Obituary: Johnny Mapplebeck, cycle retailer

Johnny Mapplebeck, who has died at 101, was a familiar face within Yorkshire’s cycling community, having co-founded the bike retailer Whitaker and Mapplebeck in Bradford, shortly after the war. The firm continues to this day, under the name Pennine Cycles.

Born in Huddersfield in 1919, Mr Mapplebeck had learned to ride early, taking pre-war work as a butcher’s boy in Bradford, carrying orders around on the firm’s delivery bicycle.

But it was during his army service in Italy that he fell in love with competitive riding. He served first with the East Yorkshire Regiment and then the Third and Fourth Battalion Parachute Regiment, and upon his return joined forced with his friend, Geoff Whitaker, to open his own shop.

They began to not only sell bikes but also build them, creating in the 1950s their own steel frames, which they marketed under the Pennine brand.

He ran the business for half a century, eventually retiring at 80 and selling it, after which he emigrated to Canada to be closer to his daughter and her family in Fort Vermilion, Alberta.

He also became a Christian evangelist, taking part in operations to smuggle bibles into Eastern European countries whose Communist regimes had outlawed them.

His wife, May, died in 1978 and he is survived by his son and daughter, four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.