What was your first proper bike?

[Manc33]

We all had BMX bikes as kids, we can't remember the name of now, but those are kids bikes - they aren't proper bikes with gears and everything.

What was the first proper bike you can remember owning?

Mine was called a "Townsend" MTB, pale green frame, Reynolds tubing (and it was aluminium) with 15 gears and it was quite cheap, but it was light for the price, bought from a bike shop that was (I think) inside a mill, in Stockport, for my 15th birthday. That would have made it the Christmas of 1991. I went on many rides with it and always remember how badly my hands got vibrated on bridleways... it had a rigid fork and no rear suspension. No bikes (in that price bracket, or for kids) had any sort of suspension back then. I still remember the curved Shimano thumb shifters it had. Still got the frame in the loft... and I'd never throw it out or sell it.

What was your first proper bike?

[Nearholmer]

When I first started full time work as a trainee in the mid-70s, I bought a Peugeot 10-speed sports bike for riding to and from the railway station, and weekend touring. It probably counts as “the first proper”, because before that I’d had various secondhand 3-speed roadsters, at least one of which I’d fitted with drop bars and knobbly tyres for use off-road.

The Peugeot inevitably got stolen from the station bike rack, so I replaced it with another virtually the same, which managed to appear in the film Superman IV (very briefly, and you can only see it if you know it’s there!) and survived s few more years before getting stolen from the station bike rack.

After that, I bought the most hard-core D-lock I could find and an MTB-derived hybrid bike, which I used for 25 years before giving it to a charity.

PS: IIRC the Peugouts were a model called “Equipe”, which was a sort of entry-level “road racer”. This is the one, or certainly the second one. It felt feather light at the time, but apparently weighed 13kg.

[De Sisti]

A single-speed, drop-handlebar jalopy (with a blue hand-painted coating). I bought it from a
friend for £5 and used it to ride from Cheetham Hill to Moss Side and Hulme. A couple of
years later when I started work I bought a cheap Raleigh 3-speed (shopper) bike with a white
front basket. It came with a dynamo too. It cost £75 from Sale Cycles. I sold it after five years
when I joined to RAF to a work colleague for £25.

[tatanab]

We all had BMX bikes as kids,

Youngsters! Some of us are old enough to predate BMX by several decades.

My first proper bike, paid for from my paper round money, was a Claud Butler Spectra frame (gas plumbers tubing, none of this 531 stuff which cost too much), steel chainset etc, Weinmannn centre pull brakes. It cost me something like £28 in 1967/8. I joined the CTC and started club riding on that and similar bikes until better equipment was passed down through the clubs. I did not get my hands on anything 531 or a cotterless chainset until 1970.

[peetee]

I was late to cycling. At the age of seventeen I was given a twelve speed hand-me-down Viscount Tony Doyle from my brother. It was in good condition and my first ride after a spin round the block was a 14 mile round trip to Winchester. Within six miles my bum was in agony and by the end I demanded double rations for tea - my mum wasn’t impressed and asked “is this going to be a habit?”

[djnotts]

Xmas 1959 I received a Rudge with 4 speed SA alloy hub, sent by train from my cousin in South Shields to me in Stockport.
As I believe was common the gear hub disintegrated (on the A6 near Stepping Hill?). Cheapest replacement was a screw on fixed wheel hub so that was what I rode until I left school and home in '67. Had a Falcon for a while in mid-70s, but doubt I rode more than a few miles (other than PTWs!) until a Kona Cindercone when I was in my mid-40s.

[Stradageek]

Yer all weans!

My first bike had a Brookes saddle, 'sit-up-and-beg' handlebars, cottered cranks and ROD BRAKES. I rode it from aged 8-10. At 'big' school it was cow-horn handlebars and SA hub gears.

My first racer (5-speed, all steel) took me from Canterbury to Edinburgh in 6 days.

And I thought, being 65, that I was still young

[Jodel]

My first proper bike was a 5 speed Carlton 'International' in the early 1970's. Nothing fancy, but as a youngster, I thought it was the business. I did a lot of miles on that bike and loved it.

[Dingdong]

Raleigh Grifter 3 speed. I absolutely loved it

[Dingdong]

Like this!

[Dingdong]

But I really wanted a Chopper, my mum said they were "too dangerous"!

[hemo]

The first bike I remember was in my early teens in the mid 70's, my parents bought me a Raleigh Tempo bike with 3 sp sturmey one birthday.

[Dingdong]

In had no end of bother with the Sturmey 3 speed

[Audax67]

My first bike was supposedly a Jackson, bought second hand for £5 when I was 15. It came with flat bars and a Sturmey 3-speed hub, and it took my dad about 5 minutes to unearth and mount a nice set of drops he'd used before WW2. I was first kid on the block with gears, wow. I rode it to school every day through Belfast, and did a few longer rides down the Ards peninsula etc. Longest was ~40 miles, measured on the map, memorable mostly for seeing a car run into a cow that had strayed into the road. I saw the beast with all four feet pointing straight up in the air, and I can still hear the slap when it came down.

I was told that Jackson was a local firm that bought frames from Raleigh and put their own stuff on them. I don't know if that was true - the forks certainly weren't Raleigh and I don't know why they'd buy frames without forks - but I've always thought of it as a Jackson.

[rotavator]

I got my first bike for Christmas from my parents in about 1967. It was a Europa Unie, maroon in colour, single speed and with cottered cranks that kept coming loose as did the threaded headset. It was far too big for me initially but I grew into it! I did plenty of miles on it, walking up hills when necessary and it saw me through childhood, teenage years, university and I finally sold it to a work colleague for £25, which I thought was a bit generous, around 1985. I last saw it a few years later as a rusty wreck in his back garden a few years later.