The Retro thread......blasts from the past

Graham Wallace

For anyone who is interested in how mountain biking started in Britain, I have compiled this history.

The History of Mountain Biking in Britain - (The Early Pioneers) This History is periodically updated as new and verifiable information is recieved.

Last updated: 18/April/2009

This information is based on detailed research and is mostly based on published and verifiable resources. However, many of the events referred to were not documented at the time, but some years later. Many of the exact dates are not known.

Serious off road cycling started in Britain in the early 20th century with the activity of 'Pass Storming'. This involved riding a bicycle to a mountainous area, then riding, or carrying the bike over a high and unpaved, mountain pass. This activity eventualy led to the formation of The Rough Stuff Fellowship in 1955, an organisation for cyclists who liked to wander from the beaten track.

1955 onwards The Rough Stuff Fellowship used a variety of existing bike designs and some modifications were made to improve performance. There is evidence that a few custom built frames were made and fitted with suitable components i.e: alpine gears, cantilever brakes etc. The idea was to, whenever possible, get off the roads and cycle along lanes and byways. If the going got tough the riders would simply get off and walk.


What was the first ‘Mountain Bike to be made in Britain?
There is little doubt that the Geoff Apps designed Range Rider was the first ‘Mountain Bike’ to be made in Britain. These were designed without any knowledge of the American bikes and so should be considered as a seperate lineage of off-road bike. The first prototype was made in 1968 based on a Raleigh Explorer frame. Experiments using a variety of road bike framesets continued throughout the 1970s. His bikes mostly used 2 inch wide, 650b, knobbly snow tyres from Finland. His first Range Rider bikes, using a custom designed (un-braced) framesets were designed in 1978) I believe the frames where made by Dees Cycles of Amersham in 1979. These bikes had all the features of the Mountain bike, though their design was arrived at independently. I believe that these bikes were the first British made Mountain Bikes. (One version had drum brakes another rim brakes).
Later versions of these were sold by Cleland Cycles (Geoff’s own company), English Cycles, and Highpath Engineering over the next ten years. They were built to order and as far as I know never mass produced. In October 1981 Nick Crane rode a third generation Range Rider prototype up Snowdon.

The above bikes were designed as if getting off and walking was a criminal offence. Geoff Apps was also a trials motorbike rider. They were designed completely for off-road use. They are the tractors of the Mountain Bike world, tall, functional and reliable.

Geoff Apps has recently been nominated for induction to the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
www.completesite.com/mbhof/page.cfm?pag ... mberid=209

http://www.james-walters.net/cleland/cl ... story.html


Who made the first American style Mountain Bike in Britain?
(1981) A US style Mountain Bike was made by
Chas Roberts at the request of an American customer.
Amateur frame builder Tony Oliver also made himself one which he exibited at the 1981 York Cycle Show.


Who brought the first American style Mountain Bike into Britain?
(1978) Journalist Richard Grant brought over a 1st generation Gary Fisher built ‘clunker’. He exhibited this bike at the 1978 Olympia cycle show.

By the end of 1982 American built Ritcheys were being brought into England. I remember it being received wisdom that Norman Hiller of Covent Garden Cycles brought over the first purpose built US Mountain Bike, an early Tom Ritchey built Bike. Others claim that either Journalist Richard Grant or Richard Ballantine brought across the first Ritcheys from the States. Richard Ballantine's two bikes brought over for a Saharan expedition were the inspiration London bike shop, F.W. Evans Cycles, to design a Mountain Bike that became the FW Evans ATB, Saracen ATB. Both bikes were identical, apart from the first being usualy painted silver and the latter being painted black or red. In July 1984 I hired a black FW Evans ATB from Kinston Cycles, its frame no was 001.



Which was the first Mountain Bike mass-produced in Britain? Raleigh Bomber? 1981 (I don’t think so). They were American style Beach Cruisers. Only three speed hub gears, calliper brakes and small frame/seat Designed for teenagers who were outgrowing their BMX bikes.

