Outgrew the Grifter.
Too old for BMX.

Gas pipe British Eagle touring frame – slack, high drops, 10 speed, Rigida rims that didn’t bend every five minutes and a rack.

Only bike for years – touring, camping, messing about on tracks in the local park, socialising, college.

Never deliberately sought out techy stuff, but it got used on rough tracks and bridleways as a way to reach places, rather than an end in itself, I suppose.

Kept it for years, long after I’d fallen for the charms of the plumper tyre.
Nicked along with my second mountain bike, a 1993 Palisades Trail.

Seemed to fulfil most of the attributes of what people seem to be chasing in a ‘do it all’ bike these days – reasonable weight and wide gearing, comfy, light off road potential.

What did you use?
What would your modern equivalent be, d’you reckon?

It wasn’t pre-mtb- they were around but not in any quantity and not cheap, this was before the heady days of the activator 2- but I just kept riding the bmx. I must have had legs like traction engines now I think about it

A bomber.

Weighed an absolute ton from memory but it was very much what all the cool kids had when they got too big for their grifters. I had to wait for a couple of years for my brother to stop using his before I had one but I loved it.

BMX I had legs like pipe cleaners. Things have changed since then, I no longer have a bmx.

Same, it started as a “racer” but developed cowhorns and lost its gears, still did a great job of getting me about whatever the terrain.

Raleigh Pacer. Used to get a few punctures.

3 speed grandad bike was OK through the woods and over the downs.

I do not miss cotterpin cranks.

5 speed 24″ wheel racer…

Grifter and my old dears Raleigh Twenty until I broke the frame! #80s

Bregante – Member

A bomber.

Weighed an absolute ton from memory but it was very much what all the cool kids had when they got too big for their grifters. I had to wait for a couple of years for my brother to stop using his before I had one but I loved it.

Same here (identical to the one in your picture).

Before that I converted my ‘Ti Raleigh’ drop bar bike to a flat bar bike with nobbly tires.

I used a highly unsuitable Raleigh shopper but it was all I had at the time. My mum wasn’t happy that I was crashing round the woods in it.

A BMX.

10 speed racer with cowhorns and what may have been cyclocross tyres though I wouldn’t have known.

I dreamt of owning a Bomber until I tried lifting one. That may have given me the weight obsession it’s taken years to shift 🙂

I used a highly unsuitable Raleigh shopper but it was all I had at the time. My mum wasn’t happy that I was crashing round the woods in it.

I loved my mums candy apple Raleigh 18. I had a tomahawk prior to that but i think i outgrew it around the same age i was allowed to explore further afield. The 18 was ace and we had many great adventures. Ok the tyres were not particularly suited to off road riding but it made up for it with oodles of standover. Plus the double basket meant it could transport 3 in comfort.

Too old for BMX.

I started when i was 12 and stopped when i was 35. How old were you? 😉

This BMX with a slick front tyre and nobbly rear.

MTBs existed but I/parents didn’t have the money then so BMX was the logical choice for a 11 year old. I use to ride 40 mile offroad loop on that thing! The Kona was then subsequently bought for me when I was 14- after 3 years on the BMX. I must have cycled thousands of miles on that. I went everywhere on it.

Edit: Sorry about the photo- I took it with a potato/first digital camera

My 10-speed Raleigh. I broke the rear axle off-roading it and I actually invented the mountain bike when I hacksawed the tiny chainring off my brother’s Triang trike and bolted it to the inside of the chainrings on my racer. I was amazed at its climbing ability and how much it made me pant for breath. Within ten minutes it collapsed catastrophically under the strain.

I rode no MTB till they had decent brakes and suspension

Just to add a bit more to my story:
I started drooling over a Raleigh Maverick (5 speed). This was in 1985.

Around that my time my father gave me an old second hand 5 speed Elswick Whirlwind ‘racer’ as he felt a BMX was a kids toy!

I’d watched a fair bit of ‘cross on Grandstand so tried to copy that a couple of times of the racer.

A year later, with the same Maverick still in the shop window but now reduced I was allowed to sell the racer and part ex the BMX to get the bike I’d been drooling over!

Happy days.

Grifter then my Raleigh road bike

monkeyboyjc – Member
5 speed 24″ wheel racer…

This. Only I had 26″ wheels. Skinny tyres and drops left intact. Some of the little chutes and jumps I rode on it are still around on the outskirts of the city – every time I find one on the MTB I wonder how I never killed myself (or the bike!) back then. The fearlessness and bounciness of youth…

One of these…

The distances we used to do on 20″ wheels was silly

Various trials bikes from when I was 16, as well as MX bikes (road legalized, well sort of) then enduro bikes, sled dog rigs and sleds. Mountain bikes are my only off-road thing now, although I’m still tempted to get another trials iron – even maybe a trials outfit if I manage to persuade Karen R to be the monkey (as the Yanks call it). She’s enough of a monkey as it is, mind……

I’m liking that Maico, fast haggis – yours?

