# Good memories ( and not so good ) of cycling to School.



## johnnyb47 (17 Feb 2017)

Back in the early 80s school really was like a scene from Grange Hill..I used to hate School and whilst being locked in the classroom enduring the drone of the teacher my thoughts were a million miles away thinking about one thing. Cycling! I used to cycle 12 miles a day on the school run. I would bike home for my dinner as well. It was a kind of release at dinner time to escape to captivity of the classroom and hit the open roads and green country side and get some peace and quiet for an hour. Come rain or shine I point blank refused to catch the school bus for three years and insisted to my dear mum I was going on the bike to School.She didn't try to hard to discourage me from the bike because it saved her a few quid a week on school dinners and bus fares and I also knew she was struggling for money at the time so it was a mutual benefit all round. In the winter my bike would be armed with a bottle dynamo, an old Eveready battery light and my trusty huret milometer clicking merrily away on the front wheel axle. . The bike weighed a ton with all the bike extras as well as me and a huge racksack stuffed full of books. I never bothered with gloves ( no sense what so ever ) when I was a youngster. I would swap hands on the bars and warm one in my coat pockets to ease the cold chilled pains in my fingers. Every night the School double decker bus would overtake us halfway along our ride home. God kids can be disgusting when you think back. The bus would go past and it was garranteed a group of kids on the the top deck would spit out the window openings hoping it would land on you. It did a lot of times and we would come home covered in spit. I can remember hearing them laughing on the bus as there vile spit would make a landing on one of us. There was no bike racks at School so everyone used to keep there bikes just across the road at a house that the owner was kind enough to let us use. His garden was strewn with a least 20 bikes. He had no chance of cutting his lawn or hedges on school days because of the sea of bikes. As kids are there was always the sneaky sabotage of your bike. The favourite was letting somebody's tyres down. Thankfully the owner of the house would keep a keen eye open but for the ones he missed he always had a bike pump in his shed to get you on your way home. Summers were the best time to cycle to School. It was like a mini tour de France with us all racing down the country roads. Sometimes we would even beat the School bus home and avoid the disgusting shower. Every now and again whilst going back to school after dinner the temptation would be just to much , especially in the summer, and I would ride straight past the school and have a nice afternoon exploring the country side instead. When I would get home I would be met with a clip around the ear by my dearest mam god bless her :-) The school would call her wondering where I was and she would make up an excuse knowing dam well I was off on one of my mini adventures. As much as I hated schools they hold the fondest memories of childhood


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## freiston (17 Feb 2017)

My school years were in the 70s. There must have been over 100 bikes in our bike shed. The school was (still is) in a market town with a large rural catchment area, so about half the kids came in on the 'village buses' and the other half from the town, mostly walking or cycling in. There were no town buses worth the effort.

I do recall a road near the school that, when the wind was in the right direction, was a bit of a wind tunnel and I remember a load of us often sailing down the road no-handed, holding our coats (usually parka or snorkel coats) out to act as sails. I also recall being chuffed if I could manage to get home for dinner (aka 'lunch') all the way no-handed (the journey wasn't much more than a mile) - albeit not wind-assisted.

Most of us had luggage racks with stays that fitted over the (solid) axle and clamped on to the seat stays at the other end. A spring-loaded 'flap' hinged at the rear held the bag against the frame/seatpost. Large adidas sports bags were often rested on the crossbar and handlebar, between the arms.

A small group of us who hated regular sports managed to get permission to go for a bike ride on 'games afternoon' and we used to cycle to my cousin's house in the 'back of beyond' and have a drink and a cake before returning back to school.

For a while, I used to have regular hospital appointments and had to apply for an exeat from the headmaster to allow me the time out for them. I always used to exaggerate the time required and use the extra time to take in a couple of villages instead of making my way straight back to school. One day I suffered quite a catastrophic puncture about five miles out and had to walk all the way back, making my return time about an hour late (which took me in to lunch break - so I went straight home and returned for the afternoon session).


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## Flick of the Elbow (17 Feb 2017)

freiston said:


> Most of us had luggage racks with stays that fitted over the (solid) axle and clamped on to the seat stays at the other end. A spring-loaded 'flap' hinged at the rear held the bag against the frame/seatpost.


Yes, remember them well ! 
Most of my school cycling was on straight barred Sturmey Archer 3 speeds.
I then 'progressed' to a dropped bar 10 speed derailleur effort, a lethal combination of steel rims and suicide levers.


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## screenman (17 Feb 2017)

I was racing at 14 so the school run was often part of a training session, intervals behind the bus was a favourite.


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## johnnyb47 (17 Feb 2017)

We used to slip stream the tractors until the big hill ,were it would slowly pull away from us. Cookery lessons were always funny. I would make something remotely edible and proudly take it home for my mum to sample in my school bag. By the time we finished having a game of football with my bag and carrying it home precariously on my bike the burnt offerings inside the bag were completely pulverised into a right old mess


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## Mrs M (17 Feb 2017)

johnnyb47 said:


> Back in the early 80s school really was like a scene from Grange Hill..I used to hate School and whilst being locked in the classroom enduring the drone of the teacher my thoughts were a million miles away thinking about one thing. Cycling! I used to cycle 12 miles a day on the school run. I would bike home for my dinner as well. It was a kind of release at dinner time to escape to captivity of the classroom and hit the open roads and green country side and get some peace and quiet for an hour. Come rain or shine I point blank refused to catch the school bus for three years and insisted to my dear mum I was going on the bike to School.She didn't try to hard to discourage me from the bike because it saved her a few quid a week on school dinners and bus fares and I also knew she was struggling for money at the time so it was a mutual benefit all round. In the winter my bike would be armed with a bottle dynamo, an old Eveready battery light and my trusty huret milometer clicking merrily away on the front wheel axle. . The bike weighed a ton with all the bike extras as well as me and a huge racksack stuffed full of books. I never bothered with gloves ( no sense what so ever ) when I was a youngster. I would swap hands on the bars and warm one in my coat pockets to ease the cold chilled pains in my fingers. Every night the School double decker bus would overtake us halfway along our ride home. God kids can be disgusting when you think back. The bus would go past and it was garranteed a group of kids on the the top deck would spit out the window openings hoping it would land on you. It did a lot of times and we would come home covered in spit. I can remember hearing them laughing on the bus as there vile spit would make a landing on one of us. There was no bike racks at School so everyone used to keep there bikes just across the road at a house that the owner was kind enough to let us use. His garden was strewn with a least 20 bikes. He had no chance of cutting his lawn or hedges on school days because of the sea of bikes. As kids are there was always the sneaky sabotage of your bike. The favourite was letting somebody's tyres down. Thankfully the owner of the house would keep a keen eye open but for the ones he missed he always had a bike pump in his shed to get you on your way home. Summers were the best time to cycle to School. It was like a mini tour de France with us all racing down the country roads. Sometimes we would even beat the School bus home and avoid the disgusting shower. Every now and again whilst going back to school after dinner the temptation would be just to much , especially in the summer, and I would ride straight past the school and have a nice afternoon exploring the country side instead. When I would get home I would be met with a clip around the ear by my dearest mam god bless her :-) The school would call her wondering where I was and she would make up an excuse knowing dam well I was off on one of my mini adventures. As much as I hated schools they hold the fondest memories of childhood


That wee story brought a smile to my face 
I'd have loved to bike to school but the school didn't allow bikes


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## User32269 (17 Feb 2017)

I lived a three minute walk from my school, but would leave the house at 8:00 nearly every day to have a bike ride before getting there. My favourite was a little stretch of the Leeds Liverpool canal. 
Despite living closer to school than anybody else, I would always arrive late. Every year I had to go on stage at awards day to be presented with one of those cardboard clocks that were used to teach telling the time. This was to shame me for my time keeping record over the previous term.


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## DaveReading (17 Feb 2017)

johnnyb47 said:


> I used to hate School and whilst being locked in the classroom enduring the drone of the teacher my thoughts were a million miles away thinking about one thing.



Particularly during the lesson on paragraphs. 

But they're overrated - nice story nevertheless.


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## matiz (17 Feb 2017)

We used to get regular lectures off the headmaster for drafting the school bus on the way home, a regular trick in the metalwork lesson was to let the air out of a tyre tell the teacher you had a puncture and he would let you spend the whole lesson pretending to fix it , you could clean and fettle the bike in school time.
There were a few of us in various local cycling clubs and the games master helped us form a cyclo cross league with several other schools in the area, every week instead of football or the dreaded cross country run a group of us would head off unsupervised to different schools for a afternoon of racing in school time.


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## ianrauk (17 Feb 2017)

I used to ride the 2 miles to school on my Yellow Chopper, that was then swapped over to a Bluey Grey Grifer. Loads of kids used to cycle to school back
In the 70's, hundreds even. All the bikes were dumped on top of each other in the bike shed. No one had a lock but none were ever stolen. No one carried any form of puncture repair kit either. But then again I don't remember ever having a puncture.


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## EltonFrog (17 Feb 2017)

I don't have any romantic memories of cycling to school, it was a chore and a bore that had to endured.

