Author Topic: Cycle commuting back in the day  (Read 1763 times)

hellymedic

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #25 on: 22 March, 2024, 10:44:19 pm »
Raleigh Caprice: metallic purple & cream open-framed 21” steel roadster, with  3-speed Sturmey Archer Dynohub, kick-stand and Pletscher rear rack.

Basil

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #26 on: 22 March, 2024, 10:59:46 pm »
I rode to school through almost the whole of secondary school until I got a moped in lower sixth. Then a BSA Bantam for a year or so until it fell to bits at which time I cycled round uni. Then nothing until about 15 years ago when I started with a new bike to work.

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #27 on: 23 March, 2024, 01:05:43 am »
5-speed gaspipe Thing as a Penniless Student Oaf, until it was nicked.  Thereafter a cornucopia of divers machines from a Claud Butler Majestic to Depravo the Cotic Roadrat via numerous Perfectly Good Gentleman’s Mountain Bicycles and recumbents.
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Pedal Castro

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #28 on: 23 March, 2024, 06:23:04 am »
Nice!

I should have asked what bikes people were riding too.

My first new bike was a 3 speed Puch I got for my 13th birthday. That was my school commuter and the bike I rode my first 50 miler on, Northampton to Banbury and back,i Iwas completed shattered on the return. Then I bought myself a second hand BSA Tour de France "racer" when I was in the 6th form which I did actually race on, a few 10 TTs, also rode my first hundred miler down to Swansea to meet up with some friends for a bike/beer week. That's the one that was stolen from the school bike sheds after about a year of ownership. After that was a Viscount Aerospace which wasn't risked on the school commute but did see some commuting duties after uni. My uni commuting bike was a bike a neighbour gave me, the frame was an old Vindec and all the bits including a Wrights leather saddle were in a basket so I had to build it up first, I learnt a lot doing that.

T42

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #29 on: 23 March, 2024, 10:39:33 am »
Rode to school in the 60's, 10 miles through Belfast & back every day, flap of schoolbag buckled over crossbar.  The bike stands had room for ~20 bikes but were rarely full.  Didn't see that many on the road, either.  I did lock the bike to the stands for the day, but if I stopped off at a shop in the middle of town I usually parked with a pedal on the kerb and didn't lock it.  Had a click-click mechanical odometer but the star wheel invariably came loose from the axle so I'd no idea of my total mileage.
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hellymedic

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #30 on: 23 March, 2024, 04:34:47 pm »
My Caprice was written off, when left double-locked overnight. Frame was bent, as were wheels.
Stripped for parts and replaced with my trust brown metallic Raleigh Sprite, a flat barred 10 speed (14-34 x 40-49) mixte.
This was stolen when parked overnight outside the newly Royal Hallamshire Hospital.
A gold Claud Butler Majestique was then purchased from JE James on Bramall Lane, using my brand new AccessCard, in anticipation of qualifying and earning imminently.
After moving to Dudley, I learned to drive and the week I passed my test, poor Claud was stolen from the residence at Russells Hall Hospital. I was also moving to Leeds.
I found myself in Two Wheels Good on my first free Saturday in Leeds, in search of a ‘Bicycle’ magazine. I rather liked ths shop and by the end of the afternoon I’d bought an ultramarine blue, mixte, 12-speed Eclipse touring bike...

Wowbagger

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #31 on: 23 March, 2024, 04:39:53 pm »
I cycled to work for my first two teaching jobs, neither more than 2 miles from home, and some of the time for my civil service job (less than a mile). This would have been between the late 1970s and 1995.
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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #32 on: 23 March, 2024, 10:09:46 pm »
I came from a cycling family, so cycling everywhere was just what we did, never called it commuting.
Primary school was close enough to walk, but from about 8 years old I was riding solo to swimming lessons in Kettering after school (down and back up Pytchley Hill) or to stay with my Nan in Wellingborough (up and down Orlingbury Hill).
I rode to High School in Kettering in the 1950/early 60s. I often made time to lift my bike over the back gate into Wicksteeds and do a few laps of the track. Not many girls used bikes, but the boys in the adjacent Grammar School did, and several were in the same cycling club as me. They were my friends rather than the girls, as we had much more interests in common. I had to ride in full school uniform, including woollen gymslip and blazer. My satchel sat on top of my saddlebag, held on by the strap, and my uniform pork-pie hat perched on top of that.  Because the school bus wouldn't pick me up from the High School, Mum shamed the council into giving me a bike grant- just a small amount for maintenance - which was a moral victory. Another victory was biking in through the snow without falling off every day of the 1962/3 winter, when the bus often didn't get through!
After O-levels, I worked Saturdays and holidays at Woolworths. Usually Kettering, but several weeks riding to and fro Northampton on what is now the A43. It was just the normal thing for me to do, but there were not many other cyclists by then.
Never had to worry about a bike being stolen or about other road users. It was an area and time when all drivers would have ridden a bike when younger. We had "tickometers" and I would check mileages when touring, but didn't record more than the first couple of weeks in the chart that came in Cycling Mag every New Year.

