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WOODROW WILSON ON WHEELS

US President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) who made five visits to the Lake District in the ‘golden age’ of cycling before World War I

There are a few connections between US presidents and Cumbria. The first, George Washington, was a direct descendant of the Strickland family that took its name from Great Strickland; the 12-year-old John Kennedy holidayed with his seven-year-old brother Robert at Killington in the late 1930s when their father was US ambassador to Great Britain; and Hillary Rodham rejected the first proposal of marriage from future husband Bill Clinton in Ennerdale in 1973.

But none was more enduring than that of keen cyclist Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) who was the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. His mother, Janet, had been born in Carlisle, where her Scots born father, Dr Rev Thomas Woodrow, was a congregational minister from 1819 to 1835, when the family left for North America. Wilson is reputed to have been the first person to own and ride a bicycle in North Carolina.