I went to two secondary schools in my teens one in London, where I wasn't allowed to keep my bike on the school premises unless I had passed my cycling proficiency test ( I had but couldn't prove it) so I had to lock my bike up outside, it was safer there anyway, the one time I did take it ( my brand new Kingpin) some twunt thought it was funny to lower the seat.

After school I used to cycle from East Acton to Paddington to do my butchers round, after that cycle home to Willesden, in all weathers. I had one of those yellow capes for when it rained.

Later when school became intolerable for me I used to bunk off and cycle round Hyde Park or go to sleep under a tree in the summer until it was time to go to the shop.

We then moved to Chertsey, things weren't much better then, still cycled to school or bunk off which ever mood took me ( I really loathed school) , I had morning paper round, and an evening paper stand to attend to. All on the Kingpin.

My mothers' sisters' husband decided to build me a bike out of an old frame he'd been given, a lovely British racing green road bike with five gears, and I used that for ages, but my riding was almost all utility riding, it was ACE, I never seemed to have time for adventures though, I did ride it about but not often. I later found out (about two years ago) that the frame was a Gillott. I stupidly sold that bike for a fiver when I was 18 when I bought my first motorcycle.

I did a lot of cycling, but it was mostly out of necessity than anything else.

One thing I've just remembered, that was fun, I did my first "sportive" (they weren't called sportives then) one Sunday , I was about 14, a 50 mile charity bike ride for MIND ( I think) I did that on the Kingpin, jeans, trainers, no helmets back then. I raised £7.50, quite a lot of cash then, my Saturday job wages was £1.50. I remember that being great fun, the headmaster spoke about it at the school assembly one morning, a couple of other kids did it too.

Edit: the charity was Action For the Crippled Child , not a very PC name https://www.action.org.uk/about-us/history


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## Flick of the Elbow (17 Feb 2017)

I didn't get properly into cycling until sixth form. Wednesday afternoon was supposed to be for sports. A couple of keen cycling teachers gave us the option of bunking off for the afternoon instead, by way of taking us on a bike ride every week. So I guess it was sports of a sort but it didn't feel like it. We used to cycle a few miles, find a corner shop, the teachers used to buy us chocolate bars and fizzy drinks, then we'd head back. Earlswood Lakes was a favourite destination. The entrance to the sixth form college was at the top of a small hill, this became a keenly fought sprint at the end of every ride. But it still didn't feel like sports


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## Crackle (17 Feb 2017)

I also cycled to school in the 70's. Initially it wasn't very far and then we moved so it turned into a nice commute. The commute to school co-incided with the discovery of cycling for transport , exploration and pleasure and the subsequent increase in my fitness led the x-country teacher to question whether I'd done all the laps in the race as I came home 10th instead of 80th.

I recall a few run in's with the lollipop man on the way as I once sleepily cycled through his crossing. After that he kept an eye out for me and I used to try and stay out of sight behind buses until his attention was taken and then sprint past. I remember also a good few of my mates watching on as a Hooray Henry in a Lotus nearly cleaned me out at the nearby junction on his way to the golf club. There was a loud chorus of ooo's from across the road.

One time I turned up to games and was about to get changed when the games teacher handed me an envelope and said, you've got a bike haven't you, take this to so and so school for me. A 10 mile round journey down some busy roads through Tuebrook.

Unfortunately I also lost things out of pockets, mostly my specs, I was up to three pairs crushed under wheels by the time I left school, though luckily the cases of the time saved two of them, well kind of, they looked a bit wonky but then again, so did I.


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## Salad Dodger (17 Feb 2017)

My senior school had a bike shed big enough to accommodate the whole field of the Tour de France, but hardly anybody cycled.

I didn't cycle, but was allowed to park my moped, and later my beloved 200cc Yamaha, in the bike shed.............

We had about an hour and twenty minutes for lunch, and the school was only a couple of miles from the edge of town, so on a nice day I would leg it from my last morning lesson, back to the common room to grab my helmet and leather jacket, then go for a ride for about an hour in the countryside before returning for the afternoon. Unless it was Wednesday, which was games afternoon. On Wednesday I would get registered for the afternoon then me and a schoolmate who also had a motorbike would ride over to the local sports centre to play the world's quickest and most perfunctory game of squash (in case the teachers checked up that we had attended), and then we would hotfoot it out to Brands Hatch which was only about 8 miles away, to catch the last couple of hours of the general practice afternoon. Cars in the morning, bikes in the afternoon, free admittance and pot luck as to what sort of bikes would be "testing". Often it was the works Kawasaki team (as the bikes were built by Boyers of Bromley) and sometimes Texaco Heron Suzuki as they were based in (I think) West London. Happy days!


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## MontyVeda (17 Feb 2017)

Apart from the days doing my cycling proficiency test at junior school, we weren't allowed to cycle to school. 

I did cycle to high school once... got told off by the deputy head. 

The high school has since closed down and the deputy head is probably dead.


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## Nigeyy (17 Feb 2017)

If there is one thing I remember from cycling to school, it was the wind. I lived in a fairly rural area and had a 2 1/2 mile ride in to my nearest Comprehensive on my Raleigh 5-speed Arena. The problem came about in that I had a section of road (the "top" road) that was slightly higher, though flat, that was completely unprotected from any wind. I can't count the number of times I cycled in against the wind heading into school -and sometimes it was really a strong wind - to be aghast to facing the _same_ head wind on the way home. The fact the road was fairly flat just seemed to compound the misery and frustration..... I never had a p^%cture repair kit either, or a working pump. Somehow managed to get by.

Like many things, I'm not sure I'd even want my kids doing the same thing now -though those were the days before electronic devices and texting (sounding really old there!).


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## Blue Hills (17 Feb 2017)

Mrs M said:


> That wee story brought a smile to my face
> I'd have loved to bike to school but the school didn't allow bikes


Didn't allow bikes? Whyever not? I note the mrs, was it by chance a girls' school that considered it unladylike?


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## Blue Hills (17 Feb 2017)

ianrauk said:


> No one had a lock but none were ever stolen. No one carried any form of puncture repair kit either. But then again I don't remember ever having a puncture.



Exactly my memory, one more example maybe that the 70s, despite their reputation, were actually rather charmed most of the time. Only puncture i remember was a total tyre explosion caused by one too many deliberate skids on an old second hand moulton. Not sure how i explained it to my dad.
May return to the thread later.


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## youngoldbloke (17 Feb 2017)

I remember being called up before the headmaster as I'd been seen riding my bike home from school without my school cap. (This was a Grammar School in the early 60s). My explanation that riding a racing bike wearing something that was liable to be easilyblown off, and the unsafe nature of trying to retrieve it from amongst the traffic, landed on deaf ears - letting down the school, blah, blah, a stain on the good reputation of the school etc etc, and contributed to my utter contempt for the headmaster, Mr Arthur Reginald Munday.


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## Blue Hills (17 Feb 2017)

Finally named and shamed after all these years. He'd never have said what he did if he knew the internet would come and get him.


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## Mrs M (17 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> Didn't allow bikes? Whyever not? I note the mrs, was it by chance a girls' school that considered it unladylike?


Just told not allowed 
However, Timmy Chung was allowed to come to school in his Datsun Sunny


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## Blue Hills (17 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE="Mrs M, post: 4687087] However, Timmy Chung was allowed to come to school in his Datsun Sunny [/QUOTE]



This thread is turning into payback central. Since this forum is essentially open to searches I can imagine a few ageing folk self googling themselves and spluttering into their tea. Off to drink my special tea - the name of the guilty party in one of my memories might be dredged up.


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## freiston (17 Feb 2017)

Flick of the Elbow said:


> I didn't get properly into cycling until sixth form. Wednesday afternoon was supposed to be for sports. A couple of keen cycling teachers gave us the option of bunking off for the afternoon instead, by way of taking us on a bike ride every week. So I guess it was sports of a sort but it didn't feel like it. We used to cycle a few miles, find a corner shop, the teachers used to buy us chocolate bars and fizzy drinks, then we'd head back. Earlswood Lakes was a favourite destination. The entrance to the sixth form college was at the top of a small hill, this became a keenly fought sprint at the end of every ride. But it still didn't feel like sports


I take it you weren't living in Edinburgh back then!


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## Flick of the Elbow (17 Feb 2017)

freiston said:


> I take it you weren't living in Edinburgh back then!


Back then, home was Shirley


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## screenman (17 Feb 2017)

Wednesday afternoon was sports, mine consisted of an hour's ride then back for a run with the cross country lads, followed by a longer ride afterwards. As you can see I was keen on cycling. Just as keen now 46 years later.


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## Stonechat (18 Feb 2017)

I was at school in the 60's. Started cycling at about 14, about 4 miles. Used to race the buses, overtake them at the bus stops annry to get enough distance to keep ahead. They had conductors in those days so the stops were not so long.

One year we had a teacher who drove so slowly we could overtake her.

Somehow I avoided the cycle proficiency training

Bike was a 5 speed derailleur, maybe some of the early ones were a 3 speed sturmey archer


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## screenman (18 Feb 2017)

Stonechat said:


> I was at school in the 60's. Started cycling at about 14, about 4 miles. Used to race the buses, overtake them at the bus stops annry to get enough distance to keep ahead. They had conductors in those days so the stops were not so long.
> 
> One year we had a teacher who drove so slowly we could overtake her.
> 
> ...