Newcastle Uni was a horrible shock. I took a bike with me on the assumption I would bike in. But N/C Uni was hopeless at looking after it's students, and a lot of first years were allocated grotty off-season B&B accommodation at the coast. The coast road was horrible, no cycle infrastructure in those days. And the uni didn't have lockers so everything I needed (heavy text books, lab coat and equipment, gym kit for lunchtime circuits, food etc) had to be carried to and fro every day. And there was nowhere to park a bike at uni. I did try a few times, until my locked to a fence bike was stolen.
That wasn't the only thing that stopped me cycling: At Fresher's week, I found the University Cycling Club stall, and chirpily asked "Do you have a Ladies Team?" He looked at me like something from outer space. Speechless. Then "well some of the girlfriends come along to make the tea and sandwiches".
I joined the Folk Dance Group and ranted my way round Northumberland for the next 5 years.
Apart from uni holidays, when I mostly worked in Youth Hostels and explored most of North Wales, I didn't use a bike.
Early jobs were in schools where a commute by bike was not realistic, then I escaped to self employment and worked from home, so I have never commuted to work!
I had discovered orienteering and that was my main sport/activity until it juddered to a halt in 2001 (Foot and Mouth year), and I resorted to a bike to try and keep a bit of fitness.
By then I had retired, so I'm definitely off topic now.
 





Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #33 on: 23 March, 2024, 10:24:53 pm »
I rode the 8 miles to school for a while in the 60s.  Then a hilly 7 miles to work in the 80s, sometimes on a barrow.  Then later again in the 90s, 10 miles sometimes to my shiny new factory - though I needed the car a lot of the time. Into the 21st century and just an occasional 15 hilly miles from a different address to a different factory (same business).  Then I retired. 

No record of mileage, never had a bike stolen (touch wood).

Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #34 on: 24 March, 2024, 10:13:07 am »
Cycled a mile or two to Owen's school at the Angel Islington in the late 50s, early 60s, but had one bike stolen from there, so started leaving my bike at a branch of my father's employer across the road in Arlington Way, behind Sadlers Wells.

Took my bike to Leeds University, but didn't use it there except for some Cycling Club runs.

Commuted again in Solihull for my first job at Rover from 1965 to 1968, as I was in digs about a mile away. Never commuted by bike again as usually too far.

My father always cycled to work from Highbury to Holborn until he retired in 1974 (except when it snowed, when he used the bus). He died from a heart attack about six years later, and I always think it was because he had stopped cycling after retiring, and that is my incentive to keep cycling for as long as possible.

Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #35 on: 24 March, 2024, 03:31:31 pm »
Took my bike to Leeds University, but didn't use it there except for some Cycling Club runs.
You missed out. The Dales were wonderful for Leeds University Union CC and other runs. Which club?

Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #36 on: 24 March, 2024, 04:44:46 pm »
Yes, I rode with the Uni Union group. This was back in 62 to 65.

Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #37 on: 24 March, 2024, 06:15:44 pm »
I was 78 to 81. My "avatar" is the British Student Sports Federation 25 in 1979 on (or rather, just off, for the finish) the A14 Newmarket-Bury St Edmunds road. Oops, we've got from commuting to racing ;D

Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #38 on: 26 March, 2024, 01:25:26 pm »
I rode the 8 miles to school for a while in the 60s.  Then a hilly 7 miles to work in the 80s, sometimes on a barrow.  Then later again in the 90s, 10 miles sometimes to my shiny new factory - though I needed the car a lot of the time. Into the 21st century and just an occasional 15 hilly miles from a different address to a different factory (same business).  Then I retired. 

No record of mileage, never had a bike stolen (touch wood).

My first experience was about 64 to 65 also an 8 miler to school.  We had to go in Saturday mornings and I think the buses were sparse to non-existent so our parents let us do it so they didn't have to drive us in.  We really enjoyed it ISTR and had no trouble with traffic.  I cannot imagine parents of today allowing pre-teens to do that.

In the 70s I started doing occasional commutes in NE Essex on an old Sun racer, quite a nice bike with 5 speeds. In the 80's I started a daily run on a utility bike and from 1986 at uni in Manchester I had a nice tourer.  Despite dire warnings it never got nicked although I used it daily.  Weekends I'd do trips into the lovely Peak District.

From the early 90s to 2005 I always commuted, in York.  My Manchester bike got stolen in the town centre and I bought an old Raleigh Richmond for commuting, single speed most of the time.  No real problems with traffic until they had the urge to create cycle paths/lanes.  Now they are complaining that cycle use in the city has 'plummeted' over the last decade. It's mainly because the cycle 'facilities' are really intended to get cyclists out of the way of the motorist IMO.  The latest works on Tadcaster Road are a fine example.
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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #39 on: 26 March, 2024, 01:31:35 pm »
A thread aimed at the more seasoned members. Did you cycle commute "before it was cool" let's say pre 2000?

If you did, would you be the only cyclist on the road or did other people go the same way? Did you worry about bike theft or distracted drivers? Did you bother logging your rides/mileage in the pre Strava era?

Yes
Only
Yes
No

I rode to the train station. Or directly to work. 9-15miles each way.

First on a cheap MBK, then a lovely fixed gear winter bike (mudguard eyes and clearances for 28mm tyres). Then a converted track bike (SA 3 speed).
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ravenbait

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Re: Cycle commuting back in the day
« Reply #40 on: 26 March, 2024, 07:18:36 pm »
Yes
No
Yes
Yes

I had a CatEye OS1.0 that not only logged my mileage, but also wished me a happy birthday!

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