Steve Thomas traces the birth of British mountain biking, from ‘tracker bikes’ to Muddy Fox
Words Steve Thomas Pics Steve Behr, Drew Lawson & Graham Wallace
Although it’s widely accepted that the branding and bare bones of mountain biking as we know it originated in the USA, there’s an often-understated British tale that runs along a near-parallel trail to the Californian legend.
Long ago, when The Beatles were at their pinnacle and before the glam rockers of the early 1970s had had a chance to sew on their sequins and scale their high heels, a rebellious band of young Brits were already hurtling down grassy fields and jumping off planks. They called their scrapheap contraptions ‘tracker’ or ‘scrambler’ bikes, but these were effectively our British ‘klunkers’.
Just about any detail from the birth of UK mountain biking comes dazed in a purple haze and splattered in mud and blood. However, deep in the Chilterns lived a young motorcycle trials and cycle speedway rider named Geoff Apps. This inventive guy had long been building and bodging his own advanced versions of tracker bikes, based around salvaged frames, motorcycle parts and fat tyres.
After a decade of refining and tinkering, Apps produced his first dedicated off-road machine – the 1979 Range Rider Cross Country Cycle, an eccentric-looking high-rider with 650b wheels and a hand-built steel frame. This evolved into the Cleland Cycles Aventura, which went into production in 1982 and could be considered the first recognisable British mountain bike. Thus, Geoff Apps must stand as the great grandaddy of British mountain biking.
Tuning dreams into reality
As the early 1980s came around, Britain was in post-punk-era turmoil, with war, strikes, unemployment, privatisation and race riots. It was a time of despair and revolutionary dreams for many, including Apps, who approached a Telford frame builder named Jeremy Torr to turn his radical visions into hard-steel commercial reality by manufacturing the Aventura.
Torr had already encountered off-road riding. “The first intimation I had about not riding bikes on the road was joining the whackos at the Rough Stuff Fellowship on a mud-and-shingle trip over the Welsh hills,” he tells us. “That made me realise that 700c (29in) x 1.25in tyres were rubbish off tarmac, so when Geoff Apps called me and asked if I could build an unusual frame design that ran 600c (24in) x 2in tyres [later changed to 650b due to supply issues], I was happy to say yes.”
