colin54 wrote:drossal, this picture should take you back, off the moor towards Ilkley.
Brilliant, thank you. It was just such a great area to ride in - one of the real benefits of studying at Leeds (and it helped that I was an exiled Yorkshireman anyway).
I'm still in touch with a friend from those days. He was never in the University Union CC, but he went off on geography field trips to the north of Scotland by on a 3-speed (of course, these days, when you need the ideal machine for the job, he'd never have made it
although he did later upgrade to a Viscount 10-speed). We met up some years ago at a reunion of the Anglican-Methodist Society, and for old times' sake got up early and did a loop. I think we went out through Menston and down the Cow and Calf, then back via Askwith and Otley, changed since our day by the A660 bypass.
Some years after that, he hired a holiday cottage, and I was one of various friends and family each visiting for a day or two as time allowed, as we rediscovered such well-remembered places as Kettlewell and Hawes. Back on topic, that time I took my totally-suitable Mercian with triple rings. For the Ilkley ride, I took my remaining bike from student days, an Aende road machine. Not really suited to the terrain at all - the bike's fine, but the rider is getting a bit dilapidated for racing gears on 1:6 hills. But that was the bike I used on my last expedition as a student, joining the Ang-Meth Soc on a trip up to Marske, west of Richmond. I'd been racing that day in the Harrogate Festival of Cycling, and there I was on my unsuitably-geared bike, pushing one of the other riders up a 1:8 or something. We stayed overnight and rode back; I remember I had to dash off eventually, to get back just in time to meet my father, who was collecting me as I left student life for good.
</rambling memories>