I could have written those exact words, and I was only 5 miles from Staines.


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## Globalti (18 Feb 2017)

In the mid 70s we moved from rural Oxfordshire to Newcastle upon Tyne. My sister and I both joined Gosforth High School and on the very first day we did what we had always done in Oxfordshire - we cycled the 1.5 miles there. My sister was the only girl to turn up on a bike and she received so many looks and comments from her classmates that the next day she walked and never rode again. Newcastle was quite conservative in those days - I remember going in a pub with my family and my Mum asking for a half of lager - the barman told her he had no lager, saying: "We don't get many ladies in here!"

I was also one of the few cyclists as most pupils lived pretty close by. One day some idiot sat on my bike while it was in the bike rack and bent a nice kink in the wheel. On another occasion I was waiting at the school gates to cross the A1, which was a busy dual-carriageway when the local ice-cream van man, who always parked on the school drive, came up behind me and began pushing me out into the traffic with his bumper. I turned round to remonstrate (didn't swear) then crossed and thought no more of it. Dismounted and set off up the pavement walking the bike, the other hand holding my girlfriend's hand as we walked to her house. Suddenly the ice cream van screeched up, bounced up onto the pavement and a short swarthy bloke jumped up and ran back to me. "My mate, he say you tell me to F*** off!" I opened my mouth to deny it and BANG, a clenched fist hit me in the mouth. Two broken teeth and in shock but Gill and her pal got his reg and as soon as we got to her house her Mum called the Police. They went round and arrested him for assault, he couldn't deny it because he'd had to have seven stitches in the back of his hand. I had to have lengthy sessions of dentistry, which left me with a crown and a bridge. I got £250 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and the Italian who assaulted me and who had already been "done" for robbery with violence, got a fine. I spent all the money on beer.


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## Jon George (18 Feb 2017)

Ah, where to start?
The early seventies was my era - mostly cycling to and from secondary school with my best mate at the time. (Where are you now, John Palmer?) The route took us across one of the busier roads out of Ipswich, and most every day, we would have to cross a junction where my older brother had been knocked off _his _bike a few years earlier and sustained life-threatening head injuries. Always gave me pause for thought. 
At around 14 or 15, my mate's birthday present was a racer with a whopper of a bell that looked as though it had been stolen from a fire alarm. I didn't think much of the bell, but I was envious of the bike.
And a favourite bit of juvenile pranstering in the cycle sheds was unlock the barrel locks prevalent at the time from two bikes and swap them over. Perhaps I should contact Simon Mayo and ask for forgiveness.
Cannot remember ever having a puncture when cycling to and from school. But then, I am getting older ...


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## jonny jeez (18 Feb 2017)

Never cycled to school but riding was just a way of life. I rode everywhere with my mates, all day long. Two abreast, swooshing around bends like the cops from CHIPS, jumping ditches like the boys from dukes of hazard, flying through the woods like luke in return of the Jedi.

Our bikes were an extension of ourselves, chosen and personalised to be who we were, or who we wanted to be.

Oddly, I never recall carrying water, a lock, a helmet, a puncture repair kit (never remember getting a single puncture as a kid)...or anything more than a pocket full of change for the sweet shop. Yet I reckon we must have ridden a good 20 miles a day.

I also don't remember riding up hills. I know I did, I had to, but I don't recall it being an issue.


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## chriswoody (18 Feb 2017)

I never cycled to school either, given it was only 3 minutes walk away. At School I hated team sports so was always bunking off of PE, but no one could work out why I was so fit given that they never saw me exercising. However I had been a really keen cyclist from about 10 and living in North Devon it was certainly hilly. Little did most of them know about my long rides every week over Exmoor.


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## HLaB (18 Feb 2017)

School was a wee bit of a waste for me cycling wise. At primary there was no place to store a bike and no safe route, as a net result I never cycled and nobody else did too. At secondary there was at least a safe route (or safe for the first year) but again there was again no place to store a bike and the net result was the same, nobody cycled. After school was my time to cycle.


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## graham bowers (18 Feb 2017)

I used to cycle to school sometimes in the late 1960's / very early 1970's in Llangollen, about a mile each way. Sometimes I forgot I'd cycled and walked home - the bike was always still there the next day - and never locked. Cycling was just a form of transport then, and my bicycle was discarded as soon as I was 16 and got 2 wheeled motorised transport. I didn't discover recreational cycling until much later, around 1989, and in my early 30's.


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## Bazzer (18 Feb 2017)

Junior school I had to get a train to as it was 12 miles from my home and as it was a victorian built school in a city centre there was nowhere for my bike to be kept there anyway.
Secondary school in the 60s was at first about a mile and half from home and easily doable on my single speed Dawes Dapper. The school had covered bike storage which ran the length of the junior and senior playgrounds. At aged 15 we moved to a much hillier area nearly 7 miles from school and I was bought a 10 speed (x5 and double chainset) Dawes, (whose model name escapes me), for travel to and from school.
Must admit, it was only when I had children that I realised how poor cycling provision was for the local junior and secondary schools my children attended. Which I found shocking as all bar one of the schools had been built from the 60s onwards.


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## colly (18 Feb 2017)

As @jonny jeez siad cycling was just a way of life. Transport to and from school, to mates houses, etc.

We would go far afield at weekends looking for differnt places to play our games. I lived in Twickenham and it wasn't unusual for us to ride out to Virginia Waters, Box Hill, Leith Hill or a place called Blacks Pond outside Esher in Surrey.
We had a mixture or bikes, mostly with Sturmy Archer 3 speed gears of just a single freewheel. Later on some of us experimented with cobbling together fixed wheel affairs from bits and pieces found and scrounged. (old bike frames seemed to be everywhere, wheels too)
Crossbars ! Giving a mate, of if you were lucky a girl, a crossbar lift. I don't think I could do it now. I once carried a mate on the crossbar from Twickenham to Blacks Pond. Not up the hill by Kempton Racecourse though, he had to walk that.
Cowhorn handlebars were the rage at one time as were hard nylon orange saddles. Campag 'double clangers' were the stuff of dreams.

My mum and dad bought me a new bike when I was probably 13 or 14 and while it was a lovely Dawes bike with twist grip 3 speed hub gears I was so disappointed that it didn't have what I really wanted which was derailleur gears. It still had masses of use though.

Girls and cars hove into view and cycling was dropped. Only for me to pick it up again in my early 40's.

In fact it was Sanddown Park Racecourse near Esher.


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## Katherine (18 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> Oddly, I never recall carrying water, a lock, a helmet, a puncture repair kit (never remember getting a single puncture as a kid)...or anything more than a pocket full of change for the sweet shop.
> 
> I also don't remember riding up hills. I know I did, I had to, but I don't recall it being an issue.


That's what I remember too.


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## Katherine (18 Feb 2017)

I used to cycle to school and college on a kingpin shopper, because it was better than walking and there wasn't much of a bus service. 
There were bike sheds but they weren't actually used much for bikes lol! I remember my so called friends relieving my bike of its pump and lights and giving them to me, so after that I had to carry them around with me.


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## EltonFrog (18 Feb 2017)

I'm reminded of trips I used to do in the school holidays, I'd load up the rear bag on my Kingpin with some clothes, and I'd cycle from home in Willesden Junction to Welling in Kent to stay with my aunt for a few days, a sort of holiday.

Looking back on those trips amuses me because for some reason I'd ride via Acton, Gunnersbury, Kew, around the South Circular Road, via Wandsworth, Clapham, Dulwich and Catford. Why the hell didn't someone direct me through the centre of London over the river diagonally?







The Kingpin

I was 12,13,14 when I did this, I think it took me four or five hours, I bet parents wouldn't allow kids to that kind of journey now, this was in the early 70's . I only ever did the ride once on my new road bike.


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## Grant Fondo (18 Feb 2017)

6 miles to school last 2 miles bloody big hill in Dorset, legs like Greipel at 12 yrs old.


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## CanucksTraveller (18 Feb 2017)

I cycled to school on an 80s Raleigh Racer, and later on a Peugeot ANC Halfords race replica, probably about 5 miles each way from Burnage to Whalley Range in Manchester traffic. This was from about age 13 to 16.


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## Sheffield_Tiger (18 Feb 2017)

We had a small boat - nothing overly fancy - on the Driffield canal, so a couple of nights a week I would ride out from Hull on narrow farm roads, all seasons all weathers - pouring down with rain on a dark evening with those ubiquitous Ever Ready "Night Rider" lights that gobbled D-size batteries and gave a glow with all the power of a nearly-used-up Poundland tealight candle. No magicshines and exposure flares in those days - I learned every pothole by heart. And hammered straight a few dented steel rims from the learning process


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## freiston (18 Feb 2017)

Jon George said:


> Ah, where to start?...
> ...And a favourite bit of juvenile pranstering in the cycle sheds was unlock the barrel locks prevalent at the time from two bikes and swap them over.


We used to do that too - the predominant lock was a grey capsule shaped combination lock with 4 rotating numbered 'barrels' and a length of chain going from one end to the other.

