[Closed] Did you mountain bike before mountain bikes?

I remember taking a cheap road bike offroad in the sixties, no special kit (no money), just learned to ride without breaking things.

We used to meet in the local woods and go 'scrambling' as we called it. Flat out dirt track laps on gravel tracks and rollers. The leader chose the route and everyone else had to try and get a pass in to take the lead. Run what you bring, road bikes, bmxs, Raleigh Choppers, Grifters and Bombers. My flat bar Puch Mini Sprint took a battering!

late 70's early 80's i used to ride off road on my Raleigh chopper, my mate on his mums Raleigh twenty, we called it scrambling, i was about 10 years old i think.

I've just always ridden bikes and mostly off-road. Not sure if it was pre-mountain bike as it would have been in the 80's but it was certainly before I owned a mountain bike.

I used to take road bikes with touring tyres off road,I think they call it 'Gravel' now 😉

I have always taken my bikes in the woods whether they be suitable or not. Raleigh Strika was the first bike I had with knobbly tyres, then BMX of course.
My dad has told me stories of a sort of unofficial club in our home town that used modified bikes and timed each other around a technical off road short course in a old school trials format, not hopping and riding through skips but just trying to get around steeps and switchbacks without dabbing. This would have been late 40's, maybe into the early 50's.

If early adopters in the UK had the entrepreneurial spark that the early repack guys did, I am sure the MTB world would have looked very different with 700c wheels and cow horn bars rather than 26" and flat bars that we all had for first 10 years or so.

About 1979-1980 we'd be around 13yrs old, dicking about on various cheap (some not so cheap) road bikes modded with CX tyres and 'cowhorn' (motorbike) chromed handlebars that weighed a ton, front brake always removed for 'skids'. My Puch Pacemaker had Sturmey Archer 3sp hub gears yet we were only really interested in going as fast as possible down a swooping bank and hitting a hard-packed dirt ramp. My best jump was measured at a paltry 13ft from the lip of the bank to the impression left where my unprotected loaf hit the mud after an unplanned forwards 180 😳

For some reason never thought to get some grippier pedals, just rode what was supplied - ie those rubbishy rubberised flats with a big chrome spindle. Any slight moisture introduced to the ride led to near constant slipped footing, cracked knackers and often violent dismounts. I'm frankly surprised any of us lived to this age, and with spleens.

We called the bikes 'trackers'. By coincidence my first proper MTB 10 years later was a 'Tracker' by Dawes.

*edit - Not my pic - but not far off 😉 :

[img] http://uploads.turbosport.co.uk/Remote0987632434287ghj/httpi186photobucketcomalbumsx1837bansheeP9084678jpg [/img]

As a child of the 90s I don't think this thread is applicable to me.

Used to blast about the woods in my Raleigh Strika. Look they had suspension! Or so I used to think...

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I had knobblies on my Phillips bike in the early 1960's and went offroad in Derbyshire and the Peaks. The brakes were awful!

Any old bike single speeded wide bars and fat tyres scrambling round the jumps opposite Stockhill woods near Priddy.This was mid 70s

Whoa- Strika!

I had a Chipper in the early (I think) 80s-

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then me and my sis got Raleigh Burners when they came out-

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We just used to ride them [i]everywhere[/i] regardless of whether it was off road or not- two bricks and a plank of wood for jumps in the back street! There was an OG gravel BMX track near my grandma's house too 😀 The BMX bug has never left me, which is now costing me a fortune 😆

Racers of course had toe clips but never ever on a tracker.
When the Grifter came out it went on each whole country's Christmas list.

I [b]invented [/b]the mountain bike in 1974! I butchered the tiny chainring off my brother's Triang trike and bolted it to the inside of the chainrings on my 10-speed racer. You had to change the chain over by hand but it went up steep hills and I was surprised at how breathless that made me. On the second outing the mild steel chainring collapsed catastrophically under the strain and that was it until some American dude stole my idea.

we trail bikes, old steel frame things we pulled out of the local tip.
Old Post Office frames with the seat tube that went to the down tube not the BB, with out the rack on the front they loved to be wheelie-ed.

We used to "ride" the hawkstone park moto cross track. Push up the hill then down the big open descent and do the jump at a the bottom.
The first time I did that it was Orrrrsum.
The second time..... well lest just say its still spoken about in these parts...30 years later.

*threadjack* - It just struck me - the future Mrs Rider was way, way cooler than me that year - riding around Wimbledon Stadium with some other laydeez for the film 'Bicycle Race'. Can't top that no matter how many retro bikes I ride, or moobs I've since developed 8)

In the sixties we used to go and watch speedway. This in turn lead us to make our bikes into trackers and making "speedway" tracks.