Had a grifter, that the forks failed on whilst jumping, ditched that for a Raleigh pro-burner, that got stolen, then another aero-pro.
We used to laugh at kids on bombers, the bike your mum and dad bought you for Christmas, they used to try and jump them!!
Started watching CX on Grandstand and got a Raleigh Olympus 5 speed, realising how utterly hopeless it was off road, I found some closed loop motocross handlebars, and stretched the stem around it, I must have been nuts! I used to go to school on it every day, until it finally was stolen.
I still have my BMX’s and ride around my village with my 14 year old daughter now. I am proper old!!

Ah yeah!

Oh No, no idea why the image won’t work, it supposed to be a pic of a Raleigh styler mag!!

Anything we could and for as long as we could before it got totally smashed up.

We (my brothers and I) had one particular cow-horned beast that was once landed so heavily that the head angle changed. Probably be on par with modern offerings TBH…

Raleigh Chipper 😀 like a small Chopper with no gears, until it got stolen down the woods one day, then something I cobbled together mostly from stuff scavenged from the local dump – a racing frame, 3 speed hub and massive cowhorns, fun times! … I wonder how big those cowhorns really were, seemed big but I was small, how’d they compare to what we use now?

Raleigh Pioneer Elite – pretty capable actually, did my first rides of the Doethie valley and Coed y Brenin on it, and it coped OK!

When I was 6 , I had a Raleigh boxer. I have a technicolour memory of riding it miles from home to go down a large slag bank . Mother gave me a good hiding when I got home v late..the ride was worth the hiding!

BMX. We had a council owned ‘track’ near our house so dug jumps and rode there a lot. Then for some reason a mate and I start doing ‘big’ (6 miles!) rides to other good spots to ride. This necessitated a rucksack with sandwiches and drinks.

Finally, he got a Raleigh Mustang and I got a Falcon Sierra.

Raleigh Grifter. Well, to be more exact, the Super Grifter or Ultra Grifter or Mega Grifter or whatever they called the one that had chrome mudguards and slightly snazzier paint.

Then, since I wanted an MTB but couldn’t afford one, my parents got me a Falcon Sierra “ATB” from the lovely Halfords…

On the one hand it was utterly rubbish – weighed a ton, crap components, rubbish wheels that would buckle if you rode over anything bigger than a pebble.

On the other hand, it was good enough to get out and explore the bridleways and bomb-holes with an ignited a long standing enthusiasm –

I’m still exploring the local bridleways and bombholes on a not-very-good, overly heavy bike kitted out with some components of questionable quality, it’s bloody great.

5 speed 24″ wheel racer…

Me too.
Did it also have “racer mudguards”? Those 6″ in long things that apparently made it road legal according to the blurb in my mum’s catalogue.

As a kid growing up on a farm everything was ridden on and off road- including some home made wooden jumps and old bombholes in the fields.
In order of increasing suitability for this there was a 24″ wheeled BSA racer, various skip find “gents racer” frames with cow horns and 20″ back wheels mangled on (always broke at the head tube/ down tube junction landing jumps) to a Kawasaki kx80 d1 (later with 100cc big wheel conversion)!
Never had a BMX as after moving off the farm into a normal house on an estate and having to finish schoolboy moto-x aged 14 I stuck to “proper road bikes” until getting my first mtb 10 years later in 94.
Learned a lot about bike maintenance in those early pre-teen years.

There was a little red thing with 16″ wheels, it was a Raleigh I think. Then there was a Dawes Kingpin.

Daughter just started at the same primary school I was at – all the wee hills and sets of steps in the playground look very familiar, though they were much bigger when I was there.

And they got rid of the massive slide that we used to ride our bikes down.

edlong- yay, the legendary Falcon Sierra! Yeah i did everything on it. Bombholes, bmx track, local xc rides and the South Downs Way. Broke almost every component on it too. Finally the headtube snapped off 😥
Happy memories though.

I think ads678 rode one of these. He needs to shorten his link 🙂

BMX innit.

Raleigh Striker, then a Burner. Repack to the forum…..

Cheers RB! 😀

My BMX, then my Dad’s 3-speed, 32c-ish (27″?) town bike. It wasn’t cool but it was fun to ride. Usually along the lanes and taking cut-throughs along farm tracks and messing about in the woods. Got a Raleigh ATB in the mid 80s – BMX quill stem, risers and 15-speed. Not much has changed, I still love finding a new off-road link, what we used to call ‘secret tracks’.

Great thread .. that Bomber on P1 is class.