Do you remember your first ever ride?

On my RD350YPVS I do, took it up to 100mph and it then kinda went a bit limp, I panicked and thought I'd killed it, but it was just needing to switch over to reserve.

No... like most people I was probably aged about 3 and we don't tend to remember things from that age.

I think I must have been 17 as I had my Morris 1100 at the time
Ah sorry you mean bike ride

Aged 15.
In a part of town I'd never been to before. Exciting but over very quickly iirc.

First bike ride or first MTB ride?

I think I can remember both.

The first bike ride was  on a little blue Raleigh on the red grit football pitches behind my parents house - 46 years ago.

The first MTB ride, round Ladybower on a purple Townsend - in 1995.

Both bike gone now, and my parents too, but the memories remain.

Back on topic - not really, but I do remember my first proper MTB ride.

Like all kids we'd ridden Choppers and 'scramblers' built from skip parts when I was younger, but got back into riding as a road rider, using it as recovery from a football knee injury* riding with the local CTC in Ron Hills and woollen jerseys, and if you think roads and cars are bad now.....

Then one summer, on cricket tour I was wandering around Bath and saw a shop selling these fat tyre things and thought they looked cool as.... so on return from tour I went into AW Cycles in Caversham and bought a pig iron fully rigid Diamondback. Which I rode up lanes and farm tracks and bridleways, to see what was at the end of them.

Then I picked up a copy of MBR and started reading about the improvements. I chopped in my DB for a Spesh Rockhopper, customised with RST Mozo Pro front suspension, pulled out the Surrey Hills classic ride out of the mag, and set off.

And it was brilliant, but hard. Like way harder than the road or 'gravel' I was used to. And it rained, and I fell off on the wet roots with 60psi tyres a hundred times and then on the long climb from Friday Street up to Leith Hill, I bonked. I didn't think I'd need food for a 16 mile ride!

And then a group of matching lycra, superathletes, on fancy bikes came past, and stopped to see why I was sat on the wall in the rain with my bike. And the thing I remember most of all was their shoes, these weird plasticky things. I'm not sure, I think it was UofSurrey MTB club, but anyway, they gave me some jelly babies and these weird sachets of sticky goo, and I got home somehow, And I was bitten......

* the physio said no running for a while, try cycling, it's 'low impact'. She had no idea of all the things i'd impact following her advice; trees, rocks, the ground, cars, other riders, mainly trees though.....

Oh yes! Round the back of the youth club…

oh hang on…

The one I remember was my first ‘real mtb’ ride after collecting the bike.

Previously I’d had a few Halfords bikes and a 91 GT Timberline and rode them predominantly on the road to work.

I’d saved up and went for a 1995 GT Pantera with the upgrade to a Quadra 21 fork. Cost me £700 at the time iirc, which was a fair chunk.

Rode home from Keighley to Bradford, going down all the off road bits I could find. Loved the ride and was amazed how fast I could go downhill.

Had many years on that bike, well 4, before getting a Zaskar LE and then FS.

The Q21 lasted about 6 months and ended up with Mozo Pros.

Still have the Pantera frame. It is very battered now but brings a smile every time I see it.

I can remember my first bike ride, I must have been about three or four. It was on a tricycle and I'd packed a suitcase to run away from home. I hooked it over the handlebars, beteween the grip and brake lever. Off I went down the road and round the corner, which then sloped down to a junction with a main road. I can still remember pulling the brake lever and it not being able to pull back far enough to activate the brake because of the suitcase handle. I then went straight across the junction and crashed into a wall, smashing my face up and knocking out half of my teeth. I was picked up by a neighbour and carried home.
I can also remember my first ride on a bicycle without stabalisers with my dad holding me up until he let go and off I went on my own.
The first ride on my first mountain bike was 1990, my mum went halves on it with me for my 21st birthday. I went down the canal towpath and then found some tracks off to the side that snake through and around some nearby lakes. I knew I was going to love it as we'd always scambled our old Raleigh bikes from back in the 70s around local woods and it made me feel like a kid again.