I found a (not very good) picture of the sort of lock - but I don't recall any plastic sleeving on the chain:


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## dfthe1 (18 Feb 2017)

I didn't know a single person who cycled to school when I grew up in the 80s and 90s. It just wasn't a thing...

...apart from once a year at junior school if you got your name down for the slow bike race on sports day. Such a magical day. Unfortunately I was (and am) terrible at track stands -- but it was all about cycling to and from school. 

Outside of school, though, we lived on our bikes. They were an integral part of everything we did. Raleigh Budgie, Peugeot BMX, Falcon 5 speed racer, GT Outpost.

The first puncture I remember was in my late 20s on the Raleigh Highlander that replaced the Outpost, which was nicked when I'd had it just a few months. I was really pleased my parents happened to be staying that weekend and my dad could roll up his sleeves, get out a bowl of soapy water and teach me a traditional skill.


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## hopless500 (18 Feb 2017)

10 miles to school and 10 back. Across a common that had hundreds of squashed frogs at one time of the year. Past the best sweet shop on the planet. Yes we stopped. Lots. A couple of miles of uphill at the end.
Abiding memory is not wanting to ride home on one occasion so resorting to attacking tyre with old fashioned maths compass and getting lift off music teacher who lived at the end of our road. Memories of very confused stepdad when confronted by an inner tube with about 15 holes in it


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## johnnyb47 (19 Feb 2017)

My dad's old bike wheels were identical to mine, so when I used to get a puncture I would swap my flat tyre/ wheel for his when he was down the pub sampling a few pints. He couldn't understand why he was constantly getting flat tyres for months on end. When he eventually found out I ended up having the full force of his boot up my backside :-((


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## bondirob (19 Feb 2017)

I used to ride an old 5 speed racer (as we used to call road bikes back then)
I would have loved to have ridden to school but with me being a pupil of the esteemed Willowgarth Academy of Excellence in Grimethorpe there wouldn't have been a bike left to ride home on.


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## Globalti (19 Feb 2017)

Before we moved oop north I used to cycle seven miles every day from our village, Chinnor, to another village called Haddenham where a friend of my parents, a now-famous architect, had just built his own house. I used to labour in his garden for 15p an hour, plus lunch. The house and garden are also now famous so I like to think I played a small role in that.

I only remember having one puncture; I walked back and telephoned my Mum who came and picked me up in our Commer bus. On my route I discovered a cow's head in a ditch with a hole in it so most days used to stop and stare at it, wondering how it got there. One day for reasons I still don't understand, I thought it would be good fun to leave a trail from my house to Haddenham so I filled my Dad's garden spray with water and strapped it to the rack, setting the nozzle down by the BB to leave a steady stream of water all the way for seven miles. Odd but true.

On that road from Thame to Chinnor there's a long straight stretch and two friends, brothers from my village, Steve and Martin Watkiss, were killed there when a pal of theirs who had just got a car, saw them walking and played chicken but got it terribly wrong and hit them at speed, a shocking tragedy.

We also used to cycle along country lanes to visit nearby villages. It was probably only a mile or two but it felt like a huge distance to us. I used to ride along the upper Icknield Way to where there were chalk quarries for the cement works. in summer the white mud set rock solid and at times the tracks were boneshaking; on one occasion my back wheel went out of true and when I stopped to investigate I discovered to my amazement that the rear axle had snapped clean through. Both ends were nutted so I was able to ride home. I got a new axle and repaired it. My favourite bike was a Raleigh that had rod brakes and a 3 speed hub; I re-painted it in dark green and dark red, it had steel mudguards. We also used to push our bikes all the way to the top of Chinnor Hill, which climbs the Chiltern escarpment behind the cement works. We would fly back down at crazy speeds, nobody ever thought of helmets and that was the only time my Dad showed any concern for our safety - I remember him checking our brakes as we set off one day.

One one occasion I rode down to the local garage to buy something and walked back. A couple of days later I realised I couldn't find the bike and was beginning to think it had been stolen when my Dad came back from work and asked me "What's your bike doing down at the garage?" When I walked back to collect it Mr Parsons the garage man said: "I took it into the workshop and checked it over but couldn't find anything wrong so I wondered why you had left it" Nice to know forgetfulness isn't just a senior problem.

My pal Andy who lived in a house in Thame called Wet Paint came round one day with a lovely green racing bike somebody had lent him. It had a derailleur and two chainrings and amazingly narrow tyres. Andy and I set to cleaning it and adjusting the wheel bearings and gears etc. and I remember a friend of my Dad asking what we were doing. When I replied "we're tuning it up!" he smiled, or sneered. Andy used to ride more than me so he was stronger but we did a few time trials down to the village, round the square and back.

Andy discovered a bike frame lying in the river near our school, Lord Williams in Thame so we got some string with a hook on the end and fished it out. It was a delivery bike with a heavy basket built as part of the frame on the front. The RH crank had worn a big hole in the chainstay thanks to badly adjusted BB bearings so I took the frame to the blacksmith, who skilfully brazed over the hole and refused any payment. We laboriously hacksawed the basket off and fitted it with a spare rear wheel with a Sturmey Archer hub then pinched a small front wheel off my brother's bike; he complained about it but was graduating to riding my sister's bike by then so didn't bother too much. I swopped a penknife for a pair of apehanger bars and I built a chopper seat out of bent copper heating pipe and wood with padding and we fitted a bottle dynamo and a huge chrome headlamp. Sadly no photos exist of this creation, which was stolen along with two other bikes from our cellar right below us as we ate Sunday lunch one day shortly after arriving in Newcastle. The Police found the two other bikes dumped on the town moor with the brake cables cut but we never saw my chopper again.


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## Blue Hills (19 Feb 2017)

dfthe1 said:


> . I was really pleased my parents happened to be staying that weekend and my dad could roll up his sleeves, get out a bowl of soapy water and teach me a traditional skill.


Nice story, thanks, but wow that is uber traditional overkill unless it was an exceptionally hard puncture to find.

All the best.


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## Globalti (19 Feb 2017)

I still use a sink full of water to find small punctures!


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## Blue Hills (19 Feb 2017)

I know it's a good technique in extremis but never needed. Either listen with my dodgy ears, or if that doesn't work, pump tube well up and run the entire surface, inside and out, very close to my puckered lips. Admittedly, the latter may look a tad kinky but, loud and proud, i have no shame about loving my bikes.


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## dfthe1 (19 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> Nice story, thanks, but wow that is uber traditional overkill unless it was an exceptionally hard puncture to find.
> 
> All the best.



Yup. My dear dad had waited 27 years for this and he was going to do it right!


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## Sheffield_Tiger (19 Feb 2017)

dfthe1 said:


> I didn't know a single person who cycled to school when I grew up in the 80s and 90s. It just wasn't a thing...
> 
> *...apart from once a year at junior school if you got your name down for the slow bike race on sports day.* Such a magical day. Unfortunately I was (and am) terrible at track stands -- but it was all about cycling to and from school.



Our metalwork/CDT/Design & Technology/The-class-title-changed-every-damn-year teacher wasn't happy with only a few of us cracking our heads on the playground with a normal slow bike challenge, so on that day _(and end of term and any other excuse he could find to potentially injure his students for his own gratification)_ he'd proudly wheel out the reverse steering bike he'd made _probably by misusing school funds_ and make us do the slow bike challenge on that


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## Arjimlad (19 Feb 2017)

I cycled to & from junior school and senior school and the funny thing is I can hardly remember doing any maintenance at all. Yet the bikes just kept on going. A wash every now and then, and a squirt of oil on the chain was about it. I had a new Raleigh Chopper in about 1980, and after starting secondary school my Dad got an old road bike from the police auctions which we spent time "doing up" - sanding the rust off and painting the frame with blue Hammerite. Centre pull brakes as I recall..

Not like these modern aluminium things which wear out in a week unless you keep them clean enough to eat dinner off.


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## Blue Hills (19 Feb 2017)

GGJ said:


> I never had my first bike until I was 12 years old


Cripes. Very odd. A case for social services?


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## dfthe1 (19 Feb 2017)

Great thread, @johnnyb47 . I love a bit of cycling nostalgia -- just the smell of bike shops makes me go a bit soppy!


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## Globalti (19 Feb 2017)

It's true that bikes seemed to need less maintenance but they were very heavily built. The brake pads didn't wear much because they didn't work on chromed steel rims!


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## EltonFrog (19 Feb 2017)

Globalti said:


> Before we moved oop north I used to cycle seven miles every day from our village, Chinnor, to another village called Haddenham where a friend of my parents, a now-famous architect, had just built his own house. I used to labour in his garden for 15p an hour, plus lunch. The house and garden are also now famous so I like to think I played a small role in that.
> 
> I only remember having one puncture; I walked back and telephoned my Mum who came and picked me up in our Commer bus. On my route I discovered a cow's head in a ditch with a hole in it so most days used to stop and stare at it, wondering how it got there. One day for reasons I still don't understand, I thought it would be good fun to leave a trail from my house to Haddenham so I filled my Dad's garden spray with water and strapped it to the rack, setting the nozzle down by the BB to leave a steady stream of water all the way for seven miles. Odd but true.
> 
> ...



