Not pictures OF Retro Bikes (although they are always nice to see 😉 ), but pictures of you and your mates riding your bikes ‘back in the day’.
Dodgy fashion is most welcome as are dodgy attempts at jumps etc….

Here’s a couple of mine:

That’s me in the mid nineties on my first Club Roost ‘downhill’ full susser. I broke it at some point later that year.
Yes, yes, purple jeans were all the rage…..

My mate Lee on his newly aquired RTS3, we were at Penshurst Off Raod Club and the big start ramp had just been built…

My mate Phil messing around outside my parents house on his Kona Fire Mountain. We should have been doing our school homework, but the weather was too nice for that 😉
Note my dad’s lovely ‘faded gold’ Austin Maestro parked in the background…

Lastly, me again. On my resprayed 92 Marin Bear Valley SE. The original paint was the matt light grey graphite paint work- i sprayed it up in this fetching battleship grey with red graphics. Maybe i should have kept it how it was…

No other old farts like me out there then? 😳

Andy Holmes and I riding the March 1994 Polaris Challenge in the Lakes – only early pic I have that’s digital.

I’m an older one:

italspark

IMAG0083.jpg by alan cole, on Flickr

me

IMG_1578 by alan cole, on Flickr

mcmoonter

IMG_1581 by alan cole, on Flickr

leffeboy

IMG_1580 by alan cole, on Flickr

A couple of me at races.


My fave bike I owned back in the day.

And some p@rn. Not mine!

Bikepacking before it became trendy. Riding Tim Woodcock’s Coast to Coast in 94 (I think).

My coice of refreshment hasn’t changed even when riding fashions have come and gone. Not sure I can live down the lager-boy shorts though.

Edit, why did Tan Hill Inn remove tea from their list of available refreshments?

Big air in 95

Best weekend’s riding ever (so far) – The Gower 98

The Kilauea from the first pic now

Me and my Raven up on Windy Gyle. 1999??

Windy Raven by ritcheyp20, on Flickr

Me with my Stumpjumper M2, 1997ish

Thrunton M2 by ritcheyp20, on Flickr

And theres the Retrobike Flickr Group

Me @ Surrey Hills 1990s by Slugwash, on Flickr

What passed for a hardcore hardtail in 1996:

Me XC racing it (just saying no to lycra, even back then):

They didn’t have cameras when I invented [strike]trackers[/strike] mountain bikes.

Well, they did but we couldn’t find the pictures in my dad’s house anywhere.

Racing in Kielder about 98 ish

Team Zebin at the Malverns with all our broken stuff. 95 I think.

Recreating 94, last year!

Have no pics of my 1988 Saracen Blizzard with its Biopace and bottom bracket mounted rear cable brake, I’m afraid 🙁

Fantastic thread. Inspired me to dig out some negatives and scan them tomorrow, in between actually doing some work… I do believe I have some photos of me and my mates in the Pyrenees covered in several weeks of road and trail dirt.

Mind your eyes – here comes some 80’s lycra, my first Muddy Fox, circa 1988…..

And one from 1996 on the NATS summer solstace ride with the essential Peak District weapons of a Clockwork with Pace forks. This was about 6.30am at Ladybower, after a 4.30am start at Bamford. And if you recognise him, yep that’s Paul from Cotic at the front.

Rob

A very cold river crossing in Keilder

Another cold day in the Cheviots

My first “proper mountain bike” at the top of the Ettrick valley

My mates old Speccy on Minch Moor

Breaking the rules as they’re not me or my mates, but here are some from the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games:

Mastiles Lane, late ’80’s. My first ‘ATB’; a Saracen Tuftrax. Happy days.

brings a tear to my eye

EDIT: one interesting thing with these pics is the lack of trailcentre pics, wonder if that says anything 😉

That trailcentres didn’t exist yet?

😉 – great to see proper bridleway’s in proper mountains… I did a lot of kielder classic races and the pics remind me how wet and how much fireroad there was/is.

1984, just before I got my first MTB.

Me going up the Rhydd Du track up Snowdon back in 1989

Keep ’em coming, i love it- more purple clothing please 😆
/\ Love the BMX stunting from 1984!

My 21 year old as she basks in the sun last summer 😉

And here’s me trying a ‘squeaker’ back when i should have been doing my homework

Me in MBUK ~2000

Racing at Matchams ~1998

Almost retro now! 2008 spot the STW members

great to see proper bridleway’s in proper mountains

+1

The spirit of adventure is half of what got us all out there in the first place!
I still explore the bits that no one else see’s….

Let’s not get all rose-tinted about this – as much as I had some brilliant rides/trips exploring ‘proper bridleways’, I also had some utter crap and miserable ones where what looked promising on a map was a several hour slog through mud/tall grass/etc…

Let’s not get all rose-tinted about this – as much as I had some brilliant rides/trips exploring ‘proper bridleways’, I also had some utter crap and miserable ones where what looked promising on a map was a several hour slog through mud/tall grass/etc…

Correct 😉
I still have rides like that today, the explorer never left me and i still ride down a trail just to see if it’s rideable. Often about two miles in i’ll realise it was a bad idea!
Also rim brakes were crap, no two ways about it! I took my Cinder Cone out in the snow last week and had to re discover ‘alternative’ braking methods 😆

I still have rides like that today, the explorer never left me and i still ride down a trail just to see if it’s rideable. Often about two miles in i’ll realise it was a bad idea!

As does every mountain biker I’ve ever met. The hand wringing about people not getting out and exploring anymore is such guff…

Me binning it, think i was in Abbey Woods in SE London. Anyway, those cut down jeans and shell suit top should have got me locked up by the fashion police!

Mwahahaha- embarrassment time! 😆

Found some more oldies!
A friend called John who introduced us all to ‘downhill’ and ‘proper’ jumps.
Basically he was a loony 😆

About 25metres down a bit in this picture is a barbed wire fence, but he still had a go at this drop anyway. What a trooper 😉

Edit: I should add that this was about 1997 or there abouts

Me and my bro inventing offroad biking in the late 60s 🙂

Did anyone read that Steve Worland article where he described his tricycle with the bread bin on the back…

http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/9341325/
http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/9341333/
gap yaaaaah. riding round Nz before the rest of the world had discovered its bloody brilliant and queenstown became the new whistler.

riding round Nz

With Greg Herbold! That’s just showing off 😆

nah he was just there, we weren’t “honch” enough for him. Met him in Maccy D’s later…I could eat more than him….
I have strong suspicions he was a tool. – he used language like “honch” plus he ran risers with bar ends… his bike was an abomination…. ah yes with triple clamp sids… oxymoron if ever there was one.