Vague memories of it being maddeningly impossible to balance on my Raleigh Budgie in my auntie's garden - then all of a sudden, with no effort, I just could.

First ever bike ride I was about 5 or 6 and it was a yellow Raleigh Boxer hand me down from my uncle. In a cul-de-sac right next to Sandhurst military academy ranges as that's where we lived at the time (Owlsmoor).

First road bike ride was on my first ever brand new bike which was a maroon Raleigh bike which I forget the name of. I was 9 at the time.

First mtb ride was on a Giant Stonebreaker, the yellow and pink one. I was thirteen and it was purchased from a bike shop in Aldershot which is now long gone.

First bike ride?

6 yrs old on the army base family friends lived at in Germany.  Dad running along with his hand on the seat and then I pedalled away from him

didn't ride again until I was 10 or so when we moved to Scotland -then I got my own bike ( the intervening years we lived on a steep hill with a main road at the bottom)

First MTB ride?

My dad had bought a MTB to get to the more remote munros when i wa in my 20s maybe around 1984?.  I had already been riding off road on modified road bikes before this but the super low gears and fat knobbly tyres were a revelation when I got a shot of his on the lanes around their house.  I got my first MTB a few years later

Not as a kid but I remember buying my first mtb 11 years ago, a rock hopper. Lovely wee bike. Took it 5 miles along the canal and thought I’d done pretty well

Next ride I took it to glentress. My mate hired an orange 160 and I had a shot. Wow, it was like a different sport! I bought a Santa Cruz heckler within 24 hours of getting back home!

I can trace my current crippling financial predicament directly to that one moment …

I don't remember but my parent have often reminded me that I was on the pavement with stabilisers and one dropped off the side of the kerb and me along with it. I got up and declared that the bike was a "stupid bloody thing"

Grew up in Hong Kong. There are a few kids in my apartment block, we all had bikes and used to race each other around the quiet car park and that's where I started. Those were fond memories and pretty rare thing to have happened in Hong Kong with it being so densely populated.

First MTB ride was with the uni cycle club taking me to Leith Hill. All I could afford at the time was a parts box mix bike based on a Carrera Kraken with v brakes, Suntour forks and fire xc pros that I built for commuting with used parts. Was holding on for my dear life most of it and slowed everyone else down. Still enjoyed it and went on a few more trips. Uni work then took over and didn't really do it regularly until I left uni.

My first proper bike was an orange 5 but been a serial bike changer since.

Ive pics of me riding a trike when i was 2 in 79

Earliest riding memory is riding to nursery aged 3-4 on my purple Raleigh Budgie, then my mum wheeling it back home and then back again to pick me up so i could ride home

Its something that always stuck with me and its something ive been doing with my boy since he was 2, hopefully its something he will do with his own kids one day

Not on a bike, no. But I do remember my first MTB ride 😎
1990, summer (June?), Ridgeway/Uffington Castle, a bloody massive Muddy Fox Courier Mega, big grins all round.

First MTB ride was in Thailand about 13 ish years ago. I'd been made redundant and after drinking ym way through Vietnam I'd fetched up somewhere outside of Chiang Mai for a few days. Fed up by this point of Wats and hiking I discovered a biking company that would take you to the top of Doi Suthep in a pickup truck and let you ride down the thing on fireraods and a bike of single track. It was a hardtail of some sort - a merida maybe and they kitted you out in full on body armour to ride down something I'd happily tackle on my gravel bike now, but I abslutely loved it. Dcided that when I got back I should look into this mountain biking thing as I'm in south Wales and was reasonably certain that it was 'thing' around there. It escalated very rapidly after buying a specialized hardrock and pootling around a bit into a pit of money of injuries that I will liekly never escape.

