A Raleigh Twenty aged 40

So here's a little Raleigh Twenty 20 inch wheeled shopping bike, which for the sake of argument I will suggest is from 1971, thus making it forty this year. What caught my eye on it, was the neat little rear fender with the integrated dynamo light, sooo much classier than most modern LED bike lights you can get. That was the inspiration behind my efforts to convert an old dynamo light into an led one, which you can read here.

This Twenty though is a little more rough and ready. All the bikes here are currently wearing a fairly unhealthy coat of winter dirt and grime.

Still, it's getting someone around Nottingham though!

And this blurry I-don't-really-want-to-stand-in-the-rain-and-take-pictures photo shows the neat Twenty graphic text on that super low top/cross bar.

Bicycle Safari Navigates to Nottingham

So after a couple of weeks taking in the sun, the sights and the bikes of Barcelona, The Bicycle Safari has once again packed its trunks and headed back up to cold old Nottingham England.

And what better way to celebrate being back in what used to be the centre of bicycle production in Britain than a classic Raleigh racing bike.

Nice vintage bicycle graphics on the seat tube.

Vintage lettering and the usual bicycle logos.

And a nice welcome back to blogging the old, interesting and rad bikes sitting around rusting up the streets!

Locking bicycle fork

I've seen one or two of these around before, but not taken a picture of them. I presume there's some kind of flaw to their design that makes them massively dangerous.

But if there isn't, they do seem a smart way to lock a front wheel. Perhaps eliminating the need to carry two locks with you.
Quite a neat bicycle overall.

Raleigh Criterium Racing Criteria

How about this for a racing criteria, you need to have sweet retro bike graphics all over your bike or you can't come and race it.

This Raleigh Criterium looks smart, I like the continuation between the stripes on the top tube and the seat tube. Neat.
Raleigh racing showing their stuff.

Here is the Raleigh Criterium.

And here's a photo which should have been awesome if I had taken it properly and in focus! Yuck! Anyway, following on from the 333 Special Carbon frame from Monday, here's the classic 501 Reynolds sticker, and a colour coordinated mountain bike pedal on this vintage Raleigh racing bike.

Raleigh Racer Equipe Equipped Rationally

Another day another Raleigh bicycle from here in Nottingham. This one doesn't have the awesome vintage logos we've seen on others, but does have a questionable teal and pink colour scheme.

Nice bit of banding on the top tube.

Questionable bit of colour coordination on the bars, with that vintage Raleigh badge in the middle.

The Aerospace Contour - Raleigh Pulsar

This 'aerospace contour' sticker is living on an oldish Raleigh Pulsar, I don't know the story behind it, but wow do I suddenly want a space shuttle graphic on my own bike.

It comes with the usual guarantees of supposedly quality tubing, in this case 18 - 23 controlled carbon.
Regular viewers will notice this has been locked up in exactly the same place as that classic Raleigh town bike I posted the other day. That's one thing I'm noticing that's different between Nottingham and Lund. Whereas in Lund there was a mass of locked bikes that sat indefinitely in the racks around the town, bikes in Nottingham move. After a certain time in the evening, most bikes have disappeared off with their owner (well you hope with their owner). Perhaps it is just a prevalence of bike theft that keeps the locked bike population down?

Raleigh Vogue is hardly posing

Raleigh Vogue could have been a name for some super stylish bike...

and perhaps this was when it first came out. But the passage of time hasn't been very kind to the style of these graphics.

So perhaps less vogue, more retro.

The Classic Nottingham Raleigh Bike

I've been talking about the kind of bikes that you find in Nottingham. The old Raleigh factory works means that there's this huge amount of classic British steel sitting around in the local bike racks. I spotted this one, and just thought, what a great example of the breed!

This little detail on the front fender is great. I've seen a few examples of brands putting little mascots or emblems on the front fender and this has that same feel.
This era of Raleigh's all carry the Made in Nottingham badge somewhere. Even if it wasn't always 100% true!
A very golden version of the Raleigh head tube logo.
From Nottingham, this bike was taken to London to be sold by E.Q. Bates cycles, and then later brought back up to it's place of origin haha.
Some casual pinstriping.
And there we have it, classic British Nottingham Raleigh.

Vintage bicycle logos by the bucket load

Ok so here's something a bit different from the usual collection of rad bicycles found on the streets of Sweden. This blog has become a bit focused on the graphics and logos that you find on these great old bikes, so why not celebrate that by actually turning them back into sweet graphics. Getting rid of the rust, scratches, abuse and grime that they face on the streets.

To appreciate where these are from click the link below them to see the original bike rusting and rotting away somewhere.

This red Monark goes back to when I first started collecting pictures of these bikes it remains one of my favourites.

Svenskt kvalitets fabrikat badges are always great to spot around.

Super simple but effective Fram king logo here.

This British Raleigh was seen on the Bicycle Safari expedition to Copenhagen earlier this year.

Again another less usual kind of logo from Weserkrone, but one that does really work for it's differences.

India also gets a look in, with this Hero cycle that somehow had made it from the subcontinent to the harsh streets of Sweden.

Bicycle Safari goes overland to Copenhagen

Normally the Bicycle Safari posts from Lund, in southern Sweden. But in the spirit of a real safari we've been travelling recently. Taking the super massive Öresund Bridge over to Copenhagen (Köpenhamn) we travelled overland and took a look at the local bike scene whilst there.

The similarities to the very nearby Swedish towns was obvious, if more biased towards Danish brands. There were a lot of very interesting modern bikes knocking around, mixing modern design with being very practical city bikes. Very interesting stuff. Take a look at the Avenue bicycle company to get an idea of what I mean.

More interesting to The Safari side of things though was the proliferation of Nottingham built Raleigh bicycles. Not sure what the connection is, but Copenhagen is full of them. Here's a black Tourist De Luxe. Great English style!

From better times of British industry.