Love this story, this thread is starting to bring back some memories. I might write up some more.


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## johnnyb47 (19 Feb 2017)

Absolutely brilliant posts to all your story's and experiences. It's been the best read in ages reading them all :-))


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## Dogtrousers (19 Feb 2017)

I had one of those racks with a mousetrap-like spring on the back for holding your bag. 

I remember jogging up and down the main road near home picking up my A level chemistry notes page by page and dodging traffic after the folder had dropped off the back of my bike and burst.


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## Dogtrousers (19 Feb 2017)

Globalti said:


> I still use a sink full of water to find small punctures!


Me too. It's the quickest and easiest way. I fix punctured tubes in the kitchen, so the sink is there to hand: Stick a bit of air into the tube, dump it into a bowl of water. A second later, remove it with my finger on the hole.


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## NorthernDave (19 Feb 2017)

I never actually cycled to school. Shameful I know, but there we are.

My primary school was literally 2 minutes walk from home, so it just didn't happen.
Middle school actually wouldn't allow you to cycle to school. The official reason was there was nowhere to lock the bikes, which would seem fair enough except when the bus drivers went on strike for a week (this was the 80s) the rule was miraculously suspended. However, by this point I was already cycling to my mates who lived a short walk from school and leaving the bike there during the day so I carried on doing that.
Then at high school there was actually provision for bikes - loads of wheel bender stands, all under a corrugated tin roof, but hardly anyone used them such were the tales of any bike being left there being nicked. Plus I only lived a 5 minute walk away, so it was hardly worth risking my Claude Butler racer. 
If you're thinking that my high school couldn't have possibly been that bad, while I was there it was used as a location during the filming of the Beiderbecke Affair (and sequels) renamed as San Quentin High - all they did was change the sign.


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## subaqua (19 Feb 2017)

Cycled to school to avoid being bullied on way home and at lunchtime. Could ride home in 5 mins so best way to avoid being bullied. 

Not many bikes in bike sheds. Had a big lock as it would have been nicked and a pump as tyres regularly let down.


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## EltonFrog (19 Feb 2017)

I'm reminded of another school-truant-adventure.

My school in East Acton used to issue 'pass outs' if you needed to leave the premises for dentists, doctors or such. This being the '70s the form was typed on type writer, the who, what, why and when, then the details were hand written by a member of staff. Then you showed it to a teacher or prefect when you left. Well, I had one of these and I forged a few on my mothers type writer, it took me blumen ages of pain staking trial and error to do them.

Not long before I took my very first trip to my aunts in Welling, as mentioned up thread, I used one of these pass outs to bunk off school at lunch time and reccce the ride to see how far I could get.

So, off I go on my trusty Kingpin, down to Gunnersbury, over Kew Bridge then Thames Road/Harrington Road to the Great Chertsey Road / Clifford Avenue. I realise that I've made mistake looking at the old AtoZ I had and I turn right towards the Lower Richmond Road.

I get to the traffic lights and stop to turn left at the South Circular jct. I look across the road at the oncoming traffic. shoot! shoot! shoot! There in a blue Austin A35 van...my nemesis...My mothers boyfriend.

I'm up on the pavement turn left and pedal my bollix off towards the Upper Richmond Road, panicked I turn left into the Kingsway down the wrong way of a one way street, I know he's seen me because he tries to follow, but he can't catch me, I cycle to a footpath over a railway bridge and I waited for a while before setting off home, crapping myself in anticipation of the bollocking I'm going to get when I'm home.

My mother only saw this bloke three times a week, we had no phone in those days so I was dreading, nay, cacking myself about the next visit...for some reason though it was never mentioned, I have no idea why.

43 years later I was cycling around that junction on RLS 100 on closed roads and that memory came flooding back and it brought a huge grin to my face.






Austin A35.

Oh Christ , another memory jogged about that van and my bike.


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## johnnyb47 (19 Feb 2017)

I remember when our local petrol station had a car tyre inflator fitted up on the forecourt. The kids would regularly go there to pump there tyres up. After a few months we were banned from using it after a number of tyres exploding off the rim from being over inflated. If memory serves my right ,this problem was happening up and down the country and was highlighted in the press.


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## Blue Hills (19 Feb 2017)

CarlP said:


> I'm reminded of another school-truant-adventure.
> 
> My school in East Acton used to issue 'pass outs' if you needed to leave the premises for dentists, doctors or such. This being the '70s the form was typed on type writer, the who, what, why and when, then the details were hand written by a member of staff. Then you showed it to a teacher or prefect when you left. Well, I had one of these and I forged a few on my mothers type writer, it took me blunen ages of pain staking trial and error to do them.
> 
> ...


Nice story CarlP - and only goes to show/confirm that the world/London can be a very small place. You never know who's watching


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## Accy cyclist (20 Feb 2017)

I had one of these when i cycled the mere 2 miles to school and back in the 1970's.


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## screenman (20 Feb 2017)

I had a Claude Butler Lugless when I was 14 and a fixie at that, it was unfortunately nicked.


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## Oldbloke (20 Feb 2017)

I used to ride various "bitsa" semi-wrecks to school in the 60s after my paper round/s. The local plod made regular visits to our bike sheds to check the roadworthiness of the contents.

Mine, along with large numbers of others, were regularly put to one side with various notes pointing out their "shortcomings" and in the more serious cases, told "not fit for further use"


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## burndust (20 Feb 2017)

with the exception of the cycling proficiency stuff at primary school, i don't remember anyone cycling to school primary or high, both had bike sheds but there was never anything in them, well except folk smoking at high school, they then knocked the bike shed down at high school for an extra car park, the whole high school is now gone and the new one about 10ft away, i kid you not


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## Will Spin (20 Feb 2017)

I rode my bike to school for 5 years during the 60s. We had to have passed our cycling proficiency before we were allowed ride to school, which was on the other side of town, about 2 miles away. On the way back I was always torn between racing with the lads or cycling slowly along chatting to a girl I was friendly with. Many of the kids cycled to school and we used to cycle miles around the countryside at weekends, once I got horribly lost in fog. It never rained and my bike never had a puncture. I had a Hercules with Sturmey Archer 3 speed.


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## Blue Hills (20 Feb 2017)

Which period are we talking about GGJ?

I stress that my comment wasn't snobby at all - I just thought most kids had bikes of some sort wayback - mine were a series of second hand things - all sturmey archer of course.


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## Milzy (20 Feb 2017)

Some little cretin roundhouse kicked me off my GT outpost into the path of an oncoming car. The car had time to swerve around. Maybe because it was on the way home and kids were all over the place and the driver wasn't speeding. If he wasn't mates with the school billy biff I'd have smashed his head in.


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## martint235 (20 Feb 2017)

I lived above a 33% cobbled street so I wasn't allowed to have a bike until I could buy it myself. I did have a play on mates' bikes but couldn't ride to school on one.


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## Globalti (20 Feb 2017)

Another memory has just surfaced.... my Mum bought me a brand new pair of trousers for school and of course under pressure she got me some flares. They had to be tucked into socks or bicycle clips to avoid them ending up oily and mangled by the chainring like my cords. Of course I fell off my bike and made penny-sized holes in both knees. I went to my mate Andy's house where his mum, seeing my distress, made me take them off and did some amazing repairs, what I guess is called darning where you replace the warp and weft. My mum didn't notice the repairs for a couple of weeks and when she did, she appeared, white faced with anger at my bedroom door, holding them out and asking "What's THIS?" I think she was mollified by the fact that I had had them repaired but still, a new pair of trousers was not something to be taken lightly as we hadn't entered the "throwaway" age where people seem to buy clothes for fun and only wear them once.


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## Dogtrousers (20 Feb 2017)

@Globalti Memories... _Every_ time I got a new pair of school trousers I would fall over and make holes in them, which would mean moderate-level trouble at home (tutting and dirty looks, no shouting). My mum was a dab hand at those darning-type "invisible" repairs.


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## Crackle (20 Feb 2017)

Not this bike, unfortunately I have only one or two pictures of it on film but this make and even the colour was my 1970's school bike, adventure bike, woods bike, touring bike etc... A Carlton Stadium


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## Sixmile (20 Feb 2017)

Great thread. I'm loving reading some of the tales of past glories here!

I never cycled to Secondary school as I lived very near but I cycled to Primary school quite a bit. I thought it was far but I've actually just measured it there, 0.6 miles! I remember cycling my purple and yellow mountain bike 'The Brute' (It might have been a Townsend as far as I remember) to school and parking it behind some dirty Perspex a the front of the school. The wheel wedged into tyre-width concrete slices set into the ground.

I never owned a helmet until I was an adult, carried no puncture repair kits, pumps or mudguards. We'd no hi-vis, cleats, specs, buffs, phones, GPS or never even carried any water or money but still went on rides for hours on end without a worry.


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## martint235 (20 Feb 2017)

Dogtrousers said:


> @Globalti Memories... _Every_ time I got a new pair of school trousers I would fall over and make holes in them, which would mean moderate-level trouble at home (tutting and dirty looks, no shouting). My mum was a dab hand at those darning-type "invisible" repairs.