The best places were away from houses around trees.

This is how we discovered the world of cycle speedway eventually.

Had great fun on simple beat up bikes in my childhood, no brakes, no gears, very simple and sturdy bikes - great fun.

Regards

Denis

as a kid, my parents told me to stay of the road and growing up in south queensferry, it wasn't difficult to find little tracks over fields and through the woods. raleigh strika, grifter and ultimately bomber for me. the other good thing about being actively encouraged to explore away from tarmac was all the bongo mags we found.

'what on earth is that??' etc...

no

If Globalti invented mountain biking I invented the trail hound. After school I would have to walk the dog so it was down to the woods on my tracker and the dog would chase after me.

Yep, used to also use a 'Tracker' in the 70's. Rear brake, single speed, cowhorns and knobbly (cycle speedway type) tyres.

Thinking about it the only real difference is now I have a front brake and flat bars rather than cowhorns...

I rode bmx at our local track. Then for some reason a couple of us started doing longer, c 10mile off-road rides on them to link up different terrains, bombholes, etc. These trips took all day iirc and we took sandwiches to fuel us.

Oh Yeah , tyre debates were a bit easier in the late seventies , a case of a knobbly or not !

in the late 60s I rode a single-speed 27 1/4" wheel from Teesside to Fadmoor via Rudland Rigg ,which was much rougher than it is now. Off-roading, rigid, SS. More or less what I do now, except for longer distances and with skinnier tyres.

I had an old Dawes 5 speed racer that I used to ride on the West Highland Way from the Milngavie end. This was in the mid-80's before it was tidied up and made more weatherproof.

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[url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/so-i-accidentally-meet-a-mountain-bike-founder-today ]Please god no![/url]
RM.

Me and my brother offroading in the 1920s

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Dez

Was that your first Yeti ?

🙂

I started by taking a Raleigh Grifter off road, and then a Raleigh Equipe Road bike.

Eee them wer t'days, when folk didnt use to be all over t'moor with 7" of suspension travel, in fact I didnt see anyone else on t'moor on bikes

[i]Was that your first Yeti ?[/i]

Retired it last year 😉

31 posts on the history of mountain biking and no photo of someone playing the geetar?

yes. i had the original Raleigh Chopper in the early 70's, the proper one with the gear stick in the 'crutch interface' position although i didn't off road with that.

I then remember going to Gamleys toy shop in Sutton in 1976 with my mum who bought me a Raleigh 'racer' as we called them then as a reward for passing my 11+. cost was about £49 IIRC.

I rode this on road for a couple of years but then the 'tracker' craze came in and I bought some tracker bars and knobbly tyres and road off road. Mainly on 'Track 40' which is on Belmont/Banstead Downs but we also used to go as far afield as Box Hill to ride off road.

I remember using my mums spoons to change tyres and one tyre having 17 (yes seventeen) patches on it.

3 speed Sturmey Archer gears and I don't think they went wrong the whole time I had it.

Only lost interest when I reached 16 and got a moped, then a motorbike, then a car, then a wife etc. (although not all at 16).

around '82 living in Bangor rode/crashed/carried my Coventry Eagle road bike up/down Snowdon - I would like to think that history will put me down as a "gravel racer/adventure CX stylee" early adapter

Yep one Raleigh three speed bike. Road it everywhere for years. Even jumped in those days. Only recall one puncture!

DezB - Member
Me and my brother offroading in the 1920s

I reckon that's my Dad in the top right corner - "one day son all this will be crazy paving"

I had a grifter(!!!!) which I bombed around all over the place on. When I got a bit older I got a Raleigh Winner "racer" which I also took down steep roll-ins on dirt, down stairs and off drops. Wheels are still true but they probably weigh the same as my current road bike

I used to ride my 10-speed along the Icknield Way and get the wheels clogged up with sticky chalk mud, then one dry summer all the chalk had turned rock hard and I actually snapped the rear axle.

Never really knew "off road" existed other than across a park / playground / someone's front garden. Was all Grifters and generic kids bikes (if you're lucky 3 gear Sturmey), and the rich kids had BMXs though there were no BMX parks. Hit teens, Raleigh racer was the rage.

Late seventies, old Raleigh flyer youth's 5 speed racer. 26 x 1 3/8 wheels. Trackers were all the thing but I wanted to head up the hills too so I got a 14-32 touring freewheel and a Suntour GT rear mech and some non baldy tyres and headed for the Eston Hills and North York Moors from Middlesbrough, by way of the jump spot at the back of the schools on Saltersgill beck. Shame I grew out of the bike within 2 years, but I've kept the rear mech and it still has pride of place on the spares shelf 37 years later.

