Cycling nostalgia - my old girl

I know there are a lot of cycling fans on the forum so I thought some of you might be interested in my most loved bike. This bicycle has been such a monumental part of my life since 1985 and has carried me across the Lake District, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire.

It's a 1985 Raleigh Royal tourer handbuilt at Raleigh's SBDU Specialist Bicycle Development Unit at Ilkeston in Derbyshire.







I'd been a keen cyclist since not long after I could walk however my 21" Raleigh Arena was becoming very small by the time I hit 15 years of age in 1984. My best pal at school had recently (Summer 1984) been bought a Raleigh Clubman (another 531 handbuilt tourer from the same Raleigh stable) and the first time I took that for a spin I felt I was riding on air. It was so lively, responsive and fast compared to anything I had ridden before that I can recall exactly where I was when I first tried it some 25 years later...

I resolved there and then to upgrade to a similar level and so began saving hard from my paper-round. I asked for money from everyone for Christmas that year and again on my birthday in March. By this time I was putting everything I had into saving for a better bicycle and I think eventually by the Spring of 2005 my parents began to pity me!

I had some months earlier in the Autumn sat on a Raleigh Royal 25" frame in the local bike shop and had utterly fallen in love. It was outrageously beautiful to look at - 531 Reynolds main tubes resplendent in magnum metallic grey with a silver head tube, chrome tipped Reynolds 531 forks and with two tone red and silver frame lettering. I set my heart on it, although at £255 it was an almost unimaginable amount of money to save up from a £3.50 a week paper round. I lay awake at night in fear someone would buy it and fell asleep with the Raleigh catalogue on my pillow - it was after all the only Raleigh Royal in the shop! It was in fact the only Raleigh Royal I had seen - they were pretty rare and the SBDU at Ilkeston was very much a high-end low volume operation.

Finally just before my 'O' Levels during the Easter holidays of 1985 my Father took me into the shop (who by now I suspect were on the the verge of offering me a Saturday job just so I could just buy the bloody thing!) and after some intensive haggling got them down to £200 plus payment for a better saddle etc.

That day will be forever etched in my memory, I recall we had to go back there later in the day after the mechanic had worked his magic and I rode her home for the first time.

It fitted perfectly, the ride was as light, springy and fast as only a really great frame can be. I kept the bike pretty much stock for many years and that Summer Philip (my Clubman owning friend) and I completed a very wet tour of the Lake District on our bikes. They were happy halcyon days.

The Royal provided solace through some pretty difficult times too, it was always there for me - beckoning me to go for a ride and to explore new country.

Perhaps the worst period was when I lived in Northamptonshire but felt rather lonely and worked for an insurance company on a business park outside Peterborough. I had some pretty dark days at that time feeling my life wasn't at all what I wanted it to be yet I think cycling was the only thing that really kept me sane. I spent many happy afternoons cycling around exploring disused airfields in East Anglia.

It was at that time I discovered the finest cycle shop I have ever known - 'Exclusively Bikes' of Stanground, Peterborough. The shop was run by an eccentric ex engineer called Sam, he hated mountain bikes and only dealt in tourers and racers - mostly British. It was the kind of place where you'd go in to buy a cycle light bulb after work and find yourself still there at 7pm with a mug of tea in hand putting the world to rights...

Eventually around 1997 I decided that the Royal could do with some sympathetic updating. By then I was living in Surrey but there was only one shop I would want to do the work. Sam rightly pointed out that it would be far cheaper to just buy a new Galaxy off the peg than modify so much of what I already had but he didn't reckon on my sentimentality for that particular bike and its link to my Father.

The age of the bike created many problems - for example it ran 27" wheels on 126mm hubs rather than 700c on 135mm. I was determined to stick with 27" though and didn't want to have any respray work done. I wanted to update it but leave the essential soul of the machine intact.

In the end Sam did all the work for the parts cost and the bike was given a new lease of life with Shimano indexed gears, a Stronglight chainset, the ubiquitous Brooks B17, Mavic Module 3CD Argent rims, DT spokes and Shimano 105 hubs and LX gearing. The bike had never felt better and has since given many thousands of miles further service, albeit I now tend to use my Scott MTB more frequently.

So here I am in 2009 contemplating another ride this afternoon across the Sussex Downs on my faithful friend. It's hard to believe 24 years have passed since I first fell in love with my beloved Raleigh - as you can tell from the photos she is still going strong.

It's interesting how greatly I respect this machine, yet how little affection I hsve for my equally expensive in todays money Scott aluminium framed hardtail. One rides badly - is jarring, hard and lifeless, the other like a racehorse is springy and alive. One feels like it is crafsman built with love and care, the other feels it was thrown together by Taiwanese minimum wage slaves. The quality of paint finish on the 24 year old Raleigh looks like it was done by Aston Martin while that on the 6 year old Scott already lacks lustre.

So sad that Raleigh don't build bikes like this anymore, but happy to have managed to look afterv mine from 'the golden age'.

So does anybody else have a special bike that means as much to them?

Jonathan