Pedalling Dreams: The Raleigh Story

[Russell]

Tomorrow  Wednesday 21:00 BBC Four

For the last 150 years, Britain has been a nation of bike lovers. And for much of that time, one make has been associated with quality, innovation and Britishness - Raleigh bikes.
Born in the back streets of Nottingham in 1888, Raleigh grew to become the biggest bicycle manufacturer in the world. For over a century, the company was known for its simple and practical bikes, built to last a lifetime. For generations, its designs were thought second to none, enjoyed by adults and children alike.

Now, with wonderful personal testimony and rare and previously unseen archive film, this documentary tells the extraordinary tale of the ups and downs of Raleigh bikes - a beautifully illustrated story full of remarkable characters, epic adventures and memorable bikes.

Meet the people who rode and raced them, the workers who built them and the dealers who sold them. Find out how cycling saved the life of Raleigh's founder, discover the technological advances behind the company's success and join Raleigh bike riders who recall epic adventures far and wide.

Along the way, the programme takes viewers on a journey back to cycling's golden age - rediscover the thrill of learning to ride your first bike and find out what went on inside the Raleigh factory, where the company's craftsmen produced some of Britain's most iconic bikes.

Finally, the documentary reveals what went wrong at Raleigh - the battles it had with its rivals, the controversy behind the design of the Chopper and the effect the closure of its factories had on its loyal workers. This is the extraordinary untold story of the rise and fall of Raleigh bikes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08j8mvl

[SoreTween]

That was cracking.  Shame they totally missed Tommy but some lovely old footage in there.  Thanks for the heads up.

[runsoncake]

Very enjoyable, shame there was no mention of Tommy. But I loved the story of the 10 year old riding from Huddersfield to rhyll ina day. Her dad would probably be up before social services now.

[Torslanda]

No mention of the company being sold to an asset stripper. The selling of Sturmey Archer to  Sun Race because it wasn't 'relevant to core business' or some shit. Yet another example of British industry imploding because the suits couldn't see beyond the next lunch on expenses and failing to innovate because of that great British excuse 'We've always done it this way'.

Oh! BTW Whoever it was who originated the Chopper should be taken out and shot.
Twice.

[Chris L]

I watched this on catch up last night.  Thoroughly enjoyable nostalgia. And some great archive footage.  It's on the BBC 4 iPlayer for the next 11 days or so if you want to catch it.

Anyway, I thought they missed a lot of the reasons why Raleigh lost the plot (two words - Raleigh Hustler) and completely avoided some of the naughtiness they used to get up to, like the aggressive dealer management strategies, which I think got them a Monopolies and Mergers investigation at one point and 26tpi threading.  Seems like they had a moment when they absolutely had it and made a deep impression on their customers (born 1930s & 1940s).  Once those customers stopped spending money on bikes, initially for themselves, then for their children, which would have been around 1983, imported bikes were left with an open goal.

Anyway, I can't encourage you enough to watch the programme.  It really was great.

[Tim Hall]

Very enjoyable, shame there was no mention of Tommy. But I loved the story of the 10 year old riding from Huddersfield to rhyll ina day. Her dad would probably be up before social services now.

Was that actual footage of them doing the ride, or just random home movie of a young girl and her father out on their bikes?

[Redlight]

We need an expert such as ESL to advise, but to my mind the quality looked too good to be anything other than a modern bit of film treated to look as though it was old. ISTR something similar being done in a programme about Keith Richard in which he talked about being ferried around by his mum and dad on the back of a tandem.

[Exit Stage Left]

They structured the film around what was available. So they had Eilleen Sheridan, even though she rode for Hercules. They might have had something about Tommy Simpson if there was any film of him, but there doesn't seem to be.

The Huddersfield/Rhyl story looked like Raleigh or Pathe had heard the story, and sent someone to film them riding together near home. Some of the CTC scenes looked like they were from the BR day-trip film that's well known.

What caught my attention was the quiff arrangement of the old rocker who'd worked on the line. That was a work of art.

[MikeFromLFE]

No mention of the company being sold to an asset stripper. The selling of Sturmey Archer to  Sun Race because it wasn't 'relevant to core business' or some shit. Yet another example of British industry imploding because the suits couldn't see beyond the next lunch on expenses and failing to innovate because of that great British excuse 'We've always done it this way'.

Oh! BTW Whoever it was who originated the Chopper should be taken out and shot.
Twice.

Id agree. Although it was great viewing, it also felt like an 'advertorial'. Too much nostalgia, too little analysis.