I've always had bikes and I used to ride around the park on a S/H Dawes Audax that my parents had bought me when I was about 13-14. It had TEN whole gears! Downtube shifters. I even did a sort of Sportive (OK, it was a charity ride...) on it out to Penshurst Place in Kent, it was 30 miles and that was far and away the furthest I'd ever ridden.

Got my MTB at 16 after reading lots of MBUK and the first ride on that was around the local woods with my mate from school who'd got a mountain bike a few months previously and hadn't shut up about it since!
My first race on it was a year or so later when I'd joined a club and one of the guys took me out to a local CX race. I wore tracksuit trousers and a thick jacket (I remember wondering how the **** were people racing in short sleeves, it was FREEZING!) and I came second to last.

I more remember my first proper club road ride aged about 18 on my brand new Lemond. Christmas Club Run out to Westerham and back and I was SO excited to be on my new fast sprinty responsive bike. And then I blew up big time on the final climb up to Crystal Palace. I absolutely died. One of the club guys had to push me up the hill so as well as dying of starvation, I was also dying of shame. I got home and just stuffed all sorts of food into me.

I am 53. I remember my very first ride vividly. Down to the details of the flower bed where I fell and the shape of the stones that I hit with my hip, I actually just looked at the place in our garden in Nantes on Maps. Looks unchanged. Weird.

First MTB ride was 1994 on a Sunn Vertik II that cost around £500 then. Fuji double butted steel. STX-RC and fing Gripshift.

Well to be honest when i first wrote this thread it was done in all innocence and i meant bike ride, this place being a cycling forum etc. Nevermind i'll buy a smutometer for next time to test content and title.

We have a bike forum for bike related questions. This is in tne smut chat forum

My first ever bike ride was when I was 6 and at a cousin's house. Had never ridden anything more than a tricycle up until that point so felt left out of everyone else buzzing around on two wheels. A spare bike was found for me with stabilisers and by the end of the afternoon I was blasting around on two wheels and absolutely loving it. They next Christmas I was bought a 16" bmx style bike and I've never looked back from that point. First proper ride was with a few friends to the local woods a mile away a few weeks later and razzing round some trails other locals had built. That spot fell out of use for a long time but was rebuilt by the current local kids during the first lockdown. Felt massive when I was 7 but in reality it's a few 10 second runs through a flat woodland!

First bike ride- no real idea how old I was; probably 6 or 7. On a silver bike with 24" wheels where my dad ran behind me to hold me up, then I realised I was going quite quickly and he'd let go, I panicked and crashed. I remain good at crashing. Stuck with road biking into the mid-1990s.

First mountain bike ride- while working in Spitsbergen in the early 1990s, I had the use of a Townsend Topeka to ride up to work sites. It weighed a ton, but riding with a pack and a rifle, weight isn't really a consideration. Then discovered recreational mountain biking in 2015 when I bought a Whyte 529. Costs have gone up considerably since then........

We have a bike forum for bike related questions. This is in tne smut chat forum

Bikemagic?

I grew up in a small close with about 15 other kids. We took over the street with gokarts, bikes, wooden jumps propped up on bricks and chalked racetracks.

Vague fuzzy memories but the clear one I have is repeatedly asking for my stabilisers to be taken off, and excuses being made that it was too soon. So I ended up dragging my Dad into the street and borrowing another kids bike off his front lawn (it was a little fixed gear thing and must have been about 10" wheels) skipping all the 'parent running behind in the park' phase and just riding straight off the lawn and down the pavement and somehow staying on! I do wonder how old I was as the kid who owned that 'bike without stabilisers' is a good two years younger than me and it might have been his younger brother's...

Ahh can't remember age but first tried was the park one being launched by my dad on a rusty red thing and actually getting the balance right but not the steering thing , so straight into a tree it was.

Then a few years later a purple chopper turned up, I missed out on the BMX craze as I was more into computers and wasn't really interested in riding in actual fact probably really got into it all in the middle of my thirties.