My mum just patched them from inside and told me no one would notice. No one would notice a light grey patch (from previous trousers) on a dark grey pair of trousers cos "it was inside"???


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## Globalti (20 Feb 2017)

I have become pretty adept at invisible repairs over the years. My most risky and audacious was shortly after my parents had had the entire upstairs of the house re-carpeted in a pale greeny yellow colour. I was making an Airfix kit and I managed to knock over a full tin of silver Humbrol enamel on my new bedroom carpet. I knew that no amount of scrubbing with white spirit would save me as a large amount had soaked in but luckily I had watched the carpet fitters at work so I knew what was possible.

I went and fitted a sharp new blade to the Stanley knife, cut out a piece of the spare they had left us and, heart in mouth, cut out a square around the spill slightly smaller than my patch. I maneuvered some sticky tape into the hole sticky side up, checked the direction of the nap on the patch and fitted it into the hole, bashing it down with a hammer as I'd seen the fitters do then ruffling up the pile at the join. My Mum vacuumed the room quite a few times and never noticed my repair.


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## dfthe1 (20 Feb 2017)

burndust said:


> with the exception of the cycling proficiency stuff at primary school, i don't remember anyone cycling to school primary or high, both had bike sheds but there was never anything in them, well except folk smoking at high school, they then knocked the bike shed down at high school for an extra car park, the whole high school is now gone and the new one about 10ft away, i kid you not



You didn't go to high school in South Yorkshire did you?


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## burndust (20 Feb 2017)

dfthe1 said:


> You didn't go to high school in South Yorkshire did you?


nope, Central Scotland, take it, it was the same in South Yorkshire then?


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## EltonFrog (20 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> Nice story CarlP - and only goes to show/confirm that the world/London can be a very small place. You never know who's watching



Come to think of it, I should have known better, I was a bit of an idiot. The bike, The Dawes Kingpin was bought by the nemesis/blue van driver/my mums bloke, from a cycle shop on the Upper Richmond Road ( had to pay him back, with my own money 10 bob a week, later it was 50p a week) I should have known I was his territory. The bike by the way cost me £38 15s 3d with front dynohub lights and rear bag.

Another memory, my mum and I finally moved away from Willesden Junction where we were living with my granddad to our own mobile home in Chertsey, Surrey. On moving day during the autumn half term in October 1971 my mother had put all our worldly goods in to the blokes blue A35 van, and filled it up so there was no room for me or my bike, so I had to cycle from Willesden Junction to Chertsey on my own. I just googled it, it was only 17.5 miles bit it seemed a lot longer than that. Going down the Great West Road in '71 it had a segregated cycle path, now I notice its covered in cars.











This thread is bringing up all sorts of memories that I had forgotten.


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## Blue Hills (20 Feb 2017)

Please tell the younger ccers that that top pic of the Great West Road isn't 1971 

There is still a cyclepath of sorts on the Great West Road isn't there?


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## EltonFrog (20 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> Please tell the younger ccers that that top pic of the Great West Road isn't 1971
> 
> There is still a cyclepath of sorts on the Great West Road isn't there?



Neither of those photos are from the 70's, just posted to give an example, there is a cycle path of sorts but the original has been taken over by cars.


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## wonderdog (20 Feb 2017)

The bike, a second hand Ashby (a Brisbane creation IIRC) - single speed, hub brake, hand painted silver frost, bolt-on seat stays, weighed a ton - was a poor second choice to my horse in country Queensland (the top right hand bit of Australia). Said horse was a champion jumper able to clear a five strand barbed wire fence and bolt into the top paddock, which he often did on a frosty morning when I went out with the bridle to catch him. So it was back to the bike ... come to think of it, my own personal Eroica Australis ... long, dusty, corrugated roads, a shoot of a hill that seemed to go on forever, past a big eucalypt tree with the magpies that would swoop you in nesting season ... hot as buggery when it wasn't freezing. The kids who lived out the west side of the school had it GOOD. The teacher would drive round the farms in her flathead Ford V8 coupe with dicky seat and pick them up. Aye ... luxury, we used to live in shoebox in middle of t'road.


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## Nigeyy (21 Feb 2017)

Been enjoying this thread and the responses. I didn't think I had a story, until from the dim recesses of my mind, a suppressed memory came back....

One day in the early 1980's I was cycling to school, head down with my feet spinning (but alas my mind wandering). I was in the middle of large village in North Notts where I was going to school, and I was on the last leg, heading down the road towards the school. The road had houses on each side, and a little Spa shop on the left. Well, like I said, I was head down, trying to give it some and approaching the Spa shop when I looked up... to see I was going right into the back of a parked blue Bedford CF van!

I barely had time to swerve; I shoulder checked the back of the van, and ended up sprawled over the road (and certainly no helmet back in those days, I was _hard_). Probably fortunate not to be run over to be honest. Anyway, I get up, and to my horror see that there is a fair sized dent in the back of the van. Quick as a flash, I look around, see no one, and to my shame (what can I say? I was a stupid teenager), got back on my Raleigh Arena and cycled off even faster. I figured whoever owned the van was in the Spa shop, and I wasn't going to hang around to be responsible for my own stupidity. 

Well... imagine my surprize when later that day after I'd cycled home my Dad returned from work.... in his blue Bedford CF van. I'd only cycled into the back of my Dad's van, and the dent was even bigger than I thought. It had never occurred to me the van was my Dad's; he worked exclusively 30 miles to the north, so the last thing I would have expected to have seen would have been his van. 

My father passed away about 3-4 years ago. I never told him about what I'd done and to be honest I was never quite sure if -and I had a suspicion of this -he actually knew I'd cycled into the back of his van. He never said anything, so of course neither did I, and I never had the guts to bring it up when I was younger. I confessed all to my dear Mum and brother and sister a couple of years ago to come clean.


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## EltonFrog (21 Feb 2017)

I realise I keep going off topic because my stories are not school based, but I was a school boy I suppose.

I remember a couple more misadventures, memory jogged by @Nigeyy ...my first accident on a bike, I wasn't riding I was taking a 'backy' on a friends bike down the back alley off of Old Oak Lane and the bike tipped up I fell off and my right hand slapped down on the cobbles, it blumen hurt 'n'all in fact it kept hurting, and apparently I was crying in my sleep, I was eventually woken up and taken to A&E where it was discovered that I fractures two of my fingers, they were splintered up and made to feel better and sent on my way. 

Later, down that same back alley I learned to ride a bike, my mum bought some red thing with solid tyres (my 7th Birthday) for about seven bob from Portobello market, brought it home plonked me on pushed me off down the alley and I was on my wobbly way, I seem to recall it didn't take me very long to get the hang of it. About 18 months ago I saw that alley in the Film Eddie the Eagle, if you've seen it it's where young Eddie tries out his different sports to become an Olympian. Well that's where I learnt to ride.

One Saturday afternoon six years later I was riding the Kingpin down the Harrow Road in near Kensal Green, daydreaming a bit and I rode straight into the back of a parked Ford Escort, I went flying, a bloke came out of the Wimpy, checked his car, then checked me, no harm done just my pride hurt and no damage to the bike. Well hard those bikes.


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## arallsopp (21 Feb 2017)

When I was a little'un, the school run comprised two choices.

A: Walk with dad. The station was 20 mins brisk walk beyond the school, and the train left exactly 15 minutes after the school gates closed. Invariably one of my sisters or I would lose something, fall over, forget books, and generally threaten his onward journey to the point that we almost always had to run all the way just to give him a prayer. When a 5 year old can run two miles at an adult's marching pace, it builds strong legs.

B: Ride with mum. On the occasions that dad honoured his "I absolutely have to leave at xx:xx" and simply left without us, my mother, two sisters and I would ride to school. My mother had a shopping bike. She would stand on the left pedal and scoot. My elder sister would sit side saddle, holding on to the bars. My younger sister sat in a box for shopping on the back. My place was the opposite crank, which was pretty fearsome for mum's shins if she didn't keep the weight on her side. Fortunately I could wriggle the end of my school shoes into the bosses for the frame pump, and float all the way on 1/16th of paint and steel.

We kept that up until my elder sister went to the big school.


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## martint235 (21 Feb 2017)

arallsopp said:


> When I was a little'un, the school run comprised two choices.
> 
> A: Walk with dad. The station was 20 mins brisk walk beyond the school, and the train left exactly 15 minutes after the school gates closed. Invariably one of my sisters or I would lose something, fall over, forget books, and generally threaten his onward journey to the point that we almost always had to run all the way just to give him a prayer. When a 5 year old can run two miles at an adult's marching pace, it builds strong legs.
> 
> ...


You lucky, lucky person!!

My mum took me to school on my first day and that was it. After that I was on my own. It was about 15 mins walk to my first primary school and was noteable for the occasion the mid-afternoon bell was rung and Martin hadn't been counting how many times it had rung that day so assumed it was home time and buggered off. 2 4th years (god knows what they are called now) were despatched to bring me back to school. When I was 10, the school moved to the town centre and became 30 mins walk away. Secondary school was in the next town, Burnley, 4 miles away by bus. This was the Pennines though so we'd sit in class on a cold sunny day in January and word would come through at about 10.30 that all pupils from Bacup were to leave as snow was forecast. At noon, all pupils from Todmorden were sent home just as it started snowing. The 5 of us from Nelson were sent home once it was confirmed that the buses had stopped running so we had a 4 mile hike through ever deepening snow. The b******ds.


