My Bikes
At present I have three bikes, having recently sold my Claude Butler hybrid. My "best" bike is an Aravis Super Tourer, built by Byercycles in Bedfordshire. It's a beautiful Reynolds 631steel frame touring bike in blue, with 700c wheels and mainly Shimano Deore components. It has 32mm tyres which are wide enough to deal with roughish tracks but still narrow enough for tarmac roads. It isn't the fastest bike in the world, but it's still capable of bowling along nicely when required. It has a flat bar rather than drops - I find this arrangement best nowadays because it allows me to hold a slightly more upright position when riding. The quite widely spaced 27 speed gearing gives me plenty of choices on the flat and on hills - quite important on long trips when the panniers can be well filled and quite heavy. I mainly use this bike in the spring and summer months.
My "training" bike is a Specialized Sirrus Elite, bought in 2005 from EBC in Edinburgh. It's a hybrid bike, with ATB style flat bars and V-brakes, but a very light road-style frame and carbon forks. The bike has been added to and altered in several ways. The main change has been to replace the Shimano 11-25 cassette with a Sram 12-32, which with the 52-42-32 front rings gives a wider range of gears including a couple of much lower ratios for tackling the steeper hills. I also replaced the original Tiagra rear derailleur with a Deore one which works much better with the wider range cassette. I've fitted Shimano A520 pedals which I rather like because they give me the benefits of the SPD system but with a larger platform to support the foot. I've also added a rear rack. I use this bike mainly for fitness runs but also for group rides if they don't involve any off-road routes. The slick 28mm tyres aren't much use off the tarmac. It's also the bike which I use for hauling my Burley flatbed trailer to and from the supermarket and the recycling centre.
My latest bike is a cross-country mountain bike, which I built myself from odd parts, mainly bought on Ebay. The frame is a cro-moly 20" job and the working parts are mainly Shimano Deore and Acera, with a Sram cassette and chain. The front suspension fork is a Rock Shox Dart 2. I calculate that by making up the bike this way I saved at least half of the cost of buying a similar bike new from a shop. Of course I've had a lot of experience of stripping bikes down and rebuilding them so I have a good idea of how bikes work and work safely.
All of my bikes are traditional uprights, of course, because you'll never see me on a recumbent. Mind you, there are some really nice ones around ...