Rejuvenating my old bike

In the 1960s, 70s & 80s, I did a lot of touring cycling in the UK, Ireland and France. Typically 50 hilly miles a day. I put together a nice Mercian frame and decent parts to make an effective touring machine.

As I lived in Cheltenham, which is fairly flat and prone to cycle theft, I also assembled a shopping/commuting machine with just 5 gears, straight handlebars, a basket and a powerful horn. The mudguards didn't match partly to save me buying a new set and also to uglify the machine and make it less likely to catch the eye of a thief.

Recently I moved to Stroud, a town that has hardly any flat roads at all - and neither does much of the surrounding countryside. I brought my old Mercian with me and did some basic maintenance to deal with it being almost entirely unused for 35 years.

As the washer in the pump had perished, I ordered one through Amazon and also 2 inner tubes. Being used to an 18" pump, I was pretty dubious about the 34cm Draper pump but it was very efficient. I discovered that although my tyres were flat, they were airtight and have already ridden over 100 miles on them. They don't look good though...

Even back in the day, my saddle attracted adverse comment

Surely it's very uncomfortable? Not really. Contemporary saddles did have more leather but the excess didn't actually do anything.  Another eccentricity was the gear changers on the ends of the handlebars. 

Made by Campagnolo, so much more convenient than the traditional lever on the downtube. You could fit levers up on the steering column but they tended to get in the way of swinging your leg over or if you upturned the bike for roadside repairs. These control a 5 speed rear block and a double clanger giving me 10 gears from 32" to 108". The lowest gear definitely isn't low enough for the local hills. In years gone by, that 32" took me up just about everything but I often had to stand on the pedals to do it. There was so much torque that I once had the thread under the freewheel block strip when climbing a hill in Ireland.

 Another Campag part is the pedals - they cost me £19 when ordinary parts were about £1.50 in Halfords. (I remember the price because £19 was a lot and a friend had a pedal disintegrate and I was shocked at how cheap the replacement we bought in Hereford was) My toe-clips and straps would appear to be totally obsolete these days 

Another eccentricity is the dual brake levers - actually "lazy levers" were quite popular at the time. They work really well and give you access to braking from several different handlebar positions.

Another anachronism is the bottle dynamo supplying front and rear lights - with tungsten filament bulbs. Nowadays, I guess it's LEDs and rechargeable batteries.

It's adequate for taking my legally allowed exercise during these CONVID-19 days but rather than a renovation, I think I'm going to use the experience to inform my purchase of a modern machine with disk brakes, indexed gears and maybe a little suspension.