I think I managed to fall out of bed and managed to do my leg in on the the other one.

Always been over enthusiastic and underperforming on the riding front it seems 🙂

Age 4. Ambleside Primary. Teacher encouraged me to ride without stabilisers. Eventually i plucked up the courage. Not been able to stop since. 1979.

I vividly remember my first successful ride without stabiliser wheels. Would've been five years old (1972); red Raleigh step-through, council house back garden, L-shaped flagstone path bending left round between the lawn on the left and the veg patch on the right. My dad had taken the stabilisers off the bike. After a couple of dry runs, jumping off to one side when it started tipping, it clicked, and I pedalled up the path to the top of the garden. I can recall the sense of triumph now!

Maybe not my first ever ride but I can vividly remember riding down the street past our family home in Macclesfield, on a lovely sunny evening, small blue Raleigh with stabilisers on. I must have been 4/5

First proper MTB ride is slightly hazy. I may be remembering a few different rides smashed together. But either way, Macc forest with my mates, charity lane etc. Circa 1992, on my giant hurricane.

Was hooked from that moment on.

Can still remember all the different bikes and japes we used to get up to around that time....seems a bloody long time ago now!

No… like most people I was probably aged about 3 and we don’t tend to remember things from that age.

Weirdly.. I can't really remember the day when the stabilisers were taken off - but I can remember being able to remember it if that makes sense.

The earliest I can remember riding is out on farm tracks on my purple tomahawk deliberately aiming for any muddy patch  and not being satisfied until the reflector on the back of the seat was completely obscured by crud. I had a bike before the tomahawk - something metallic denim blue with white mudguards. I don't remember riding it but I remember discovering after leaving it outside the house that someone had hacksawed through the downtube. And I remember my dad bringing it back from work having brazed a sleeve over the cut t repair it so that it was a lovely mix of denim blue and scorched paint and metal.

Vague memory of being pushed on a bike by my dad thinking "what is this illogical nonsense, oh it works!".

Kinda...

https://freeimage.host/i/HSnpvvS

No… like most people I was probably aged about 3 and we don’t tend to remember things from that age.

I do, I tried riding it along the garden path, but wobbled and fell off, right on one end of a breeze-block garden wall; you can probably imagine what state my leg was in where it dragged down the raw bare edge of one of the blocks. I rode it for a bit with the stabilisers on, but then pretty much abandoned it.
Until about four or five years later, when I was promised a proper full-size bike if I learned to ride it. About five minutes after taking it out the gate and up the street to the access slip between the back gardens of the other end of the street, I was back home, asking when I would get my bike… 😁

It was a BSA Star Rider, and I rode many miles on that bike, 27 1/2”/650b wheels, I fitted Avon c/x knobblies to it, and went ‘dirt-tracking’ on it, what I’d later be doing on a mountain bike. By later, I mean twenty-odd years later, in 1988.

First Ride:

I have a memory of managing 2 two wheels, no stabilisers, on my blue Raleigh Chipper (like a Chopper for little kids). Maybe 4 or 5? A hearty shove by my Dad and I was off. I don't remember any crash or pain, so I guess it was a success!

First MTB ride:

I went to my parents place during a leave period from the Navy, circa 1992(?). My Brothers TuffTrax was there. I hadn't ridden for a few years, the last bike I used was a too big Raleigh 10 speed (which was still huge fun).

It was truely eye-opening. Simply being able to shift under load, and hoon up and down hills without worry of breaking it, was brilliant.

It wasn't long before a chunk of my own cash went to a gorgeous Marin Eldridge.

Bike rding on my own: Great Gidding churchyard path....I thought my mum was holding the saddle still, and she was not.

