Thank you everyone for stirring up my brain and printing nonsense regarding British bicycles,,,To be honest, clubmen in the 50's would ride anything they could get their hands on and the bike they rode on the Sunday ride was also their utility bike for riding to work, racing, or going Youth Hostelling
After initially starting off at age 8, on a Rudge witworth 24" wheeled thing with one gear, rod brakes and only a rear mudguard,I then progressed to a Hercules Kestrel Tourist in Black with cream panels, a heralleur derailer( made by Hercules also and a hit and miss affair) and a single front chainset with the "Hand " emblem holding the thing together, My brother went one step better and got a light blue Rudge Tourist bike...both of our bikes had the Allrounder handlebars and to be honest, we didn't need anything better, he had a Sturmey Archer 3 speed with the gh6 front dynohub. On these bikes we rode hundreds of miles to Youth hostels far and near.
Soon afterwards, I turned the handlebars upside down, chopped a good inch from each side of the saddle and began to think I was a Racer.. I joined the local Cycling Club ( Redcar Wheelers) and not one person gave me grief about my daft bike..I soon put in a pair of decent wheels, Samir rims and Normandy hubs but on fixed wheel...still no grief from the others and they were a very mixed bunch and a good ten years older than I was..As I remeber on those first clubruns, there were 2 Coventry Eagles, 1 Holdsworth mistral, 1 Viking Tour of Britain, 1 wearwell and a Bates with diadrant forks..Those guys would of ridden anything available and shortly afterwards, I went to work at Jack Taylor's , had Norman help me build my first frame for myself but it looked nothing like any Jack Taylor before or after,,,I did fancy cut lugs, very short wheelbase ( by their standards) and more braze on's than they had used up to that time including the rod changer Simplex front derailler,,,I wanted my name on it but Jack put Jack Taylor on when he painted it Flam red with sky blue panels...I sold it shortly afterwards to a chap named Mick Pase, he died on a motor cycle about a year later so I don't know where my bike ended up.
So, all I can say, in our neck of the woods anyway, there was no snobbery at all and all the riders were extremely kind to newbies
Colin Laing Chandler Arizona.