Nobody invented riding bikes off road though, when bikes as we know them were invented, most roads weren't smooth anyway. Definintely the Californians who defined and refined mountain biking as a separate thing though. Anyone seen Repack Rider on here lately? He has a few tales to tell.

My Dad talks of riding "Rough Stuff" in the sixties, basically just taking their touring bikes out on bridleways. Which is basically what XC was when I started riding in the eighties.

FWIW, [url= http://www.rsf.org.uk/ ]The Rough Stuff Fellowship[/url] still exists.

Raleigh Bomber for me down the local fields with old tip jumps and woods full of jazz mags and glue sniffers. I broke the frame twice, it ended up with so much weld on the head tube it nearly doubled the weight. Found a replacement frame hanging up in a small cluttered dirty bike shop for £15, a loan from my grandad and that was my first foray into building bikes at the age of 15. Such memories of drilling out seized cotter pins, the constant tweaking with sturmey archer toggle chains, always getting bumped and twisted and lots of chrome polish!

Raleigh Bomber for me as well. Pretty much the same as soulwood (are you me??!).

I bought mine second hand, snapped the frame and my dad managed to get a new replacement from Raleigh!

My brother had a chrome one and I had a black one.

My uncle used to ride around Ash Ranges in the early 50's. They made a track that was still visible when I lived in the area in the 70's. Sort of off road pedal-bike speedway.

I used to do a lot of exploring back in 1066 on a horse with the hooves cut off and replaced with wooden castors.. I would regularly take the long way home on my commute (from nationwide in Swindon)and head off up Everest on my Dandyhorse, stopping at the summit to take a tot of niche grog from my STW hipflask before railing some berms on the descent.. I would make it home in time to make last orders at the pub, where I would wile away an hour or two discussing castor sizes with my chums before Shaznay the serving wench sent us on our way

Aah.. Simpler times indeed 🙂

In 1976 I lived in Rugeley. I had a nice purple Raleigh Chopper and my friends (from Western Springs Junior School) had a motley collection of racing bikes and their mum's shoppers. We started off going to Etching Hill and did some 'downhilling'.
The summer of '76 was basically a long drought so rain never stopped play. We were out seemingly every day. One of our number was crazy about finding old military emplacements so we went exploring Cannock Chase. I distinctly remember cycling along the road to Birches Valley and going along the fire road to the stream crossing and then turning right up the long fire road climb that is now on the Follow The Dog Trail. When I attended the Follow The Dog opening day, the nostalgia was overpowering!
I'm not sure parents today would give kids as much freedom. We were a bunch of 10 and 11 year olds and left the house at about 9am and didn't return some nights until dusk.
I wonder how many of that group apart from me still go biking?

My Raleigh Racer & Puch Maxi Hybrid.(forks & wheels) worked quite well

Jumped over 13 mates using a Scaffold board leant on a dumped washing machine.

But then we got hold of Honda C90's ( & fitted em with old MotoX tyres) and I didnt get on a pedalcycle again for 25years

The answer is yes. Down the local gravel pits and paths on a polished Aluminium mongoose bmx. With red tyres, pads, grips and saddle. Sometimes in wellies if it was wet. Nearly always with a catapult to blast tin cans and the likes.

I was gutted when my Mum told me about fifteen years ago that it had been sold whilst I was at Uni.

🙁

This Hobo reminded me of my 70s/80s trackers.

[url= https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8537/8646350630_9c0f956b28_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8537/8646350630_9c0f956b28_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/eb3NNS ]Bristol 006[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/82598458@N05/ ]jamesanderson2010[/url], on Flickr

1977, i was bought a second hand Carlton Corsair. drop bars, 10 gears. simplex huret gears.
bars were swapped for cow horns, the curved brake levers never worked well with the bars.
i scrambles, as it was called, on it for 3 years, used a load of 2nd hand wheels from doug hartley cycles in wakefield.
in 1980 i bought a dawes galaxy tourer, and started to ride with the calder clarion. my 1st proper offroad ride was a club run over cutgate.
mudguards, saddlebag and drops.
the week after, i did my 1st ever timetrial on the very same bike.

good memories. 8)

