Thanks for the couple of invitations to pitch into this debate with my ten-pennyworth of recollection. I hope that Crumpy is reading this as I need him to edit out my mistakes.
Reading the many contributions on the topic I first of all felt alienated from the term* Road-Path *as I was more used to the term *Road-Track..* as this more appropriately described the joint use to which we used to put such frames.
Then I started to wonder whether the difference in terms reflected the north v south geographical divide that used to and still exists to this day in the UK..increasingly so in terms of income ie did southerners from London, Kent and Surrey ride on paths to the office, while northerners rode on roads to their factories. But so much for my amateur sociology.
In effect the two terms described the same type and style of bike frame, but is interseting to note that Harry Rensch the maker of Paris bikes in Stoke Newington, London described his frames as *Path* models, while Bob Jackson, up in industrial Leeds described his as *Track *ones. Somewhere in the middle of the country Mercian used the term* Track. *There again, Condor and Hetchin in London preferred the word *Path*, and Hill Special in the murky nothern textile town of Padiham also, very surprisingly called his frames*Path *ones.Meanwhile David Rattray up in Scotland called his Flying Scot models*Path *ones, Buckley Bros in London preferred *Path* too, but Pennine in Bradford, LH Brookes in Manchester, both up north, used* Track*, as did Bates of London and Les Ephgrave, also in London. Sitting on the fence in the debate was Sandy Holdsworth, also of London who referred to his Zephyr frame as being..wait for it...*Track, Path and Road.*
No English builder that I know of or any of the thousands of cyclits whom I have kniown have ever used the term