My girlfriend's after a ladies roadster bike. Curved toptube, skirt guard, 3 speed hub, north road bars etc. There were various models – Cameos, Caprice & Chiltern seem to come up on ebay.

Did Raleigh ever make any of these with alloy rims? She'd like to get one second hand, see how she likes riding it, and do it up from there, rather than spend £2-300 on a new one. I'd like to avoid buying something that needs £100 worth of wheel rebuilds to be able to stop properly!

She's keen to have a proper lugged frame with the nice curved toptube, so a lumpen alloy city bike isn't going to cut it. I suspect the Raleigh lady's "racers" came with alloy rims, but they don't have hub gears or the curved toptube.

Try Edinburgh Bicycle Coop as they do a nice one in their Revolution range for about £3-400

this lot seem to do some nice bikes new and secondhand if you're down sarf…

http://www.amsterdammers.co.uk/ladies.htm

Edit – oh and these now have a shop on Hove seafront;

http://www.dutchbikeshop.co.uk/

The best drop tube Raleighs had the mixte frames which handle nicely.

There was a very original one sold on eBay recently for less than £100

There's usually something on eBay.

I'm ooop Norf.

You must bear in mind that we are talking about my girlfriend. She wants a bike that looks nice and stops well. To some extent, looks take precedence over function 😆

In other words, it basically has to be a classic Pashley Princess / Raleigh Cameo type frame for her to be happy. The thing that I'm wondering about is the potential for an old Raleigh to end up costing as much as a new Pashley by the time you've sorted it out…

how about:

http://www.biketart.com/collections/bikes-city/products/creme-cafe-racer-uno-ladies-3sp-bike

or

http://www.biketart.com/collections/bikes-city/products/creme-holy-moly-uno-ladies-3sp-bike