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  • Did you mountain bike before mountain bikes?
  • zippykona
    Full Member

    As kids in the 70s we had a racer and a tracker.
    The tracker was just a normal bike with a low gear on the back, with knobblies and cow horns that came in normal or wide.
    Some people put cow horns and knobblies on their racers but we frowned on that as the gears were bound to get ripped off.
    As my dad could weld he was responsible for welding strengthening bars across our handlebars for that full on moto cross look.
    Sadly can’t any photos but no doubt the hive can.

    slowoldgit
    Free Member

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

    gravity-slave
    Free Member

    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!

    seanthesheap
    Free Member

    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.

    lunge
    Full Member

    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.

    fasthaggis
    Full Member

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

    JefWachowchow
    Free Member

    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.

    Malvern Rider
    Free Member

    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 😉 :

    fr0sty125
    Free Member

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

    coogan
    Free Member

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

    wheelie
    Full Member

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

    Edric64
    Free Member

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

    kayla1
    Free Member

    Whoa- Strika!

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

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

    We just used to ride them everywhere 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 😆

    zippykona
    Full Member

    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.

    globalti
    Free Member

    I invented 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.

    Speshpaul
    Full Member

    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.

    Malvern Rider
    Free Member

    *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)

    Denis99
    Free Member

    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

    zinaru
    Free Member

    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…

    iolo
    Free Member

    no

    zippykona
    Full Member

    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.

    kerley
    Free Member

    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…

    Yak
    Full Member

    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.

    stanleigh
    Free Member

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

    Moses
    Full Member

    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.

    bigyinn
    Free Member

    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.

    rogermoore
    Full Member
    DezB
    Free Member

    Me and my brother offroading in the 1920s

    fasthaggis
    Full Member

    Dez

    Was that your first Yeti ?

    🙂

    FunkyDunc
    Free Member

    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

    DezB
    Free Member

    Was that your first Yeti ?

    Retired it last year 😉

    scotroutes
    Full Member

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

    MTB-Idle
    Free Member

    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).

    antigee
    Full Member

    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

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

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

    antigee
    Full Member

    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”

    atlaz
    Free Member

    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

    globalti
    Free Member

    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.

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    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.

    midlifecrashes
    Full Member

    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.

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