Bit of a thought experiment (though might become more over the winter)...
If mountain biking had developed in late '70s Britain instead of California and Colorado, what bikes would they have used as the basis for their klunkers instead of the old Schwinn, etc. cruisers that the Americans used?
I know we had Geoff Apps and his crew, but they were doing something slightly different in concept.
I had a 'Tracker' - a stripped down Raleigh Superbe with cable brakes, some Motocross 'bars my dad fitted and slightly knobby tires. Would have been late 70's early 80's (I was born in '72). I'm thinking I might have actually invented mountain biking?
Rode it far more than my 5speed 'droppie'.........and then I got a Piranha BMX and never looked back
I also had a tracker and a racer.
The tracker was single speed with cow horn bars and knobblies. Cow horns came in 2 sizes.
Only super cool kids had the wide ones
I don't think mountain biking of that type would ever have been pioneered in the UK, as we don't have big enough hills. Blasting down fire tracks at speed uses up the average UK hill pretty quickly.
Anything being pioneered here would be more of a cross country, trekking kind of affair. Hence the Rough Stuff Fellowship and that kind of thing.
We're Land Rovery ploddy country, rather than flat out V8 Baja buggy country.
How about the raleigh bomber? That seems like a UK clunkner.
More likely would have been the bikes used by the old CSC Cycle speedway clubs - they looked the part with their peculiar shopper-ish north road handlebars.
Bomber. Yes. But built from 'junk' on a shoestring rather than bought whole and new.
Rough Stuff nadgering
Lol. My new default answer when asked what my hobby is.
We’re Land Rovery ploddy country, rather than flat out V8 Baja buggy country.
I was born in the wrong country.
I don’t think mountain biking of that type would ever have been pioneered in the UK, as we don’t have big enough hills. Blasting down fire tracks at speed uses up the average UK hill pretty quickly.
Agree with this - where in the UK would you find something that was long and steep enough to do what the californians did, but easy enough in terrain and corners that a coaster braked rigid bike was viable?
I don’t think mountain biking of that type would ever have been pioneered in the UK, as we don’t have big enough hills.
Mount Tamalpais is 786m according to Wiki. That's bigger than the hill I can see from my window, but I can get to a 500m ascent/descent fairly quickly around here - do I need the extra 200m to make it proper MTBing?
Blasting down fire tracks at speed uses up the average UK hill pretty quickly.
What do you think we used to do in the early days in the UK, ride around canals? 'Oh don't bother going up the hill, we'll be back down too quickly..'
Agree with this – where in the UK would you find something that was long and steep enough to do what the californians did, but easy enough in terrain and corners that a coaster braked rigid bike was viable?
The Repack races were on a 2.1 mile course with a 1,300ft drop. I could think of a few forest roads that might qualify but none near a population centre of any size so it's maybe that combination we were missing.
As a kid who was born in the late 60's and had a dad who raced MX or Scrambles as it was back then we all just stuck MX bars on whatever bike we could get our hands on until BMX became a thing.
Was definitely more a thrashing around in the woods than going up big hills though.
Agree with this – where in the UK would you find something that was long and steep enough to do what the californians did, but easy enough in terrain and corners that a coaster braked rigid bike was viable?
You've described what The Wall at Afan was when it was just fire-roads, before the 'proper' MTB trails were built. Maybe, as Scotroutes said, the bit that's missing were the people, not the locations.
I mean, you could do the same thing over half or one third the vert and still have fun.
My first thought was Bomber as well - not sure if just 'cos it looks most like a Klunker - but it does look like it'd be fun on the singletrack:
We built some tracks in the woods and rode what we had. It was the eighties though so the rich kids already had cool BMX bikes, then MTBs obvs.
The less rich had old Bombers and Grifters/ Grifter copies from Kays catalogs mostly. I just used my 5 Speed Winner. It had pretty big tyres really, but was crap for jumps, rear axles kept snapping.
I could have written exactly what Rusty said up top.