MTB ride: at age maybe 13-14 an adult friend of the family wanted to try out these new fangle ATB bikes, and a new hire shop had opened at Tirril. We arranged bikes, and the route plan took us to Pooley and Askham, over the common, perhaps with an extension over high street. Unfortunately the first section of bridleway had the hedges trimmed - and so 8 of us had multiple punctures each and we never got to do our route.
Thankfully a year later I was loaned a prototype bike from a chap at the sailing club on Ullswater and got to do High Street - I was hooked, and the prototype bike said 'Orange' on it and belonged to Lester Noble.

I don't remember my first bike ride as a nipper.

But my first MTB ride was aged 15 on an XL-sized Raleigh Montage, mucking about on tracks in the local park near my mate's house.

I don't remember if I cracked my nuts on the top tube on that ride, but it happened fairly regularly until I got hold of a bike in a suitable size.

Remember my first ever "proper" off road ride. Just finished my GCSEs (so this was 1996) and my parents contributed towards a Trek 970 as I'd got some half decent grades. A mates dad took a few of us up to Chop Gate in the Moors, did a ride there and then we headed back to Helmsley and we did another ride there. Seem to remember there being 4 or 5 of us + bikes in/on a Vauxhall Frontera... no idea how.

No but in 1986 I remember my brother getting a “tracker” bike which was now called a mountain bike. I still can’t figure out why it didn’t have proper handlebars rather than those silly ,flat narrow ones.

Can still remember every bike I've ever owned since I was about 3 or 4. But then there's not been that many. Couldn't tell you the name of the first few as a kid but can picture them well.

Can definitely remember my first ride with an mtb club and first xc race. Was 14.

I don't remember the first ride but I distinctly remember the first ride without stabilisers and even riding with them but I don't actually remember getting that bike and 1st ride.

First MTB ride - September 1990 – I had just come back from a summer InterRailling / Island Hopping in Europe and, as I had sold my car to fund my travels, I only had enough money to buy a bike, a rigid Peugeot with Reynolds tubing, bought from Spa Cycles in Harrogate as it was the cheapest 'nice' bike they had (£180 IIRC). I used to ride it around Knaresborough (especially along Spitlecroft on the far side of the River Nidd from town). I eventually started exploring up into the Dales during the next few years and cut my proper MTB teeth on Mastiles Lane – a pretty scary descent on a rigid bike with V brakes.

Never really got the hang of bikes as a child ( I failed my cycling proficiency ha) but gradually figured it out and got into touring stuff through college. I do vividly remember the moment I realised that mountain biking was the good stuff though. First month or so at uni in Bristol I decided to go explore Leigh woods on my Scott Atacama hybrid thing, ran into a course mate and ended up upside down trying to get down the picnic bench trail! Spent a big chunk of my first loan cheque the next week on an awesome Marin hardtail.

Didn't learn to ride until I was 19 and at University. I was spending way too much time walking about the place so pestered my dad to teach me. Being a late 70's/early 80's kid, I'd been desperate for a BMX, but wasn't allowed one, but we did lots of hiking/rambling, so going offroad was instinctive.

We pushed up to a nearby carpark with a gentle slope - he had a Raleigh Amazon MTB and a Peugeot road bike at the time. Slammed the saddle on the Amazon (21" frame, so still not a lot of clearance!) and I learnt to stridabike it, then feet up and pedal by the end of the morning. We rode back home again. Success!

That was during the halfterm break in my first term.

First offroad was Easter the following year - I rode up to Swithland Woods in NW Lecestershire and did some laps of the bridleways. Absolutely amazing. I can remember both the exhilaration and the absolute soaking I got. That will be 30 years ago next Easter and I haven't looked back since.