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## Globalti (21 Feb 2017)

That brings back memories of the morning milk delivery at primary school - a crate of half pint bottles would be delivered to the classroom and left in front of the hot stove. By break time the bottles would be half warm and half freezing and those that had frozen would have a cone of snowy creamy water pushing up the foil top. I can still remember sucking the thick cream then the milk up a straw, some of it freezing and some warm. That has to be one of my strongest childhood memories.


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## ianrauk (21 Feb 2017)

Globalti said:


> That brings back memories of the morning milk delivery at primary school - a crate of half pint bottles would be delivered to the classroom and left in front of the hot stove. By break time the bottles would be half warm and half freezing and those that had frozen would have a cone of snowy creamy water pushing up the foil top. I can still remember sucking the thick cream then the milk up a straw, some of it freezing and some warm. That has to be one of my strongest childhood memories.




Similar memories.
I used to be a milk monitor at school - delivering the milk to the class rooms. My overriding memory is that of going to the milk store and the overpowering smell of rancid milk.


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## martint235 (21 Feb 2017)

Globalti said:


> That brings back memories of the morning milk delivery at primary school - a crate of half pint bottles would be delivered to the classroom and left in front of the hot stove. By break time the bottles would be half warm and half freezing and those that had frozen would have a cone of snowy creamy water pushing up the foil top. I can still remember sucking the thick cream then the milk up a straw, some of it freezing and some warm. That has to be one of my strongest childhood memories.


Ours arrived in cartons and was always warm. I was initially puzzled as I lived on the opposite side of the valley from the school, up towards the farms so our milk always arrived in a bottle. It was also warm but for an entirely different reason and tasted much different (and better) than the carton stuff.


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## Blue Hills (21 Feb 2017)

ianrauk said:


> Similar memories.
> I used to be a milk monitor at school - delivering the milk to the class rooms. My overriding memory is that of going to the milk store and the overpowering smell of rancid milk.


yes it never quite seemed like normal milk, like so much school catering.
Of course this is why a certain woman abolished it, saint that she was.


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## boydj (21 Feb 2017)

I rode a single-speed (not that I knew that's what it was) to school, part-time job, and home again for a couple of years before I became a full-on, parka-wearing, Lambretta-riding mod.

My strongest memory is of coming to, trying to push my bike with the forks bent backwards and the front wheel jammed and bent against the frame, after my satchel had fallen into the front wheel. There was a girl was screaming beside me because I'd taken a considerable amount of skin off the side of my face and looked like a monster from a horror movie.


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## david k (22 Feb 2017)

We used to tease people who rode to school, spent years picking on them until we realised it was fun and quicker than the bus. We would shout at the from the bus if we caught them.

We were cycling home once and I got a puncture, we kept stopping to pump up the tyre to get another mile when the bus came past, we all hid our faces in our blazers knowing our previous teasing would come back to haunt us. It didn't w


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## juniorshysheep (22 Feb 2017)

freiston said:


> We used to do that too - the predominant lock was a grey capsule shaped combination lock with 4 rotating numbered 'barrels' and a length of chain going from one end to the other.
> 
> I found a (not very good) picture of the sort of lock - but I don't recall any plastic sleeving on the chain:
> 
> View attachment 338540



I was trying to remember if I even locked my bike when I did cycle the 2 miles to school in my Raleigh Burner, you've just jogged the memory, that was exactly it!! I had a newspaper round back then so the Burner saw plenty of action. I foolishly let someone borrow it as they lived slightly further away than me and I haven't seen it since 30 years later I still haven't given up the hunt for him and the bike...


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## Blue Hills (22 Feb 2017)

juniorshysheep said:


> I foolishly let someone borrow it as they lived slightly further away than me and I haven't seen it since 30 years later I still haven't given up the hunt for him and the bike...



In the finest traditions of this thread, name and shame him


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## alecstilleyedye (22 Feb 2017)

the episode i remember best was a load of us riding home from high school, me on a team murray bmx i think, and one chap at the front crashed, causing a chain reaction. my front wheel met my friend's dismounted arse as if it was trying to park itself in a human wheel bender, sending me over the bars. miraculously, we got up and carried on…


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## Grant Fondo (22 Feb 2017)

My nemesis...Gravel Hill in Poole. Ok its no Mt Ventou but steady climb for a long way as you head from Poole harbour out into the wilds of Dorset...good laff going home though!


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## martint235 (22 Feb 2017)

Grant Fondo said:


> View attachment 339090
> 
> My nemesis...Gravel Hill in Poole. Ok its no Mt Ventou but steady climb for a long way as you head from Poole harbour out into the wilds of Dorset...good laff going home though!


Plenty of room in the middle. Is the traffic generally nice to cyclists/motorcyclists in the centre or do you get the idiots who block you just for the hell of it?


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## Dogtrousers (22 Feb 2017)

I remember those barrel locks. They were very easy to undo if you had the nack.

I, of course didn't have the nack, because I was an uncool lummox. But lots of other, cooler, kids did.


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## Gixxerman (22 Feb 2017)

I was a very late learner, and only learned to ride a bike when I was 10 or so. All my mates could ride bikes, and I was also left at home as they are went out on rides, so there was some peer pressure. So much so that stabalisers where out of the question as the piss-taking would be unbearable. Any way, my dad or mum (can't remember which now) bought me my first bike which I now had to learn to ride. The bike itself was a small (as I was only ickle and was 14 or so before I started to grow) single speed with small (20 inch?) wheels. I think it was a second hand one from somewhere as we were not well-off. I cannot remember the make or colour. All I can remember, for some reason, is that it had cream grips and very sharp brakes. Learning to ride it consisted of my dad and my uncle (who lived with us) taking turns in wheeling me round and round the block. This went on for what must have been weeks and I still could not ride the bloody thing. So one weekend afternoon I was sat there in the house feeling fed up as I thought that I'd never learn to ride. Then, without warning, something stirred in me. "Bugger it, I'll ride this bike if it bloody kills me", I said to myself. So I got the bike out, got it near the curb cocked the peddle and off I went. I rode it round the block twice with no problems. My dad was aghast. "Bloody hell , all this time wheeling you round and round and you just get on it and ride it." I'm sure he must have felt that I pretended to not know how to ride for some reason as it was all so odd, but I certainly did not. I just decided in my own head that today is the day that I'd learn to ride. Still can't explain it myself. I rode it every spare minute I got after that. So I started riding it to school, which was about 2 miles away, all town roads riding. We had a bikeshed at school, that had what looked like 2 upside down mudgaurds that the wheels fitted in, covered by corrugated iron. I too used to take those barrel locks that most had, crack the combination (which was easy if you knew how) and swap then round / change the combination. This used to culminate with the groundsman / caretaker having to come out with his bolt croppers to release the bikes. The old steed lasted me several years until I eventually outgrew it. I then got a 5 speed racer for Christmas. This was bought from "Binks for Bikes" in Lincoln, and paid for on the nerver-never. It was brought home many days before the big day and sat on the upstairs landing, but I wasn't allowed it until Christmas day. I would sit on it and even try riding it on the landing and trying to change gears as I had never had a deraileur before. Again I cannot remember the make or colour. I did repaint it Daytona yellow some years later as was all the rage at the time. As said on here, water bottles and puncture repair kits were never carried. I do recall having a pump, but never recall having to use it in anger as the p*uncture fairy never struck. Then at 16, I got a Yamaha FS1E (Fizzie) moped (brown with crome side panels no less - reg number LJV453R) for which I paid the princely some of £250 and push bikes were forgotten. I started cycling again in my mid 40's, mostly due to keping myself fit to prolong my football playing days. It worked. I'm 52 and still playing twice a week. I now have 4 bikes.


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## Globalti (22 Feb 2017)

Pushing a kid around holding the saddle is the very worst way to teach them. Best is to remove the pedals, drop the saddle and let them scoot it along; they'll soon be asking for the pedals back.

Many of us lost interest in pedalling when motorbikes came along; I've never been as unfit as when I was a motorcyclist as you never had to walk anywhere. Many, me included, then got back into cycling when mountain bikes made cycling easier.


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## wonderdog (25 Feb 2017)

Globalti said:


> That brings back memories of the morning milk delivery at primary school - a crate of half pint bottles would be delivered to the classroom and left in front of the hot stove. By break time the bottles would be half warm and half freezing and those that had frozen would have a cone of snowy creamy water pushing up the foil top. I can still remember sucking the thick cream then the milk up a straw, some of it freezing and some warm. That has to be one of my strongest childhood memories.


HALF pint bottles??? For some reason, most Australia states had one third pints. Invariably the crows and magpies would find the bottles first and pierce the foil caps. Smirking birds with milk moustaches.


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## Katherine (25 Feb 2017)

wonderdog said:


> HALF pint bottles??? For some reason, most Australia states had one third pints. Invariably the crows and magpies would find the bottles first and pierce the foil caps. Smirking birds with milk moustaches.