Born in 70, first bike was a Raleigh Strika, then a Grifter followed by my Arena 5 speed which got trackered. First BMX in 82/3. Some mates had Super Bomber’s in a metallic blue but bent the forks from jumping homemade ramps.
We used to ride from Wolves to the Chase on our Trackers and ride round exactly the same terrain we did did on our first MTB’s. I had a Raleigh Mirage in 89.
I was really fortunate to have a relative work at the factory in Nottingham who was able to get a significant discount on our bikes.
Edit, we also had a cycle speedway track local to home which we used to race around but you would get the best gravel rash if you came off!
We used to whizz around the woods on a Moulton bike (think of a non folding Brompton, on a diet)
It had a luggage rack on the rear, IIRC
The UK is good at thinking of new stuff
The US is way better at marketing
First suspension I ever saw was a Highpath in 87
How we laughed
Mid 60s Grandstand on the telly box , scrambling with Badger Goss , Dave Bickers etc then between races out on our 5 speed racers with Cowhorns Bluemels chrome rear mudguard up over the seatstay for that Husky look ? not forgetting the playing card in the rear spokes for that authentic braap sound !
Still see my dad's face when my front wheel ended up a funny shape .
We all " invented" MTBing in our own way and time but we didn't have the terrain .
I also used to ride a tracker. A good introduction into bike maintenance at 8 years old as needed to deal with threaded headsets, cup and cone bearing wheels and bottom bracket along with the fun of cotter pins. Luckily my dad was previously a mechanic so had loads of tools. Not exactly the strongest of bikes though.
I guess if it had grown up here in the same home-brew way as the states it would have had much the same pre-cursor which was tyres. It wasn;t the Schwin bikes as much as the availability of Nokia's 26" knobbly tyre.
The tyre is pretty much the only component on a bike that you can't make or bodge in a shed. Even rims were being cut, re-rolled and re-pinned to fit the tyres
People chose the Schwin bikes to adapt becuase they were a bike you could use the tyres with, rather than choosing the bike and looking for a tyre.
given that the tyres were Finnish they were just as available in the UK as the US then they'd probably the same key component that a bike would evolve around. Other 'knobbly' tyres at the time were't really that knobbly - they were just on kids bikes with a sort of off-road styling. Grifter's tyres werent really knobbly, the Bomber had more of a cruiser type tyre
Remember that MTB was invented / developed my adults competing not children playing
Adults bikes most commonly had 27" wheels then but not large volume ones so even with knobbles existing frames wouldn't have accommodated a chunky mountain-bike like wheel/tyre if one existed
Thing is though - we didn't really have many common fatter tyred bikes of any kind for adult at the time that you could have accommodated the Nokia tyres. I think ithe most common bike you'd have found as donors frames that could take 26" wheels were mixte style women's bikes - which I guess would give you the increased standover 🙂
Picture the scene - early pro-mountain bikers hooning down skiddaw on stripped down knobbly tyred BSA Metros and Granadas.
I did my early 80s trail riding in the north lakes an orange folding Dawes shopper with a coaster brake and BMX tyres
@kerley oh the fun of cotter pins ! It was only much later on I found out how to adjust a 3 speed Sturmey Archer after many slipped cranks and crushed nuts !
I turned my mum's Raleigh 20 Shopper into an offroad/"BMX" by removing the mudguards, putting checkered black and white tape down the tubes, and attaching a foam covered "cross bar" to the handlebars with Plastic Padding. And crashing lots. I probably should have asked her permission, but she never said anything. Best guess, 1981.
My mate had a Bomber with bent forks that he acquired by swapping it for a crap motorbike we'd been failing to make work for months, and the neighbours had complained as they got fed up with the noise. He bent the forks back and filled the dents with Plastic Padding too.
I turned my mum’s Raleigh 20 Shopper into an offroad/”BMX” by removing the mudguards, putting checkered black and white tape down the tubes, and attaching a foam covered “cross bar” to the handlebars with Plastic Padding.
in don’t think many people noticed at the time that the Raleigh commando was pretty much the same thing. A Raleigh 20 dressed up as a grifter
