lethal.”

We were reminded of the rubber road by former Lord Mayor Ann Spokes Symonds, who produced an Alan Course cartoon of workmen laying the blocks (Memory Lane, May 14).

Mr Rhymes, of Mill End, Kidlington, recalls an amusing incident in Cornmarket Street after the rubber surface had been removed.

He writes: “As a young policeman in the late 1950s, I was on duty at Carfax and it had been raining hard.

“Looking down St Aldate’s, I saw a lone large swan flying majestically up to Carfax and losing height all the time.

“As it entered Cornmarket, it was only head height and I saw it eventually land in the middle of Cornmarket, opposite Market Street.

“This was at a time when the public looked to the local bobby to take some positive action in unusual circumstances as the presence of the swan was scaring pedestrians. So it was down to me to capture the errant swan.

“As the swan strode about, I eventually grabbed the swan’s neck and body and stopped a passing motorist to convey me to the nearest stream.

“My bad luck was that it was a very small two-seater grey van. The kind driver allowed this large swan and me to squeeze into the passenger seat. Somewhat apprehensively, the driver took off down Cornmarket, much to the amusement of the crowd that had gathered.

I directed the van driver via George Street and then down to the stream at Hythe Bridge Street where the swan was carefully released and the driver thanked.”

As we recalled (Memory Lane, May 14), the rubber road was laid in 1937, a gift from a rubber company keen to test its revolutionary surface, and despite numerous accidents, particularly in wet weather, it remained in place until 1953/4.