1930 Raleigh Gent’s Model Superbe X Frame

1930 Raleigh Gent’s Model Superbe X Frame

Sturmey-Archer 3-Speed

24″ Frame

28″ Wheels

Frame No H63876

(Now sold)

THE ROAD WHICH HAS NO ENDING…

It is the road that matters – the old Road – the only Road – the one true Road of Heart’s Desire. For I believe profoundly in the dictum of Robert Louis Stevenson, that it is the journey, and not what we find at the journey’s end, which brings us real happiness.

Do you say there are many roads? I reply that there is but one.

The road through the Trossachs, the road to Betts-y-Coed, the road to Newlands Corner, the road by Wharfs-side to Bolton Abbey, the road through the Isle of Oxney to Rye, the road to Dedham and Flatford Mill, the road over Dartmoor, the road to Killarney, the road to Miller’s Dale: these are not different roads, but merely stages of one Great Gay Road.

And this road is not confined to the British Isles; it stretches beyond the utmost limits of her far-flung Colonies and Dominions to embrace all the wide spaces of the world.

I grant there are different methods of traversing it …but for me one method is as much too slow as another is too fast. I cannot taste the true glamour of the road as a pedestrian, choked by the fumes of tar. Nor can I taste it as one of a packed line of impatient car drivers, hot and cross because an inoffensive old cow has seen fit to meander across the road and hold up traffic.

So just as there is only one real Road, so there is only one true way of tasting its joys to the full, and that – need I say it? Do you not know it? is through the bicycle.

– 1930 Raleigh Catalogue

This X Frame is in very good original condition, retaining its first paint, with box lining and original transfers. It was owned by one family for a long time, and has had little use. Apparently the maid of the household had instructions to polish the Raleigh every week, with the result that some of the lining and transfers on the top of the bike – which received more eager polishing – have worn thin.

Luckily, the maid appears not to have bent down to polish the chain-case, whose lining and transfers are still nearly like new!

By 1930 Raleigh had started using chrome, and some of the brightwork is tarnished with age. It retains its original Sturmey-Archer 3-Speed (with matching Sturmey-Archer front hub) and Raleigh pedals. I’ve ridden it and everything functions as it should.