Early 1984 F.W. Evans ATB/Saracen ATB? (Manufactured by Bluemels).
In 1982/3, Richard Ballantine asked London bike shop F.W. Evans Cycles to build up two Ritchey frames he had brought from the U.S. for Tim Gartside's and Peter Murphy's ,February 1983, Saharan expedition. Evans were curios and persuaded Bluemels to build some bikes based on what they had seen. The resulting FW Evans ATBs were mostly silver and branded under the shops own marque. The Bluemels’ own Saracens bikes were identical, apart from being painted black.

The other early British made bike was the Dawes Ranger.

As for the Raleigh Maverick, I remember these as being surprisingly late to the party. The earliest contemporary reference I can find is October 1985. And were "made in Japan", and so don’t qualify as British. British made versions were eventualy mass produced at a later date?


Which was the first mass-produced Mountain Bike imported into Britain? I am not sure about this but the Freewheel, mail order catalogue, included far east made Ridgeback bikes from 1883 onwards. The first that I personally saw were Ritchey Montares in late Late1983, though many other models had arrived by mid 84.

Mountain Bike Hall of Fame UK History section:
www.mtnbikehalloffame.com/page.cfm?pageid=13665

butcher of bakersfield

Soggz wrote:

...erm, quite 'retro' i s'pose..

Retro? Bar the stem, that's very similar to my current - and only - bike. Think mine's about '97 though.

phz

i first got into mountain bikes mid 90s and had a succession of noname bikes cobbled together from police auctions and car boots (i was a poor student at the time) while lusting after the stuff i saw in MBUK

first 'proper' mountain bike i had was this one from about 1998 i guess - a decent (and pretty light) hand built reynolds frame by lee cooper in coventry (you can see its road bike heritage though) built up into a kind of do anything MTB - rockshox quadra forks / planetX downhill bars / noname BMX quill stem in that 1" threaded headset / SRAM twistshifter / DX brake levers (a thing of wonder still IMHO) / noname rims and hubs with panaracer dusters (replacing my original smoke & dart combo) / crud catcher (of course) / kalloy (i think - the branding has long since rubbed off) seatpost with a selle royal saddle / FSA sidewinder pro cranks and planetX DMR V8 copies / single front ring with some weird extending chainguide / SRAM 7 speed centera rear mech / LX parallel push v-brakes with a noname brake arch



the frame is sound (and has beautiful welds) so as i come out of biking retirement itll soon be rebuilt into a commuter / hack bike using some of the bits im replacing on my main DMR trailstar ride (itself about 9 years old ! ) - so will soon be back in business sporting rigid forks (i cant face even trying to make the quadras rideable again ! ) / mavic d521s on hope hubs / 24seven saddle / DMR chain reactor

slainte 8) rob

bobagg

Back in the day I had (and still have in the garage) my 1992 GT zaskar with rockshox mag 20's. Awesome bike.

Random parts I have lying around, DCD (daves chain device), girvin flex stem (utter plop), control stem, ringle skewers, USE seatpost. onza porcupine's etc.

Those were the good ol days.

Chaz.Harding

Soggz wrote:

...erm, quite 'retro' i s'pose..

That is a BEEEEEEEEEEEEEAST of a stem.

Bet it's a bugger when the going gets technical, right?

floosy

I remember Nike Ngubas....... ermm still using them 15 years later.... (same pair same cleats) . same pedals Ritchey WCS with cromo axle.

(though Im for a new pair of errmmm road shoes tommorrow...)

Oh and Still have my Kona Lava Dome from `93.... with P2`s and a quill stem (going to get my original owners life time frame warranty out of this one (25 years))

Dave.