Tapatalk puts this signature here, not me!

[LEE]

It was a lovely piece of nostalgia, like watching a metaphor for the British Empire.

Thank god they turned the Brompton patent down.

[ian]

I always wanted a Chopper. My first bike was a Commando which was awesome. We had two camps, the Commando/Chopper gang and the Striker/Grifter gang. The latter were idiots, of course, and are probably still waiting to get girlfriends.

Never got a Chopper though, I had some piece of crap from the local bike shop that had suspension that didn't actually work and eventually fell to bits like a clown car, or rather bike. Then I got into BMX and got a Mongoose (not the furry kind, the ones made out of chro-moly, which was the thing back then). Which was rad. Till I snapped it in half on the track. That might have been partly due to a summer spent jumping off ever bigger ramps into a boating lake (who the fuck boats in a derelict East Mids mining town). I then got a Raleigh Ultraburner which saw out my BMX fever. I learned to cycle backwards and could have wheelied from Lands End to John O'Groats and back again. 360? I could spin that bike so fast around it's front wheel that time itself unwound (like when Superman spins the world backwards) – all without a front brake (which had to be taken off to enable the stunt, you wedged the wheel with your foot, or if you were unlucky, your ankle). The stupid shit I did on that bike. I once tried to ride up a vertical wall. Teenagers, it turned out, were subject to the same laws of gravity as everyone else.

I can't remember after that, those were the cider and (attempts at) girls years. I got a second hand Raleigh Arena during my PhD in Edinburgh and used that to commute back and forth from West Mains to the East End. The gears had solidified so it was effectively single speed. Someone helpfully vandalized it as I was finishing up which made me a bit sad and hopeful that the perpetrator spend an eternity having their shins mauled by beartooth pedals.

Last Raleigh bike I had.

[Redlight]

I also coveted a Chopper when I was about 10. My two best friends at school had them but they cost £36 at the time and there was no way my parents were ever going to be able to afford to spend that on a bike - it was about the equivalent of two months' rent.  Fortunately - with hindsight - by the time they were able to afford to buy me a bike, I had moved on to be interested in bikes with drop handlebars and gears.  It was all downhill from then on 

I did eventually buy a Raleigh in the late 80s.  It was a Volant, a lovely steel frame with down tube shifters and an elliptical chain ring. I kept that until I became committed to Audaxing and felt that it wasn't really what I needed. If nothing else, mudguards made it look really ugly.  It spent its last few years attached to a turbo trainer in the shed, before I gave it away to someone on the forum who was interested in restoring it to its former glory.  I hope it's  still out there, being ridden and enjoyed.

[ian]

Their current HQ is in that ex-mining town where I thrashed my Ultraburner (one brake, no pads, even less sense) and cut a cool swathe with my Commando. Which I suppose is a kind of symmetry though they were HQed 'down Nottingham' back then.

That Raleigh Arena sure did judder over those Edinburgh cobbles. And those vestigial mudguards didn't do much about the weather. One day I will have my revenge on the addled numpty who slashed the tyres and stamped the wheels.

[caerau]

(who the fuck boats in a derelict East Mids mining town). I

Ha ha.  It still bemuses me to this day, that growing up Bedford, which must be close on as far as you can get from the sea in the UK, we had a YACHT club at school.  I kid ye not.


Many of ye olde London Brick Company clay pits in Beds had been turned into lakes - but not really very big ones.

[caerau]

I dreamed of a Raleigh of any description as a kid.  A chopper?  Hell yes - though we did look down on the kid in our village that had a Chipper (little cheapo Chopper iirc) 


My bikes were all things picked up by my Dad at auctions.

[Chris L]

Well, I had a Raleigh.  The bloody Raleigh Hustler (steel wheels, metal mudguards, 3 speed sturmey, cotter pin crank), a slug of a machine.  I think it fell just south of my parents' budget expectations, the sky blue Arena with its racing mudguards and 5 derailleur gears falling an impossible five pounds to the north.  Anyway, it was a dog and put me off Raleighs for a long time.  When BMX came along, I never had the capital for an off-the-peg machine, so spent an entire year's paper round money building up my own bike (Redline frame, Acorn mags, MX brakes (F&R), 531 forks), which kept my cycling flame aglow.

Certainly from the POV of rural Cambridgeshire, the Raleighs were never really up to much.  Even the Grifters were overshadowed by the Moto X bikes that the American kids used to ride.  (There were quite a few Americans around my part Cambridgeshire owing to the USAF bases that were expanding rapidly.)  And when BMX arrived, everyone wanted a Diamond Back, a Mongoose, Redline or......or there was one other that I can't remember....

