The Raleigh Chopper relaunch thread and stories of STWers with their Choppers, Grifters and Tomahawks got me reminiscing about my first bike. Several mates had Choppers or skinny-tyred roadies or hybrids and I was the the first to get what was a very basic MTB. I don’t feel I missed out not having a Chopper.

This was me: Dec 1985, my 7th birthday, with my first bike: Halford’s finest Apollo Blizzard complete with nobblies and 2 x 6-speed thumbies. Looking back it’s so obviously a great big turd of a BSO but at the time I thought it the best thing ever.

There must be some great / shocking first bikes out there?

Raleigh Budgie in a bronze brown followed by a Raleigh Burner in red and yellow. Both got well used and probably ended up at the local tip. If only we knew how collectable they would become.

I learned to ride on a red girls bike which was handed down from my older cousin but the following Christmas, Santa got me a Raleigh Strika in metallic green with a pedal back coaster brake which was just the thing for amazing skids.
Reading that Chopper thread has brought back many great memories from my childhood.

First one I can remember was a Gresham Flyer – no photos exist of this though – we weren’t a photos sort of family! 🙂

Trike with direct pull brakes

That must have been a great Christmas because I can also see a Jacko the monkey, a robot and a tonka toy. I think this is 1977

As per jp-t853, a trike, with a cavernous great boot for carrying the Action Men in. Or maybe Jacko, cos I had one of those too 😀
Me n big bro about to go truckin

Raleigh Grifter is the first ‘propper’ bike I remember, first MTB was a 1989 British eagle no idea which model, first decent mtb was a 93 rockhopper fs.

There is an old photo of me in the family heirloom aged about 3 on a trike. Does that count?

If it must be 2 wheels I think it was a bsa racer. Probably 10 speed. Had bar top brake levers I recall. I’d have been about 8 or 9. I remember the cotter pins always falling out of the cranks. There’s a photo of me in it in cub uniform somewhere. Came secondhand from grandparents I think.

Then a series of skip find frames built up resprayed crashed and broken.
First new bike I bought with my own money was a Raleigh road bike. Lovely cream colour. 531 frame 501 forks. Bought with money earned one summer holiday when I was 14 or 15. Did 300 miles one week round welsh youth hostels when I was 16. Bar bag and rucksack. Got knicked within weeks of starting uni. Insurance replacement never gave me as much joy. Also a steel Raleigh road bike. Snapped at headtube down tube junction after too many drops off kerbs. Jejames got me a warranty replacement. Got ridden less and less until I got my first mtb after uni. Khs Montana comp from langsett cycles… didn’t ride drop bars again till I was 40!

edit- yeah just like those trike pics above!

I had a Jacko the Monkey too!

First bike was a hand me down with solid tyres, next bike was a 2nd hand racer that had been completely painted in lime green: tyres, rims, spokes, cranks the lot. Dad & I stripped it down & he repainted it.

First new/proper bike was a Raleigh Arena with 5 (yes a whole 5) gears. I was the first of my mates to get a bike with gears, then a few months later one of them got an Arena with 10 gears, the bastard. Then BMXs started to appear and these racers we had looked old fashioned.

Raleigh Budgie in a blue green, then a Chopper, then a Coventry Eagle Stratos (racer) then at 16 into the roadie world with a Raleigh Road Ace 531c.

Me n big bro about to go truckin

Watch out girls!

Raleigh Commando – Wasn’t a Chopper, wasn’t a Grifter, but I loved it

Dont remember my first bike by manufacturer, the one i learnt to ride on. I do remember it was a hand-me-down from my big sister and it was red and yellow.

Next bike was a Raleigh Boxer, then a Raleigh Meteor. Then onto motorbikes…..

A 1973 Raleigh Pixie.

A blue and yellow solid tyred beast of a machine.

A trike, bit like the one above except mine had solid tyres, a bike handed down from family via my sister. My first ‘proper’ bike was a 5-speed Puch Pacemaker racing bike my mum bought from the local auction house. Best bike I ever had it was so special to me, as we had very little money to spare.

