Your best/favourite bike from your youth?

[Cubist]

I only wish I could find a picture of my beloved Crown Comet. It was a ten speed with 531 tubing, handbuilt in Birmingham in the mid to late 1970s. Mt father has done some work for them (he was an architect) and they had done him a pretty good deal when my (other beloved) Raleigh Olympus was stolen. It was a thing of great beauty with a leather saddle, ten speed gearing, and gloss black paintwork.

One morning when I was cycling to college in Sheffield the dropout gave way, dumping the mech into the rear wheel. I couldn't get it straightened (or so I thought) and I left it in a shed on Woodseats Road.

 

[Orange]

I had a wonderful red, green and white touring style cycle, with black and silver mudguards. It was very smart and (to me) quite expensive- can't remember the make. I stupidly only kept it a year before selling it to purchase a beat up Suzuki 100.

 

[abo]

My first bike was a 2nd hand girl's bike. This was before we moved to a bigger house when I was 3 so it must have been 1975. My dad sprayed it blue before teaching me to ride on it. I guess that's how things were done in the '70's

I had a Raleigh Comanche after that:

And the a Grifter XL

Heavier than a heavy thing, I used to try jumping on it but the weight was a problem. It was so bad the forks bent over time, so badly I had to remove the front mudguard...

I used my dad's bike after that, in my teens. Some sort of '60's Dawes racer in black which I wish we still had.

 

[Portex]

1948 if memory (failing) serves. I think it was a Triang made just after the war from old aircraft parts. Note the riding gear

 

[Oxo]

I can't find a picture but my first bike was a Hercules with 'sit up and beg' bars and rod brakes.

 

[abo]

1948 if memory (failing) serves. I think it was a Triang made just after the war from old aircraft parts. Note the riding gear

Who needs lycra?

 

[Andrew_P]

Had a few I guess what would be mow described as BSO's, until my 15th birthday when I discovered covered outside in my back garden my beloved Peugeot Competition she truly was a thing of great beauty, I had a "burn up" with a mid twenties "roadie" all around Croydon, and kept up with him but didn't scalp him. Pulled up at the lights in North End Croydon (in the days when you could drive down the high street) and he said you ride well why don't you pop along here and gave me a Dulwich Paragon business card!

Felt like I had been talent scouted and one of my regrets was never following it up! Bit strange riding around with Dulwich Paragon cards though lol

 

[wiggydiggy]

Raleigh Activator 2 Ltd Edition

Loved that bike, used it until it was destroyed and took it on some big rides. I think my fondest memories are at the top of a very big mountain my front brake cable snapped, in my youthful wisdom I decided the front brake wasn't important and positively flew down!

Another time we were negotiating a descent and what we thought to be a path turned out to be a dried up river bed complete with boulders the size of a mini, suspension coped surprisingly well with that.

Lastly I think managing to hit 42mph on a descent of a 1:7 single track road, it is still the fastest I have ever been on a bike!

Amusingly the source for the picture mentions the bike needing new front brake cable!

 

[superbadger]

Back in the mid 70's my Dad wouldn't get me a Chopper so I made my own.

I made seven of them in all up until I was about 14 or 15 years old.
The last one had drop bars, bikini fairing, brake lights and 'dashboard' switches for the lights.

I am very tempted to make another chopper.

They are awesome!!!!!

 

[superbadger]

Hey portex.... That trike looks tougher than a grifter!!!!!

 

[MontyVeda]

They are awesome!!!!!

They certainly are.

 

[superbadger]

A lack of girls bikes on so far so just asked the GF and hers was a Raleigh Apple. she had a dolls seat on the back of hers.

 

[Globalti]

I had a Triang trike which made a clattering noise because the six-sided hubs were gradually wearing six-sided holes in the steel wheels as they rotated. Then I had a Raleigh roadster and a couple of 10 speed racers. When I was about 15 my pal and I fished an old delivery bike out of a river, cut off the basket part of the frame and built it up as a chopper with apehanger bars. I was very upset when it was stolen from our cellar.

My first modern bike was in 1987 when I was between jobs and I spotted a Raleigh Maverick MTB in a bike shop in Harrogate. It was a glorious yellow and white with red decals and I fell in love with it; as soon as I saw it I knew that was the bike I needed so despite being unemployed I hit my Barclaycard for the £199 to buy it. I rode it home with the tyres under-inflated; it was only seven miles but by the time I got home I was absolutely exhausted. I didn't touch it for several weeks after that bad experience but gradually it needled me until I got it out and tried it off road; I remember my first feelings of amazement at the way it rode up and down hills and coped with mud, which had always been a problem when I took my roadsters off road. Then followed 23 years of mountain biking until I embarked on my present road riding obsession, which didn't really get going until I found a carbon road bike in a river - that's another story though!

 

[mickle]

Pashley Pickle trike then my bro and I were bought a pair of yellow solid tyred Tri-angs then then it all goes blank until a Raleigh Chopper which we had to share then a Raleigh Flyer in my early teens which was the bike that ignited my passion for cycling - they couldn't keep me off it. Ended up treating it very badly, threw it off a bridge at one point and then sold it to a guy who, two weeks later, came hobbling up the drive with his arm in plaster and a bandage around his head. I ran away but he said to my mother; I know there's nothing I can do but I just wanted to let you know that I was riding that bike you sold me down a hill when the front wheel fell off.' The headtube had sheared. Rather him than me.

Then a lull before I bought a second hand Rory which gave way to a brand new Claude Butler Dalesman touring bike circa 1983.

It ended up possibly saving my life but certainly from serious injury when a drunk driver mowed me down and then tried to drive away over my prone body. The bike got caight up underneath the car preventing it from moving.

 

[DiddlyDodds]

Cow horns ,,, no bike in 1970 was worth its salt if you didnt have Cow Horn Handlebars ,, no brakes just your foot on the front tyre (and a belt around the head of yer mum for ruining your beetle crusher shoes)