M6TTF

Wish I had some pics of my old dave yates diabolo. Had a set of mavic 231cd rims with a hope fatso up front

zog

Graham Wallace, I read your thread with interest, as this brings back many memories.....I worked at DOA at this time for the company run along side the cycle shop( Signwell Ltd)... Roy Davies was my boss....Geoff was a customer at this time. Roy, with a little help from myself did build his first frame , always refered to as a cross country bike, not a mountainbike.We had to fabricate bash guards and many other strange fittings and I think we assembled the finished frame into a bike Geoff could ride home.
Geoff always used to ride to the shop....cross country of course!....dressed in his rather natty clothing and deerstalker hat.
Ive wondered what Geoff is up to these days, the last contact I had was at the Wendover Bash back in 88...
I'll try to remember more details about the spec, the thing I do recall is the studded tyes imported from Sweden (Hacka?)

Graham Wallace

Hi Zog,

Great to hear a first hand account of the creation of the first Cleland Cross Country Cycle designrd by Geoff Apps back in 1978/9. (Thirty years ago!) Geoff went on to improve his design and eventualy marketed it as the Cleland Aventura in 1982. I was one of his customers in 1984 and still own and use two of his machines. Geoff now lives in Scotland though returns to Buckinghamshire for a reunion ride each December. I have nominated Geoff for induction to the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame museum in America and have the backing of Charlie Kelly, one of the pioneers who developed and marketed the American mountain bikes. Geoff and I are also developing a new version of his design which should be finished by the end of this year.

It's wonderful to hear stories about the early years of off-road cycling. Organised off-road cycling in Britain had existed since 1955 but Geoff was the first person to develop and market purpose built bikes.

People back then must have thought of Geoff and his ideas as excentric, not realising that what he was doing was preempting the invention of a new sport and style of bicycle. Much of what happened back then went unreported and so its history has been overlooked. Geoff tells me that most frame builders, at the time, refused to build bikes with sloping top-tubes. Roy was ok with the sloping top-tube but refused to bend the chainstays in order to improve the frame/tyre clearences. The later Clelands resolved this design problem by using straight chain-stays and extra wide (90-110mm) bottom-bracket shells.

I will pass your memories on to Geoff.

Klein XC

Thanks for the history Graham, that's very interesting. I like the idea of the Rough Stuff Fellowship - very 50s Britain! I see they are still going strong...

This was my first mountain bike, a 1990 Ridgeback 601 LX.



It was a fantastic bike, built like a tank. My friends all rode things like the Muddy Fox Pathfinder, Orange Clockwork and Spesh Stumpy etc, mine was the only Ridgeback.

Lots of fun, until some low-life stole it. I still have the seat post and saddle though! Can't imagine how the crook rode it home....

Anonymous

3 in 1 oil!!!!

Vimeous

The day I walked out of BikeTech with my shiney 1989 Hardrock Comp ended my jealously of friends on Raleigh Mustangs and Montages.

Mind you when a mate chopped in his Mustang for the fabulously purple-framed and black-rimmed Mirage I got the pangs back. Of course it was made worse by his brother whos Rockhopper hung tantilisingly in the garage only to be replaced by a Stumpy when that got nicked!

Droooool

Meanwhile my Spesh rolls on, the original 2.25's replaced by Tioga Farmer John's and the Accushift drivetrain in desparate need of a service. And I still love the Sugino Bionic chainset

Thing is I've just seen pickies of my old black and gold Super Grifter - I want it back now!

zog

Hi Graham, my memory is returning to last century very slowly....still at this time are a little vague.......they were happy days early in my working life....still in the bike trade to this day.
When I hear disscusions about early offroad/ mountain biking...2 things allways spring to mind..Geoff and his then strange design and a family friend who used to offroad in the Highlands back in the twenties with his wife...both no longer in this world, but probably plotting their next trip ....
My father has inherited photos of these trips, ill see if any are available, I veiwed them many years ago...very facinating!