Like this:

I do remeber it was a hand-me-down from my big sister. It was red and yellow.

Raleigh Chico? Loads of them about when I was a kid.

Watch out girls!

Shitty stick in boot to beat em off with! 😆

Raleigh Road Ace 531c.

oh yes! My mate Dave had one of those. Black with the stripes on the top tube. Same catalogue as the cream one I had but better bits. Mine was called a corsa or something similar Italian sounding. Or maybe that was its replacement.

Dave got into mtb before me not long after we’d been round wales together. He had more money. Had an early Marin. Prob 1990sh? Grey with pink forks?

A turquoise chopper copy. Close-ish, but singlespeed. Could just fit a passenger on the seat. Actually quite good as it seemed faster than actual choppers for some reason. My little sister wanted it after me, but my Dad wanted to give her a new bike that Christmas…but didn’t want to spend £££s. So he stripped the bike down, got the paint shop at work to spray the frame pink, then changed the saddle, polished everything else and rebuilt it. It did indeed look like a new and different bike. My sister was happy, but said she would have been happier with my old bike instead…

Raleigh Chico? Loads of them about when I was a kid.

No, it looked like this. Internet search says Raleigh Elf?

No. It had a double thin tubes for a top-tube and a thicker downtube. Not Raleigh. Seat like chopper with a back rest, but not quite as big.

No idea what I learned to ride on. Had various hand me downs, a Raleigh Bomber, then a Raleigh Pulsar that I bought myself when I was around 14-15 at a guess, maybe a bit younger. I’d class that as my first proper bike (not my pic)

Raleigh Striker. Think that was the one with fake shock covers on the forks. Nice and yellow anyway.

Big bro had a Grifter. Got into trouble one day riding it because you could tuck the rubber back part of the front mudguard against the tyre for fake motorbike noises. Downside was that it wore through after about 10 mins of that. Oops.

First bike I remember was a bright orange Lee Ways/Play Ways – remember going with my parents to a warehouse somewhere to get it, only had a front brake.
After that it was a Raleigh Striker and then Raleigh Super Burner (not with the black mag wheels though….).

A folding Raleigh shopper – second hand.

/four Yorkshiremen
An I thought I was lucky…

I think it was around 1987/88, mum and dad took me and my brother to the bike shop. I got a 16″ wheel BMX style bike in white and red (may or may not have been a Raleigh), and he got a Raleigh MTB in white and maroon with 20″ wheels and proper gears.
As this was my first bike dad had got me stabilisers. Got home and within in about 5 minutes I’d asked for them to be taken off and I was away. I never have been allowed to forget that he wasted money on stabilisers that I didn’t need.
I inherited brothers bike some years later which then saw me through until I got a Marin Bolinas Ridge for Christmas in 1995.

A trike, looked almost exactly like that red one in the photo above from desperatebicycle!
Late 80’s probably when I was 4 or so, it was a rescue project with the local bike shop guy who was a family friend. Started off as a rusty heap, ended as a gleaming red & yellow thing of beauty. No idea what happened to it.

First 2-wheeler was a proper old BMX, not sure what the style’s called, a big thing not like today’s stunt bikes.

First thing that could remotely be called a mountain bike was probably also my first bike bought new, a Claud Butler Pagan in an amazing black & yellow paint job wot I can’t find a picture of.

Dont remember my first but the second was a Raleigh Striker but with the normal back brakes followed by the black and gold Grifter and then i went halfs with my parents one birthday maybe about 13 and got a Raleigh Quasar with the funky aero bottle. No bikes for a while after that then in 2010 I bought a Carerra Fury then a Bfe and an Aeris 9. Still have the last 3 bikes but wish i still had the Quasar!

Ellis Briggs 531 tubing road frame bought second hand from a junk shop for £5 for my 11th or 12th birthday in the 1970s. I particularly remember the intricately cut lugs. Built up by a relative with old Campag parts mostly. Stolen when I was 15 or so. No pictures because no-one in my immediate family had a camera. We had it tough up North back in them days.
Choppers and other heavy bikes with cowhorn handlebars and tassels never appealed to me.

