Circa 1994 my parents bought me a oyster coloured road/touring bike from
Halfords. I would love to find out the name of it but alas that has eluded me but I'm Dawes Gold Wing rings a bell. Checking Dawes' history however has revealed nothing with a bike of that name so it might be Halfords' own brand: Halfords Gold Wing. Alas, I cannot find information about that either and whenever I'm inclined to search for it, I always get many ages about a Honda....
Anyway, this bike had downtube friction shifters and full mudguards. I used to ride in a group of 3 including me. The other two guys had racing style road bike whereas I was on a touring/relaxed style model with full size mudguards. I used to always beat them up a steep hill. I remember putting it into 4th gear and mashing the pedals until I the cadence was high enough to start spinning.
I once met a hot girl who was riding along so went up beside her (ha, no shame in my teens!) and started chatting to her. She told me her and her boyfriend were cycling the world and even many years later I did not believe anyone would do such a thing on a bike until I got back into cycling again. I rode with them for an hour until I decided the girl would not leave the guy for a dweeby teen like me (aka I was getting bored and wanted to go my own way).
The end of the bike came when I was riding one day and things just felt too soft and I just knew that squirting oil at different places on the bike was not going to fix this. When I next road the bike, it still felt soft and then I realized the frame had snapped at the driveside chainstay/seatstay junction. Then I got a MTB....