SHAFF Films – Where The Trail Ends – downhill all the way….

Where The Trail Ends is very much Darren Berrecloth’s personal project, an attempt to find riding the equal of his Utah home turf even if it means travelling thousands of miles to do it.  Daringly, the film opens with breath-snatching footage of Berrecloth and his pals riding some astonishing lines in the Utah badlands, helicopter ...

SHAFF film – Endless Winter, crazy Brits….

  Don’t be put off if you originally saw Endless Winter on the telly because this is a much better edit than the BBC managed.  The inherent conservatism of the Beeb ensured that all the soul had been ripped out of this excellent documentary and the version you’ll see at SHAFF is a welcome antidote.  ...

SHAFF films – Road Bike Party, Danny who?

I’ve always been a big fan of Martyn Ashton but with the wall to wall coverage of Danny MacAskill and Chris Akrigg over the last few years, maybe even I’d begun to forget just what a brilliant a rider he is.  Luckily, Road Bike Party acts as a big fat reminder of Ashton’s talents.  In ...

SHAFF films – Lacon De Catalunya, pilot’s licence required…..

Andreu Lacondeguy is freeride aristocracy and his wild style is a guaranteed crowd pleaser.  In Lacon de Catalunya, he builds some insanely huge ramps and proceeds to enjoy himself immensely sending some tough tricks – frankly, just the start ramp would leave most riders quaking in their 5.10′s.  When you’re as good as Lacondeguy though, ...

Yorkshire Gritstone Volume One – Almscliff to Slipstones.

Remember what climbing guides once looked like, utilitarian little pocket books that did the bare minimum? They’d get you to a crag, (approximately, knowledge of grid references being a distinct advantage), get you to your climb of choice, (providing you were tuned into the nuances of the author’s directions) and, well, that was pretty much ...

Marmot Hut Tour Ski Gloves

Snowboard Ace Clive Doughty has kindly contributed this excellent review of Marmot’s top of the range Hut Tour ski gloves….   I’m fussy about my snowboard gloves – for years I’ve used Au Clair’s finest but decided to treat myself this year, and I’m glad I did. My feet and hands often get cold on ...

Johnny Dawes interview….

Johnny in full flow explaining the motivations behind and the challenges of writing his superb autobiography.

Peak seasons….

Rights of passage

Depending on who you believe, either Gary Fisher or Joe Breeze built the first mountain bike in the seventies.  As it goes, I reckon it was Joe Breeze but, whoever it was and whenever it was, it was a decade too late.  If they’d had that flash of inspiration earlier, we wouldn’t be in the ...

Pivot Mach 5.7 – a quick spin….

I’ve been very aware of the hype surrounding the Mach 5.7 so when The Bike Tree let me know they’d got one I could test, I took off my pinny, switched off the hoover, put Jeremy Kyle on record and headed out sharpish.  All the talk in the biking media was of incredibly well sorted suspension, superb build quality, of a ...

Cotic Rocket

I know how these things are supposed to go.  I’m supposed to blind the reader with science, with talk of head angles, chain growth and frame rates leaving all but the geeky one per cent flummoxed and the average rider none the wiser about whether this bike is the best thing since pro-pedal or an ...

Sheffield Moors Partnership Access and Recreation Focus Group Meeting, June 26

The Sheffield Moors Partnership has brought together all the bodies who manage moorland on the fringes of Sheffield.  The National Trust, RSPB, Peak District National Park Authority, Sheffield Wildlife Trust and others have joined forces to see how much they can synchronise their management policies across some of the most popular and important moorland in ...

Pat adrift in a sea of rock….

Bag for life

My mate Mike sent me a text back in May which simply said ”Short story title idea: “Bag For Life.”  This is the result.  Thanks Mike….         Her staccato steps stuttered as she beetled along.  The rhythm was so uneven that anyone listening to the tottering tattoo would have thought she was going to ...