Prowlus

just bagged myself a Giant GSR 100 for in town riding . Its amazing what the definition of a mountain bike has changed over the years



nowdays that could be considered a hybrid! Anyone here remember the mango creak by townsend? that was my first mountain bike and 1/2 of my mates took the piss out of it because of its lurid color scheme

Graham Wallace

Hi Zog,

Everday off-road cycling in this country goes way, way back and serious recreational off-road cycling (known as Pass Storming) goes back at least to the early years of the 20th Century. The question is why specialist off- road bicycles never developed? On reason is that, back then, most people could only afford one bike.


This is an excerpt from the 'History of the Roughstuff Fellowship' written by their chairman which gives a second reason.

...."many RSF members have little or no interest in the technical side of cycling. They would be unable to tell you the make of components on their bikes. Indeed for many years Archie Woodward the
RSJ editor (1969 to 1991) would refuse to publish any thing on equipment saying it was outside the scope of the magazine".


But this did not stop them from developing bicycle 'Thermos flask holders'!
What effect did the Rough Stuff Journals refusal to publish technical articles for 22 years have on the development of specialist rough stuff bicycles?

Had the RSF championed the all-terrain machines of the Taylor brothers or Geoff Apps, would they have succeeded commercialy? [/b]Finally, had the RSF championed all things technical, would specialist roughstuff machines have developed even earlier? Or was this limited by the availability of suitable tyres?

Check out the Cleland website below for pictures of Geoff Apps machines including his 1979 Range-Rider.
http://www.james-walters.net/cleland/

zog

At one time many years ago I was a member of the RSF, as was my father...I believe he still is....he's in his late 70's now and still rides offroad, either on his std touring bike or his 89 Tufftrax...
I do remember going on RSF rides back in the 70's, the summer of 76 I remember one of these rides, meeting in Winslow, we tried to follow the route of the Great Central Railway.As a member of the South Bucks CTC at the time we had annual winter weekends often led by my late uncle(tim hughes)....trips were made to the Black Mountains and Breacon beacons, usualy in mid feb....it allways snowed...we rode all the well known tracks, all ways on fixed wheel...on one occasion we crossed the roman road south to north in a raging blizzard...we were hard then, no fancy bikes or clothing just +4s and an old style cycle cape....happy days!

snotty badger

Prowlus wrote:

nowdays that could be considered a hybrid! Anyone here remember the mango creak by townsend? that was my first mountain bike and 1/2 of my mates took the wee-wee out of it because of its lurid color scheme

When I rode my old 94 Univega into work someone asked if it was a hybrid- I got a little defensive, the bloody cheek!

AndyBeast

mid 90's (and current / only bike) Saracen Rufftrax!!

Only got this out the shed and dusted it of to help me loose some weight so I can get something new and shiny next april on the companies CTW scheme.

It's 'Handmade in England' apparently but they must have forgotten to add the Iron Bru '...From Giders' as from lifting it onto the car rack I believe it's made from cast iron.

Wheelieguy

mongoosed wrote:

a mate of mine bought a bike called a donkis knob..no joke all the letters stood for something cant remember what though,i was dead jealous cause it looked good,jeez i can still remember saying to him that his knob looked great....oh god.

Just read the pages i didnt catch up on now the thread has been bumped again, and im thinking D.O.N.K.I.S .N.O.B. did mean something to do with the build and was a bike or frame built by dave yates?

yearofthegoat

My first and only MTB - a 1993 GT Tequesta. Still going strong:



Am considering replacing front forks with suspension ones to save my wrists - can't afford a new steed

EDIT: My bad - memory must be going - it's a 94 not a 93. STX throughout, one-piece handlebar/bar-ends.

Thermo1

My first was a KHS Montana Crest - in luscious pink smoke colour

I'm actually considering putting some Power Grips back on my pedals. I had a set back in the 90's and loved them. But then we all got SPDs and my bro threw out my power grips pedals. So now I will have to stump up for a new set (yes they still make them) sent from the UK or USA.

Don't s'pose any of you guys have a spare set floating around in your spares box?