A horrible pinkyred girlie looking shopping bike, with stabilisers. Dad built up the pedals with wooden blocks so I could reach them. I was probably about 4, think I finally learnt to ride it age 7.

From that I progressed to a Raleigh Module 3. A “racing bike” with a three speed hub gear.

A Raleigh Scrambla Trike…like this but in blue…I didn’t even know it was a Raleigh until now after googling lots of 70/80s kids trikes 🙂

Theres one on ebay now…hhmmmmmm

Thers also my first mountain bike on ebay….Raleigh Maverick yellow/white 1989/1990

I had a Caloi “Chopper” knock off. It had independant handlebars, if you pulled too hard to wheelie one bar would pull back and the other wouldn’t!
Then a Raleigh road bike, silver blue/grey if I recall.
First mtb was a Marin Palisades Trail around 86 or 87 from the windsurfing shop in Poole, the matt grey one with yellow forks, stem and bars.

I’m sure my parents have some pictures somewhere in one of their 28 albums but I remember 3 bikes and was able to find pictures that were similar, the rest I do have pics of.

1st bike was very similar to this

2nd bike was like this but I remember planets and more black than green on the rear wheel

3rd bike was a chrome GT Dyno, 1997 one, loved that bike. Had it for a couple of years until I got a yellow 24″ wheeled Giant.

Then I wasn’t too fussed about bikes and had my dads hand me downs into my teens including a GT and a Specialized Rockhopper as I was growing, about 13 got into mountain bikes and dirt jumping and built up a Brand-X 4x frame with bright orange RST triple clamp forks, the rockhopper was torn apart to build it.

Then when I was 15 I saved up and got this with some birthday money.

Lost interest after learning to drive and sold it, then got back into riding in 2011 and bought a full sus Specialized Pitch

Sold that in 2016 and bought a specialized Enduro which I still own and ride today

Found a pic of the Caloi!

Always had bikes as a kid – just cheapo generic things to bash about the cul-de-sac on but my first “real” bike was a Dawes Audax thing. Beige with 2×5 gears (downtube shifters obviously!) and a rack and mudguards which weren’t very cool but I didn’t know how to take them off. Bought S/H for £45, part-ex’d several years later for £50 when I bought my first MTB, a 1993 Saracen Sahara Elite for the princely sum of about £400.

Like this but black:
https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/1993-saracen-sahara-elite.196652/

To be fair to it, it was a great little bike, I did all sorts of rides on that starting with just bashing about the local woods before joining a local club, doing a couple of entry level races, going on much longer rides and then some basic MTB touring (a couple of those Tim Woodcock books) and it got progressively upgraded with V-brakes when they first came out, RockShox Quadra 21R forks, an LX/STX groupset etc. Ended up donating it to a local cycle charity when I eventually bought a new MTB. Wonder what happened to it…?!

I had a Triang bike with a double parallel cross bar with metallic blue paint work. It would have been in the late 1960’s. Do not remember its name and cannot find a picture on the web. Can anyone shed some light…?

First bike was this one

The first one I remember was a Yamaha BYZ1 and a PW50

First bike was a Raleigh Strika. First ‘mtb’ I used was actually my brothers:

…which we still have in my mums garage.

My first one was this beauty (loved that paint scheme):

Reckon the bike I learnt to ride on was similar to @eatmorepizza’s, first one I can fully remember was a Raleigh Nitro, 24” wheel kids bike, then my first proper adult bike, I got around 12 or 13, was a Carrera Mission, much like this one.

Upgraded pretty much everything, was running 1×9 XT by the time I changed to an Azonic DS Evo frame. Seems I’ve not changed in 20 odd years

Apollo Lazer from Halfords. Rode that beast to primary school and back for years. Took it up Mabie forest and snapped it into three pieces on the jumps. A fitting end 🫡