I've got a Clubman project on the go at the moment and was disappointed that the programme didn't spend most of it's time discussing parts variances and showing how other people's restorations worked out.  I'd have also like to have seen some of Raleighs howlers, like the Bomber, for instance.

[caerau]

Ooh, my brother had a Raleigh Hustler, which I *eventually* inherited in the very late 80s, with having never had anything other than the junk heaps my Dad bought me to compare it to, I rather liked it.
 That was my earliest dip into 'proper' cycling.  I'd been doing 10 mile runs around Bedford and then tried it on the bike and was most impressed.  Sadly this ended in me being put off cycling for the best part of a decade when on one of these rides two juggernaughts overtook me on either side on a slip road off of a dual carriageway - being sandwiched between two tower of metal going at about 50 mph was scary enough to put a stop to that for quite a long time unfortunately.


I still remember hauling it up Clete Hill outside Bedford and loving the feeling of triumph over what passes for hills around there, however.

[ian]

I dreamed of a Raleigh of any description as a kid.  A chopper?  Hell yes - though we did look down on the kid in our village that had a Chipper (little cheapo Chopper iirc) 


My bikes were all things picked up by my Dad at auctions.

The Commando was bought my dad for Christmas. Which was ace, except my dad always assumed I was taller than I was so it sat in the shed for two years until I could reach the pedals. I bought the Mongoose and Ultraburner with my paper round money (via my mum's catalogue, my first introduction to consumer debt and child labour, not to mention the stolen supermarket trolley I used to make my deliveries of the local freesheet to approximately 10,000 houses every bloody Wednesday).

Boating lake was bit a of a euphemism, it was a murky pond in the country park. Itself a euphemism for landscaped former pit workings. But it had a great down approach, practically a ski jump, so we built bigger and ramps in our attempt to achieve escape velocity. Up and up and splashdown. Probably the most fun summer of my youth.

Before the boating lake we had The Clayhole. With was just that, except filled with water. Orange water. And mud. We spent another summer building a boat out of a old bathtub. Which, of course, sank immediately with all hands. They turned that into a landfill site eventually. Not so bad, we use to scavenge pram wheels and stuff to make go-carts. "You'll get tetanus!" was my mother's constant rejoinder throughout my childhood. I never did get tetanus. I got bit by a seagull once though.

My childhood is starting to make me feel old. I doubt kids do this kind of stuff any more. Swimming in the canal. By the sewage works. OK, maybe my mother had a point.

[LEE]

I also coveted a Chopper when I was about 10.

Me also.

This explains why I still covet one.

I had a Raleigh Olympus "racer" before moving on to a Carlton Corsa...also a "racer".

My wheelying was done on a cycle speedway bike (trendy in my local area for a while). 
I used to go to school on it.  It was a single-speed with no brakes at all.  It never struck me as dangerous at the time but, thinking about it now.....

[Cudzoziemiec]

What caught my attention was the quiff arrangement of the old rocker who'd worked on the line. That was a work of art.

I haven't seen the programme but I've been told about this and seen a still of it. A lovingly made construction of wire wool and bum hair, they reckoned.

[Gattopardo]

No mention of the company being sold to an asset stripper. The selling of Sturmey Archer to  Sun Race because it wasn't 'relevant to core business' or some shit. Yet another example of British industry imploding because the suits couldn't see beyond the next lunch on expenses and failing to innovate because of that great British excuse 'We've always done it this way'.

Oh! BTW Whoever it was who originated the Chopper should be taken out and shot.
Twice.

Disagree about the chopper.

[Gattopardo]

I dreamed of a Raleigh of any description as a kid.  A chopper?  Hell yes - though we did look down on the kid in our village that had a Chipper (little cheapo Chopper iirc) 


My bikes were all things picked up by my Dad at auctions.

The Commando was bought my dad for Christmas. Which was ace, except my dad always assumed I was taller than I was so it sat in the shed for two years until I could reach the pedals. I bought the Mongoose and Ultraburner with my paper round money (via my mum's catalogue, my first introduction to consumer debt and child labour, not to mention the stolen supermarket trolley I used to make my deliveries of the local freesheet to approximately 10,000 houses every bloody Wednesday).

