The club was founded in 1874 by a group of men, predominantly from Trinity College, to ''encourage proficiency in cycling''. Membership was limited to the university and many senior members were heavily involved in both the foundation of the club and its earliest committees. The club provided tuition to novices; information about the locality to facilitate excursions; a cycling path for use by novices and for times when the roads were impassable; and both storage and maintenance for members ''machines'' at an attended club house. Club activities centred on regular ''meets'' or excursions with rides setting off from both Cambridge and regional railway stations. The club also organised races, trials and matches against outside opponents, primarily Oxford and London Universities. The expenses of these activities were, in part, defrayed by the dividends of an investment in preference stocks. Additionally the club ran a subsidiary club known as the ''Long Vacation Bicycle Club'' which operated an excursion programme for the summer months. Members of note included the biologist Francis Maitland Balfour, zoologist Adam Sedgwick, physicist George Frederick Charles Searle, politician Gerald William Balfour and the motor car promoter and aviator Charles Stewart Rolls. The club was wound up in 1937 but an organisation begun 1951, the Cambridge University Cycle Racing Club, was considered by some to be a refounding. The website of the Cambridge University Cycling Club (active at 2008) is to be found at http://www.srcf.ucam.org/cycling/.