We called them Trackers too, The best ones were 26" wheels, knobbly tyres, cross-brazed cowhorns, sturmey archer 3 speed, straight forks, small front cog, and a motorbike front brake lever.
The forks were just normal curved ones placed between 2 planks of wood and you kept hitting the top plank with a 4lb mallet until the forks were straight and level.
The small front cog mod required a mate whose dad had a welder. You took a normal chainset with the required pedal arm (crank) length and hacksawed the large 46 or 48 tooth cog off, making sure you didn't go too close to the cotter-pin hole, then you gave the same treatment to a raleigh Chipper or Tomahawk chainset to get the desired 28 or 32 tooth small cog which was then welded to the long pedal arm.
I got a Falcon Black Diamond 5 speed racer after taking the 11+ in 1976 but still enjoyed riding my tracker along the muddy lanes. Mine was somewhat lower spec than the dream list above. (single-speed Raleigh Rocket with 24" wheels and some old bent motorbike handlebars).

slowoldgit - Member
I remember taking a cheap road bike offroad in the sixties, no special kit (no money), just learned to ride without breaking things.

Same here, although the road bike got progressively more expensive through the 60s as I got more money.

Apart from a brief flirtation with derailleurs it was singlespeed because derailleurs broke too often.

My favourite bike was an Andre Bertin Course C37 which had every weight weenie bit on it I could get, except I fitted it with Dunlop stainless steel rims and the fattest tyres I could (27 x1½"). My mates used to scoff at the wheels (they would be on 1" and alloys) but I never had the problems with buckling they had.

In the late 70s, we used to take whatever bike we had to the local woods which had lots of natural ups and downs, the biggest of which we called Devil's Dip. Great fun.
I had the choice between 2 unsuitable bikes- a road bike and a shopper with a basket on. My mum was forever telling me off for mistreating the bikes by riding there.

If Phillip Harrison hadn't jumped on my Puch Tracker riding it down the bank into the back of Blakeney toilets, bending the forks I'd have been downhill world champion by now.

Halfords Olympic racer - sprayed silver (with airfix black enamel detail) and added cowhorns. Ready to scramble Norfolk's wildest.

Had we better send out a search party for Charlie?

Growing up in Wednesfield in the late 70's and early 80's we used to ride our "tracker" bikes at "Sideies" which was an area of foundry waste which had a big bomb hole which we used to ride down and get big air out of the other side. It was a natural progression to BMX. The area is now a retail park.

Had a Chipper in the dim and distant past, but rode my Halfords road bike everywhere with no mods - loads of off-road, jumps, drops, gravel, etc. all on the drops and slick tyres.

Would scare me s**tless today, but then it was the only bike I had so that's what I rode. Mates did the same on their BMX/Grifter/Chopper/whatever.

We've moved on so far, but not really gone any further forward...

We used to take bent forks to the local garage for"straightening" under the four post ramp. Didn't last long.

My brother and I used to ride our bikes up and down the cow paths that crossed the fields on my dad's farm back in the early 60's. We'd call it single track now!
I had a Dawes D'Artagnan, single speed with white wall tyres!

VETERANCYCLECLUBLIBRARY.ORG.UK "http://veterancycleclublibrary.org.uk/ncl/pics/Dawes+Super+D+Artagnan+-+Nov+62+(V-CC+Library).pdf"

Used to ride my Raleigh Super Bomber (Super denoted a derailleur instead of Sturmey Archer 3sp hub gears) on farm tracks

(not mine)

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I want a klunker now.

Chopper for me. It got used for off roading and jumping on the drive with bricks and planks as jumps. This kept going until the stem broke and was replaced by a Raleigh Ultra Burner.

I can still feel the pain of nut-to-gearstick interface incidents.

Late 70's into early 80's i used to ride in linley woods and the ashmounds near aldridge on anything we could find and mend.linley woods also had a devils drop but the largest hill was the toboggan. amazing place to ride as a kid. Only the rich kids had bmx. My best bike was a tour de france with cowhorns.

double post

As far as I can find out, every kid who had access to an old bike and a dirt track rode one on the other. So did I.

If all that was "before mountain biking," when did mountain biking start? I would say it started when my mate and I called the bikes we built for that purpose by that name. Can't call the sport mountain biking before you call the machine a mountain bike. My mate Gary Fisher and I came up with the name. We weren't using old bikes, we built them new, to the same standard as a Tour de France bike

Big difference between that and an old bike on a track

Oh the humanity!

Too much deja vu. I'm off back to my hermit's cave.

Yay, geetar man is back!
On a more serious note I'm glad someone did invent mtbs, now I just break myself instead of the bike.
If it wasn't for the mtb I wouldn't have spent the last 28 years of my working life in the cycle trade.