Trackers

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Due to the popularity of young people modifying their bikes for riding off-road there must be footage somewhere. But one problem in tracking it down was that the activity, and the bikes had many different names depending on where the activity took place.

I am aware of another film of a 'tracker' style bike taking part in a cyclo-cross race, so there must have been a degree of crossover between the two activities.

The children's TV or BBC/ITV news coverage of the day must have reported on this topic. The best we can hope is that some of this material has survived and that somebody, realising the importance as social history, will one day make it available to others.

 

[Iwasgoodonce]

Wow. Just gone through the thread. Turns out I unknowingly had one. In fact, the same model as in a much earlier reply. I’m sure I spotted a Vindec Trekker. It has big chrome fork braces, a very heavy frame a Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub. It weighed so much that often when I fell off it I ended up in orbit around it rather than on the floor. I’m sure light bent around it.

Lots of happy memories of riding it in Dartington woods. In South Devon.

 

[Rikoned]

The Scouting event was the first National Scout cyclo cross meeting
https://cms.scouts.org.uk/media/12901/fs295306-milestones-of-scouting.pdf

Perhaps the Scouts were quite inclusive about "cyclo-cross". Are you a Scout + Do you have a bike?

For contrast here's a picture of the National Schoolboys' Cyclo-cross Championship
at the same venue (Gilwell Park), one month after the Scouting event - December 1968
programme

https://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/n...yclo-cross-news-photo/574056493?adppopup=true


More Scout cyclo-cross
Barnet 1976

https://www.barnetscouts.com/gallery/22nd-finchley/25-1976-cyclo-cross

Very low quality photo but shows inclusive handlebar rules!

 

[Iwasgoodonce]

The spectators don’t look too concerned in that first photo!

Unless he is howling, “ Noooooooo!”

 

[Wyndbrook]

My tracking days were the mid to late 60's, although not aware of the name at the time, we were all 'scrambling'.
Usually Friday evenings, a typical lap was a loop around the primary school playground, including some steps, across the road into a local farm and Into a small hilly wood, back around a manure heap past the milking parlour and back into the minimal traffic road for another lap.
Not really any special bikes, we all used whatever we had, my friend Colin had a pair of old motocycle scrambler bars and a rear snobby, and that was it. I sometimes used to practice at home on a wreck with no tyres, just rode on the rims around the garden.
Sixteen was always the end for our racing endeavours.
Schoolboy scrambling had not quite commenced, but hit that magic birthday and a provisional licence quickly meant the open road on an upto 250cc bike.