Being a Yorkshireman, so therefore a Northerner, I'd have to agree with Norris here and say 'up north' we used the term 'Track'........you wouldn't say 'Im off T' ride path'......that would mean youd'e be riding on the footpath [or sidewalk for the US]
On a national scale, I can't ever recall the 'National PATH championships'!......so howcome the term 'path' was ever used?
Cheers Kevin Sayles Bridgwater Somerset UK.....not so far from Newport Velodrome, where we use Track bikes.
> 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