You're right, they were one third pint bottles.


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## Blue Hills (26 Feb 2017)

Katherine said:


> You're right, they were one third pint bottles.


That's what i vaguely remember.
But I also remember the term "gill" and wiki tells me that that is a quarter pint.
Of course the fact that some of us remember anything about this quaint thing marks us as of a certain age.
The removal of school milk was one of the first salvoes againt the post war settlement.


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## freiston (26 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> That's what i vaguely remember.
> But I also remember the term "gill" and wiki tells me that that is a quarter pint.
> Of course the fact that some of us remember anything about this quaint thing marks us as of a certain age.
> The removal of school milk was one of the first salvoes againt the post war settlement.


I only remember school milk coming in ⅓ pint bottles - all slotted into galvanised wire crates. I remember whisky being sold by the ⅙ gill from the optic.


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## matiz (26 Feb 2017)

freiston said:


> I only remember school milk coming in ⅓ pint bottles - all slotted into galvanised wire crates. I remember whisky being sold by the ⅙ gill from the optic.
> 
> I remember the school milk but not the whiskey,maybe that was for the teachers.


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## Tim Hall (26 Feb 2017)

My primary school was only half a mile from home, so I walked there (on my own, obvs.), except when the week of Cycling Proficiency came along, and everyone in my year cycled there, parking their bikes in the (long) drive by just leaning them, unlocked, against the hedge. The day I passed I went for a ride with my Dad "round the block", then "round the block but using the next road over" then "round the block using the next road over after that." 

I left that school to go to grammar school six or seven miles away and went by train and bus (free season ticket and bus pass), although I did go through a phase of cycling across town and parking my bike at some friends of my parents who lived a stone's throw from the station. I doubt it saved me any time though. Occasionally in the sixth form I'd cycle the whole way. The class room must have been minging, full of the smell of teenaged boy. I remember when I was in the third or fourth year, our English teacher, Paddy Carpmael, asked who would like to go on a bike ride at half term. I was up for that, as were a handful of others so we turned up with bikes. I don't remember any permission forms or mass of paperwork, just bikes and a pack of sandwiches. We went up Leith Hill, and Mr. Carpmael bought us all a half of cider in Coldharbour.

I was (and still am) in Scouts, and we'd organise ourselves to go off on a bike ride on Sundays. No leaders, just half a dozen hoodlums on bikes, more sandwiches, no helmets (they hadn't been invented), minimal (if any) tools. We had to knock on a door to borrow a spanner as one kid's rear wheel had shifted in the dropout and was fouling the nearside chainstay.


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## hatler (28 Feb 2017)

From 7 - 11 I cycled 0.6 miles to school and back twice every day (home for lunch) on my faithful Dawes Dapper.

Only real memories of the school cycle were pulling massive rear wheel skids on the grass verge just down from the school (until one of my mates took out the legs of one of the younger girls right in front of her mum, at which point this practice was officially frowned upon), having a parent complain when about 20 of us formed a peloton on the pavement, and turning up at home absolutely drenched at least once after a biblical downpour. Lunch at home was invariably a slice of bread, a slice of Edam cheese and an apple.

Oh yes. And getting a bollocking from my dad when I failed to put the bike away in the garage.


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## hondated (1 Mar 2017)

Salad Dodger said:


> My senior school had a bike shed big enough to accommodate the whole field of the Tour de France, but hardly anybody cycled.
> 
> I didn't cycle, but was allowed to park my moped, and later my beloved 200cc Yamaha, in the bike shed.............
> 
> We had about an hour and twenty minutes for lunch, and the school was only a couple of miles from the edge of town, so on a nice day I would leg it from my last morning lesson, back to the common room to grab my helmet and leather jacket, then go for a ride for about an hour in the countryside before returning for the afternoon. Unless it was Wednesday, which was games afternoon. On Wednesday I would get registered for the afternoon then me and a schoolmate who also had a motorbike would ride over to the local sports centre to play the world's quickest and most perfunctory game of squash (in case the teachers checked up that we had attended), and then we would hotfoot it out to Brands Hatch which was only about 8 miles away, to catch the last couple of hours of the general practice afternoon. Cars in the morning, bikes in the afternoon, free admittance and pot luck as to what sort of bikes would be "testing". Often it was the works Kawasaki team (as the bikes were built by Boyers of Bromley) and sometimes Texaco Heron Suzuki as they were based in (I think) West London. Happy days!


Nice memories SD I must be older as I remember when Boyers raced Triumphs. I think I am correct in saying that Texaco Heron Suzuki were based in Beddington Lane Croydon at least when Barry Sheen was riding for them. Was the Saltbox Café Biggin Hill still open in your days.


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## hondated (1 Mar 2017)

CanucksTraveller said:


> I cycled to school on an 80s Raleigh Racer, and later on a Peugeot ANC Halfords race replica, probably about 5 miles each way from Burnage to Whalley Range in Manchester traffic. This was from about age 13 to 16.


You cycled in Whalley Range omg.
I say that because attending a residential union training course I went for a run one evening and when I got back I was greeted by a chorus of locals on the course telling me that you do not go running of a night in Whalley Range.


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## hondated (1 Mar 2017)

Globalti said:


> That brings back memories of the morning milk delivery at primary school - a crate of half pint bottles would be delivered to the classroom and left in front of the hot stove. By break time the bottles would be half warm and half freezing and those that had frozen would have a cone of snowy creamy water pushing up the foil top. I can still remember sucking the thick cream then the milk up a straw, some of it freezing and some warm. That has to be one of my strongest childhood memories.


Oh dear me you've prompted a memory that I didn't want. Like many of us I guess in the early 60s to raise some funds for a bike and later a motorbike I would help the milkman do his rounds.
This particular morning he had gone into a house to give a lady some sort of help, ok I was a naïve youngster, and the float was blocking the road of someone trying to get past.
So being the good Samaritan I decided to move it out of the way. I mean how difficult was it going to be, all you had to do was release the handbrake, push down a pedal and steer it !.
Hmm easy then !
Lets just say that when the milkman returned he didn't notice the float had been moved and that it might have been a little too close to the car it was parked next to.
Probably later held me in good stead when it came to special awareness when I was learning to drive.


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## Salad Dodger (1 Mar 2017)

Was the Saltbox Café Biggin Hill still open in your days.[/QUOTE]

I am not familiar with it, but then we used to ride out to The Halfway Cafe on the A20 at Harrietsham for our meet-ups.


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## Stonechat (2 Mar 2017)

Globalti said:


> That brings back memories of the morning milk delivery at primary school - a crate of half pint bottles would be delivered to the classroom and left in front of the hot stove. By break time the bottles would be half warm and half freezing and those that had frozen would have a cone of snowy creamy water pushing up the foil top. I can still remember sucking the thick cream then the milk up a straw, some of it freezing and some warm. That has to be one of my strongest childhood memories.


Yes I also think they were 1/3 of a pint bottles


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## Globalti (2 Mar 2017)

I was much smaller at the age of five.


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## Gravity Aided (2 Mar 2017)

I rode to and from junior high school on my Schwinn Varsity. A fine bicycle, but I lost control and had an off in the midst of a seldom used intersection on some loose gravel, and skidded across through the intersection. Luckily, it was the early 70's, so I was wearing jeans as well as cycling gloves. I escaped unscathed.


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## Lostmiles (7 Mar 2017)

The school run on the bike. A blast from an early sixties past.
Great stuff in the morning free-wheeling down Foljambe Road with tie and blazer flapping all over the place but doing the homeward run in the afternoon; it was hands under the straight handlebars for more pull and standing up on the pedals to crank up to the top of the hill. I had no gears on my bike. Shirt and blazer ringing wet with sweat because of the haversack full of books strapped to my back. 

I cycled quite a bit as a kid out to Matlock and back or Fox House, Owler Bar with sandwiches and a GLASS pop bottle with water in it. Weighed a ton in my bag and it usually squashed my potted meat sandwiches. I once cycled to Hucknall Air display from home in Chesterfield and back. The mind boggles. I got fleeting glimpses of aircraft during the afternoon from standing on the top of a little hillock outside the aerodrome fence.
Doing the weekly Saturday shop on the bike with 4 loaded shopping bags on the handle bars and a full rucksack on my back for the return journey. Thankfully it was all down hill from the little Co-op shop to home. Like others have commented I have no recollection of having a puncture........as a kid.


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## Milkfloat (8 Mar 2017)

I used to cycle-train-cycle to school. Luckily back in the day when trains had guard vans and you could just sling your bike in with all the others. There were 4 or 5 of us that did it daily and we each had a station when it was our turn to open the window and stick our heard out to check that the bikes were not being nicked. I was lucky in that Dumpton Park station was my turn and on the way home the curve of the platform meant you often could not see the van - so no need to bother. Many a time at school my tyres were let down or lights nicked, being an idiot I never carried a pump or took the lights off.


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## Katherine (18 Mar 2017)

I finally remembered to photograph a bottle of school milk and it's interesting to see that they are still a one third pint rather than a rounded up or down metric measurement. Under 5s get the full cream blue top for free. The rest of the school pay 15p for the semi skimmed green top.


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