Remember the stabilisers coming off - will have been 4 living in Luton circa 1975

Rode bikes all through my youth and learned to maintain them to a certain degree with the help of a book - can't remember the name of it

Remember my first road bike - 2nd hand off a mate and passing my cycling proficiency on it

Remember my first 'off road' ride down farm tracks on my Raleigh Bomber and realising it was more fun than riding on the road

Remember my first go on a proper MTB - a Dawes with 18 gears owned by a family friend and being desperate to own one

Remember buying my first new bike that I'd saved up for  - Raleigh Pulsar road bike. Wanted an MTB, but a family friend (Aiden Leheup - google him) worked in a bike shop in Matlock Bath at the time and told me that any MTB I could afford at that time would be rubbish - good advice! Did a family cycling holiday camping with panniers and a tent strapped to the back around Whitby and Scarborough

Remember buying my first MTB from a mate - an old Scott, must have been around 1992

The rest as they say, is history

I think my first 'no stabilizers' ride was round the corner from my house. A mates dad removed my stabilizers for me as everyone else could ride a bike and I was nearly 7, so it was about time.

turns out I could ride a bike without stabilizers. or rather, not that well.

cue a BMX, lots of gravel in the knees and lots of beartrap pedal strikes on the shins. The same summer we were building ramps from scrap wood and house bricks, using a nearby steep driveway for a run in and jumping over our mates. That was progression.

first MTB ride, on an MTB (of sorts) was after my BMX was written off in a RTA, and I could walk again, and the insurance had paid up (18 months later). being 6ft at 12 years old, BMX were very small. so onto an ATB I went. It was quite a revelation not to be riding on the tracks of the Malverns on a BMX, with one quite difficult gear, but with a whole 15 gears to play with.

I broke 3 of those bikes, eventually being told, after an upgrade from the supplier, that this was my last one, and they weren't proper mountain bikes, but mountain bike-like bikes, so don't do anything silly on it.

the remainder of the 1980's was spent on a blue and white bike, adorned with cosmic fluoro yellow frame bag, with a padded strap for shouldering the bike, and a similarly coloured disc wheel cover and Mt Zefal pump. rumble rumble...

My first proper ride was on a Raleigh Record (black with gold detail) in 1976 around the lanes of Partington and Dunham.

The first MTB was a 1991 Dimondback Sorrento (gloss black and white "spangle") up and down the grand union canal at the back of Hounslow. Oh the joy

my brother bought a marin MTB bike back from uni or somewhere. I borrowed it for a razz about the towpaths and footpath around radley gravel pits. loads of fun. Then i bought my own MTB at uni many years later as my mate was keen to do a few XC rides on teh south downs.

when i leant to ride i remember it as i rode straight off the patio, across the gravel drive and into teh privet hedge opposite, much to my dad and brothers amusement. i can still hear my dad shouting 'turn! turn!' but that was advanced biking i`d not been taught haha! A week later he was shouting at me for doing skids on teh gravel drive.

I was a late starter, my first rides were my mate's deathtrap castoffs. I was never allowed a bike of my own (my mum said I was dangerous enough on foot) so obviously I was far better off on a rotten Raleigh Boxer with no brakes.

The first bike I actually owned was a Diamondback Outlook, probably around 1993 giver or take a year. I replaced it with a Spesh Hardrock in 2009, so it owed me nowt.

And in fact, said Hardrock:

That one did owe me something, it was stolen less than a year after I bought it.

Learnt to ride a bike when i was 4, and was always around the village on a variety of BMXs and 90s MTBs. I remember rides around "the block" with my dad, and the odd jaunt up the long mynd or haughmound hill,

but "first ride" i would put as the freshers ride at uni.

a 5 or 6 year old 200 quid giant boulder, that was hanging out its ass on a good day. Bald tyres (with an orange tread), balder brakes blocks

Got absoloutely destroyed by bigger boys on bigger bikes around Nant yr Arian.
I think we rode out on the first ride. (12 miles of uphill before you even get there)
The best of times.

My first MTB ride? I sure do. I remember sprinting to the top of a fairly serious climb going past all these other blokes in this group and thinking, what a bunch of pussies! I threw up at the top; they just nodded, sagely.

Remember my first road bike – 2nd hand off a mate and passing my cycling proficiency on it

The cycling proficiency test! Is there anything more British? Reminiscing on this is defiantly 😉 worth its own thread.