IN A perfect combination of style and content, the round gallery in the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes is the setting for a celebration of love, life and a surprising enabler of both, the bicycle.

The structure of the circular skylight of the gallery, with its struts radiating from the centre, echo a typical bicycle wheel.

The Grand Depart may be the reason for the timing of the exhibition – the cyclists will pass within feet of the museum as they make their way towards Buttertubs on July 5 – but it’s more a grand coming together that is celebrated in the Daisy Daisy exhibition.

Artist Jan Bee Brown, with museum manager Fiona Rosher, asked people for their memories of cycling in the Dales, and specifically of falling in love. The postcards came in by the dozen telling stories of meetings and marriages, courtings and couplings.

“The bicycle improved the gene pool of Yorkshire no end,” said Ms Brown. “Before its invention a farm labourer could only go courting a very short distance because he had to be back for the milking.”

One of the postcards reads simply: “I was in t’Dales for a few days, though I live on t’coast. I saw a lass who looked just like my sister. Ah think ma dad must have had a bike when he were younger. Fred.”

The exhibition shows how the bicycle changed life in the Dales from the early 1900s: bicycle meetings formed an important aspect of early tourism in the area. The Cycle Touring Club was founded in Harrogate in 1878, and by 1897 there were 44,491 members. The exhibition includes a short film made by Ms Brown and a selection of embroidered saddles telling stories gathered at a spring workshop.

Daisy Daisy is in the gallery from now until the end of September. The museum and gallery is open every day from 10am-5pm. Entry is £4 and children visit free.

Betsy Everett