A COUPLE who owned one of the South's most successful cycle shops were today back on the tandem as they celebrated their Diamond Wedding.

Reginald Stride, 84, and his wife Elizabeth, 82, used to take regular bike rides from the Totton area to the beach at Highcliffe in the days when there were more bikes than cars on the road.

Reginald was born at Ashurst where his father founded Stride's Cycles.

After four years, the business moved to Totton's Commercial Road.

It has been in Commercial Road for many years, where it is now run by their daughter Hazel Twine and is believed to be the biggest independent cycle shop in the South.

Elizabeth was born in Gateshead but her family moved south when her father became clerk of works at Southampton Council.

She met her husband at a dance at Southampton's Royal Pier and she recalls with a smile: "He was a Hampshire Hog and I was a Geordie and I couldn't understand much of what he said."

They were married at St Edmund's Church in The Avenue and the early years of their marriage were interrupted by the Second World War, with Reginald spending three agonising years as a prisoner of the Japanese in Malaya where his weight dropped to six stone.

And while the bikes in the shop are probably half the weight they used to be, Reginald is up to a healthy 12 stone.

And a man whose early duties included repairing the old Pennyfarthing bikes looked at the wide array of modern machines and said: "They've completely changed, with extra gears and all sorts of things."

Mr and Mrs Stride, who have six grandchildren, now live at Bramshaw and keep in close contact with their daughters Hazel, who lives at Whiteparish, and Gill Lawrence, who lives at Landford.