Boating lake was bit a of a euphemism, it was a murky pond in the country park. Itself a euphemism for landscaped former pit workings. But it had a great down approach, practically a ski jump, so we built bigger and ramps in our attempt to achieve escape velocity. Up and up and splashdown. Probably the most fun summer of my youth.

Before the boating lake we had The Clayhole. With was just that, except filled with water. Orange water. And mud. We spent another summer building a boat out of a old bathtub. Which, of course, sank immediately with all hands. They turned that into a landfill site eventually. Not so bad, we use to scavenge pram wheels and stuff to make go-carts. "You'll get tetanus!" was my mother's constant rejoinder throughout my childhood. I never did get tetanus. I got bit by a seagull once though.

My childhood is starting to make me feel old. I doubt kids do this kind of stuff any more. Swimming in the canal. By the sewage works. OK, maybe my mother had a point.

Tomahawk in the 80's....I was too cool for school...not.

[caerau]

I dreamed of a Raleigh of any description as a kid.  A chopper?  Hell yes - though we did look down on the kid in our village that had a Chipper (little cheapo Chopper iirc) 


My bikes were all things picked up by my Dad at auctions.

The Commando was bought my dad for Christmas. Which was ace, except my dad always assumed I was taller than I was so it sat in the shed for two years until I could reach the pedals. I bought the Mongoose and Ultraburner with my paper round money (via my mum's catalogue, my first introduction to consumer debt and child labour, not to mention the stolen supermarket trolley I used to make my deliveries of the local freesheet to approximately 10,000 houses every bloody Wednesday).

Boating lake was bit a of a euphemism, it was a murky pond in the country park. Itself a euphemism for landscaped former pit workings. But it had a great down approach, practically a ski jump, so we built bigger and ramps in our attempt to achieve escape velocity. Up and up and splashdown. Probably the most fun summer of my youth.

Before the boating lake we had The Clayhole. With was just that, except filled with water. Orange water. And mud. We spent another summer building a boat out of a old bathtub. Which, of course, sank immediately with all hands. They turned that into a landfill site eventually. Not so bad, we use to scavenge pram wheels and stuff to make go-carts. "You'll get tetanus!" was my mother's constant rejoinder throughout my childhood. I never did get tetanus. I got bit by a seagull once though.

My childhood is starting to make me feel old. I doubt kids do this kind of stuff any more. Swimming in the canal. By the sewage works. OK, maybe my mother had a point.

Sounds astonishingly similar to mine I have to say.  In Oakely (village just outside Bedford) in the 70s we used to play in 'the Dump' - I think it literally was a dump, but then we were about 5 or 6 yo so who knows what it was for real.  It did have a big pile of earth with stuff thrown over it through, we used to have excellent stone throwing fights there.  My brother clocked someone over the head once and he went home crying as a result.  He learned not to throw stones at people after that. 


In Bedford itself, we moved uptown in 1979, we fish around the toxic streams around Mowsbury Golf course and Mowsbury Park wood (there did literally used to be toxic waste in there occasionally) and fish out golf balls to sell them to the golfers.  Your boating lakes sound remarkably like small scale versions of the Stewartby Clay pits in Beds.  Must be a midlands thing.


Ah, halcyon days.  (and I mean that  )


I never got tetanus either.

[ian]

Halcyon indeed. Though we didn't do words like that at my comprehensive school. Which they knocked down to build flats that no one wanted and now, two decades after letting it turn to vacant scrub, they have to rebuild because they ran out of a school places. All the fields we played in have turned into crappy little housing developments. I'm pleased to see the lake is still there though I suspect they don't let kids jump into on their bikes these days.

Entrenched in the middle-classes now, all the parents I know seem to ferry their kids from one activity to another. Perhaps middle-class parents always did that, I didn't have any. And the local chavlets just spend their time sitting in the park looking bored and vandalizing things.

[LEE]

We played down in The Woods, by the River Goyt (before it becomes the Mersey). 
Ropes-swings, old mopeds and air-rifles from dawn until dusk (with a cursory warning about "the Flasher" who apparently frequented the place, although nobody I knew ever saw him).

The place was full of jumps and slopes just as the local A&E was full of us kids who cycled on them, with the image of Evel Knievel in their head.  Come to think of it...Evel used to end up in A&E nine times out of ten as well.

The Raleigh Chopper was the Ford Mustang of the bike world back then.  Slow? Yes.  Heavy? Yes.  Desirable?  Damn right. (Suitable for taking "down The Woods"?  errr. no).


Jumpers for goalposts Jimmy?  Absolutely.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.