Forum menu
Bought a bike to get to work and generally ride around on in the mid 80's, it was a Trek but I can't remember if it was an 820 or 830. First ride that I would recognise as being properly off road was a couple of months after buying it and was a 14-15 mile loop from Wendover. From that point on me and a mate went pretty much every weekend.
'68 Thorner woods
Newcastle, Norn Iron
here
On a rigid steel bike with caliper brakes in 1993
Bought my 1st mtb in 1986 from a shop I still buy bits from, a claud butler! At the time I was off-road m/cycle racing so went into the Peaks to do a climb I flew up on the enduro bike. Needless to say I didn't fly up it , returned a broken man and put the bike back in the shed for a few months until it was nicked. With the insurance money I bought a Saracen Tufftrax with the rear brake on the chain stay [ask your dad ] and finally started riding properly. When I asked the salesman in the bike shop how the Saracen compared to the Butler he had sold me 6 mths befor he replied ,'That was a stone axe compared to this'! I have been cynical about technological claims ever since.
Used to ride my 24 inch wheel Raleigh up and down the flat bridle way outside my parents like any kid.
november 1998 aged 11 id been a good kid and dad offered to buy me a magazine. Spotted this cool cover of Dave Cunningham doing a massive tabletop on mountain biker international and decided that looked cool.
read that mag cover to cover and decided i wanted to do that and have a good bike. Saved every penny for a end of 99 stumpjumper comp as my first proper bike and started getting my mates into it at school.
never stopped 🙂
Dunno, guess I'm young enough that bikes have always been 'mountain bikes'.
Started using them beyond just cycle paths and BOAT/RUPP style trails in South Derbyshire arround 2002, sold my boat 6 months later, bought a carrera and a year after that headed off to uni in Sheffield.
Christchurch NZ- as teenagers in the 70's, used to ride our bikes on the Port Hills, loads of sheep tracks and old unmade roads.
Mountainbiking on mountainbikes? Same area, mid-late 80's..
Three years ago, rewired a house as a hommer thought id get a bike as a cheap hobbie. how wrong I was
June 1991, on a youth group camp in Frosterley, we hired a bunch of Marins. I was 13.
That evening I asked a girl to go out with me. We're married with kids now.
88/89 around Dalby and the North York moors. Took a road bike sabbatical between 96 and 2008 😯 but I'd say I'm now 50/50 mtb and road
I has riding a hybrid on the odd bridleway in the early 90's but I can pinpoint the seminal moment when this became mountain biking:
It was 96 and I'd been on a management training course on the mendips and was riding home. I decided to ride down a bridle way at full pelt and crashed breaking a tooth.
1. Riding fast and risking it was fun for its own sake
2. I needed a proper mountain bike!
[i]1996 Up and down the Wrekin/Acle wood near telford. Bl*ody loved it. [/i]
Funnily enough me too but 5 years earlier! Still have a mess around there when I am back in the UK!
1987, palisades trail, 1 months apprentice wages up Hampsfell, Cartmel Fell and Coniston Old Man. Still love it [even more perhaps]....
This was my playground as a child in the 60s; http://www.wwt.org.uk/visit/caerlaverock/ It was a farm in those days and we used to ride across the merse and sands of the Solway estuary. I rode these tracks and roads till I got my driving licence and then there was a biking gap till 1980 when wife became pregnant with child number 1 necessitating me to cycle to work and her to have the car.
Then in '88-89 son and I started riding in the local forest and then Mabie. A mate needed to get fit for a job interview/medical so we started riding more at Mabie.
My bike at that time was a Rudge bi-frame; http://www.lfgss.com/thread84511.html. A few Raliegh Mustangs followed by an M-Trac followed before I bought my son a Trek 8000 which we shared for a while until I got my Bontrager Priv. This I rode for 16yrs till the b&b she'll have up and I bought a Blue Pig frame to add to my '05 Kona Dawg.
So a quick recap; started at Mabie in late 80s, add in a bit of Ae. In the '90s ventured over to GT, down the Lakes, got the maps out and went exploring everywhere and anywhere within a reasonable distance of home 😆
Growing up on the Isle of Man had some advantages!
in 1991, I had some mates who were well into biking, so i borrowed an old Dawes Ascent and went on my first ride with them
It was 30 miles, wet, cold and it nearly killed me - but i loved it!
I then bought the Dawes for £70 and painted it black and white with Hammerite! Just like a Dogz Bollox, but not quite as classy
6 months later, I bought my first 'proper' mountain bike - a Raleigh Dyna Tech Mission.
Rode and raced regularly for 6 years and then discovered women and drink
Got back into it with a bang in April 2011 - the best decision i've ever made 🙂
For my first mtb ride, late 80s, think i was 11 or 12. 11 of us hired some ridge backs from a bloke in the village and set off to tackle garburn pass! 10 hours, 5 puntures, and 3 snapped chains later, we made it home. never looked back, it was great growing up in staveley.
Was 1993, living in West Wycombe, bought a steel (v.harsh)Muddy Fox and mainly rode West Wycombe, Naphill/Downley Common and Hughenden area, and not much beyond because an hour or two was all I could take.
There are some good trails round that way, but I never fancied taking that bike up any real mountains or somewhere rocky.
First proper "mountain" bike ride, with front suspension, was an all dayer out of Rhayader c2000. Fantastic.
Somebody lent me a Saracen Rufftrax, I rode up Penrith Beacon - ace, but damn heavy and the brakes did not work.
.
Then some chap called Lester, from a company that had just started up called 'Orange' (they were sailmakers...) had a couple of bikes at the sailing club, I borrowed one and got halfway to Glenridding on the singletrack - I was HOOKED....plus the bike was the coolest looking thing you ever saw...
Late 80s some time, replaced my BMX with a very bad raleigh mountain bike, then replaced that with a fairly nice carrera which I still have. Barely recognise what I do today as a continuation of that, though...
So then I stopped for years, but restarted in about 2009 after I broke my hip- needed the exercise to sort out my leg. Revelation- tyres that grip, forks that boing, brakes that actually brake.
1991 Muddy fox pathfider around the pent lands
Formby, Merseyside, 1985, Saracen Conquest.
1st MTB race - Brinscall near Chorley in 1985.
Got an image now of 90s Northwind riding past 90s maddyutah!
Mostly pootled around local footpaths with my sister(didn't know it was forbidden).
Then got into mtbing properly after coming back from a fantastic skiing holiday, wondering where I could capture that feeling of being in the fresh air, countryside, with good friends, doing exercise with a buzz. So my skiing pal and I, we headed out to the Peak District. Quite a learning curve in the late 1990s.
Never looked back.
Christopher Harrison's back garden circa 1972.
Felt sure those steps were doable but a fixie trike and the wrong tyres were my undoing.
'87 in Whistler, I swapped the Xt 600 for a Nishiki and started hitching the bike on the back of the chairlift on 7th Heaven as Id spend the day watching my mates ski on the glacier, then Id ride down the fire roads and little tracks back to the village, then ride around the village and the lakes.
2000 in Brechfa before the trails got marked out, mate took me out as he had been riding there for years. My COUGH barracuda snakebite's COUGH components completely seized after the first ride so built up my own over the next couple of months, never looked back since.
1992, Luton, aged 14. We used to ride out to Chicksands every Sunday right up to 18 and blast round all day, before riding back. Good god we must have been fit back then!!