Friend of mine is buying her husband a bike for his birthday. He wants to get fit, hasn’t ridden a bike for years, lives five miles or so from the train station. £300 budget. So I was looking round at Trek, Spesh and Giant hybrids and for that money you can get a reasonable 700cc city bike.

But then I remembered what I used to commute on in London a few years ago and they still make it!

Carrera Subway: http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_10001_catalogId_10151_productId_810737_langId_-1_categoryId_165534

£230 – mine was £300 about seven years ago and didn’t have the mechanical discs. He’s not really going to miss the faster rolling speed of the 700cc and I think having something a big more rugged that’ll take some towpath action is worth going with a MTB frame rather than a total hybrid.

Assuming it fits. Good thing about Halfords is here are loads of them around to try. Just make me think that we’re always having moan about how expensive cycling is – but as an entry level bike for someone who wants to ride rather than drive, I think the choice out there is brilliant and excellent value. He ‘breaks’ even after something like 35 trips because of car parking and petrol. And it’s one less car on the road.

Good to get a different perspective sometimes 😉

Very true.

Merida and Giant seem to do some nice stuff around the £300 mark too.

Biking doesn’t have to be expensive. certainly if you do traditional big rides on the hills stuff and ride for transport anyway.

The answer has never been in doubt….of course you can
I bought a bike for £27 a couple of years ago
It was utter garbage

But that’s a different question

Got my missus a Carrera a few yeas ago, the frame is really good everything else was adequate for her needs cost us £270 IIRC, she loves it (When she bothers to ride it)…

I’m sure I remember reading that Carrera frames came from the same factory as some Merida and Spesh’ models… could have imagined that though…

They do come from the same place as Merida [well, they did a few years back].

I heard that too. I know ‘my’ Subway lived in London between Marylebone station and the fetid underground car park at work. Covered 10 miles a day, 5 days a week for four years. Once a year I took it home for a service/clean. And it never missed a beat. Needed one set of transmission (running in the vanguard of 1×8 back in the day!), two sets of tyres, a few tubes and some headset bearings.

The last week I was in London, I put a sign on it saying ‘free to whoever is here at 6pm on Friday night’ There was a queue 😉

My first mountain bike was from Halfords; an Apollo Equito from around ’96. It was £180 with rigid forks and cantilever brakes.
I used it mainly for my commute from Hayes to Southall while on a Uni work placement for 6 months.
I then got more into riding and rode it everywhere, commuted into uni on it, went down the local canal path and woods etc.

Then took it over to Germany for my next work placement in north Bavaria and rode it round there fore 6 months. Rode it most days, probably clocking up 75-100 miles/week. Only thing I think I changed was a rear mech that got bent while riding through a Bavarian forest. Oh, also stuck some riser bars on (the ones with the brace across the top!)

Got back to uni and the whole bike shed got cleared out one night by some blokes with bolt croppers and a van. Was really sad to lose that bike.

It wasn’t as capable, but I probably had just as much fun on that bike as any other I have ridden since.

Excellent stuff.

The weak spot on Subways used to be the hubs.

If you have the skills, time and tools, keep and eye on them and give them a proper service with PTFE-loaded grease after a few weeks. Should do you well.

Mine “Used to get around” 😉

…’till it was nicked.

Hopefully the fact I’d stripped the thread on the new 717/XT centrelock disc front wheel that day means karma took care of the scroats 🙂

I’ve had one of my £300 carreras for I think 23 years, my other one’s in bits just now but it’s been all over- put rigid forks in it and did and innerleithen uplift, raced the glentress seven on it in 2011, it’s been awesome.

Well let’s hope she goes with the recommendation then! I do remember the hubs being a bit grumbly but definitely didn’t have new wheels. The original shop site she sent me was her local bike shop that had a bunch of sub £100 bikes in there. Each of which had a set of pointless forks and weighted about the same as a small planet.

Big difference spending just over a 100 more for something like the subway. Although I’m in awe of the ‘journey of apollo’ up there 😉

I’m toying with the idea of swapping the bits off my ss inbred onto a frame for the girlfriend, but by the time I’ve bought a cassette, shifters, new chain, sourced a frame, and some forks, I think I’ll be better off just getting her a £300 ish proper ladies bike, there are some bargains about for anyone who’s not a totes hardcore gnarrrrpoon radmeister…….

The Calibre 2.2 at Go Outdoors is brilliant for just over £300