Ok, so having received the green light, its time to start the search, but what am I looking for? It’s a build project, but I have no specific brand in mind!!
My old bike from when I first started racing was a Ron Kitching – I’d got the frame & cobbled the rest of the bike together from old parts (my first ever build!). Sadly, the only photo I have is this one (upper bodies cropped to spare everyones’ dignity – this was the 70’s, the hairdos should not be exposed to the public!) it’s the bike to the right with the dark bar tape.
As the eagle-eyed may notice, I’d rocked up in rugby kit & Converses, despite this I still managed to finish 4th in the District Championship (yes, there were more than 4 entrants!).
I may have managed to acquire a few items of proper cycling kit since then….
Eventually, that bike was kitted out with some lovely old (even then!) Campagnolo components that I’d inherited – sadly, I’ve no idea what happened to it, I’d moved out, my parents downsized and somewhere along the way it vanished 😢.
Starting out on this new build project I asked my father if he knew, but he can’t remember – I like to think that someone may still have it out there somewhere and it didn’t end up at the tip!
So back to the search criteria for the new build – I suspect Campagnolo will feature heavily, but putting nostalgic reasonings to the side, I think the frame needs to be something a little higher spec than I could afford when I was a 14 year old, sorry Ron 😞 (having said that, I’ll bet the Campagnolo components I had then would cost a pretty penny today!!).
Time to do some research as to what is available and narrow down my options…