• I'm planning on building up a touring bike for my partner for her birthday.

    Must be lightweight, have a wide gear range, pannier mounts. Mixte/step through frames nice but not essential. Ideally something 90s, nice light steel tubing. Basically a Dawes Galaxy or something similar. She's 5'4", so I'm guessing something around 50cm ctc would be ideal

    The only catch is that it has to be a "nice colour"... she has flat out refused a couple of recent eBay finds on the grounds that it looks too dark or the decals are ugly. Frankly, I respect her commitment to aesthetics. No point owning a bike you can't sit and stare at

    UPDATE: Have now got ours hands on a lovely raleigh royal courtesy of @tomatoe. It's a little on the long side for her with drops, so we're going to try it out with risers. so we're now looking for the following:

    • North road style bars (e.g. with rise & backsweep)
    • Tall, short reach quill stem
    • Brake levers (for cantis)
    • grips
    • these Jtek thumb shifter converters. Will probs just get these new but if anyone has a spare set that would be cool... or Paul thumbies going cheap...

    Will probs get some of these bits new, but thought it worth checking on here first!

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