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Great Britain Mountain Biking – Tom Fenton & Andy McCandlish – Vertebrate Publishing
Over the years, Vertebrate Publishing have produced a series of area guides to Britains diverse mountain biking landscape. Detailed and authoritative, they’re arguably the best mountain bike guidebooks in the country. This mighty tome however is an attempt to encapsulate all that the UK has to offer, the best of the epics, quick blasts and […]
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Best of Shaff 2013
Shaff 2013 served up its usual eclectic mix of adventure films and here’s your chance to catch those you missed first time round. Included are a couple of fine mountain bike films. Strength in Numbers by Anthill Films includes the usual mountain bike porn, unfeasibly brilliant riding at warp speed, but finds room for a […]
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Sometimes I hate mountain bikers….
It’s not just any old frost that excites the committed mountain biker. It really needs to be three days of minus four frigidity, weather that will prompt cataclysmic predictions from the Daily Express of thousands of deep frozen grannies and empty shelves at the supermarket. Only then can we be sure the bogs will […]
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Lake District Mountain Bike Routes – Tom Hutton
Lake District Mountain Bike Routes Tom Hutton Out There Guides – £13.95 Tom Hutton, route aficionado for Mountain Bike Rider magazine for 13 years, has now turned his hand to publishing guides to Britain’s best trails. First up is his take on the best the Lake District has to offer and if anyone should know, […]
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Rights of passage
Depending on who you believe, 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 mess […]
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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 […]
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Sunday fun….
Riding out of Sheffield recently, Nick and I had to negotiate streams of traffic as the great British public set off en-masse to indulge in the national pastime, shopping. Wistfully we watched the smiling faces of those lucky enough to be heading for Meadowhell or some other consumer cathedral wishing we too had a credit […]
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Culture clash
Interesting things cultural differences, dodgy ground generally. However, I’ve no intention of risking a fatwa from the Moonies or the Tufty Club so this column will, in time honoured tradition, eschew any mention of religion. Thank God for that I hear you say. No, the cultural difference to which I refer is more parochial, namely […]
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The view from the ditch
Strange expression, bed of roses. Hard to think of anything less comfortable really. Unless you’re lying upside down in a bed of nettles, brambles and nice pointy rocks with a bar end jammed in your ear. Deja bloody vue. Here I am again, looking skywards from the depths of the ditch wondering where the hell […]
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If god had meant us to walk……
…..he wouldn’t have created bikes……
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Go girl
The missus has been having a torrid time of late on the steep stuff. The dry conditions have made braking a pretty pointless exercise when the ground is so dry and dusty there’s almost nothing for the tyres to grip onto. So here she is in typical style exorcising that particular demon by pointing herself […]
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Sport’s zeros trump real sport heroes
Britain’s heat wave continues and I feel full of the joys of spring. But it’s not just dry trails that put a spring in my step. Nor does my ebullience spring from yesterday’s brilliant ride when cunningly sprung mountain bikes of the utmost springiness bounced along trails that would pass muster anywhere in the world. […]
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Mountain Biking Trail Centres – The Guide
I don’t know whether to be jealous of Tom Fenton or sympathetic. Any man who racks up 1500km of riding in one month and in a very short time rides every trail centre in the country surely deserves to be the object of one of those emotions. The resulting guide is a comprehensive compendium of […]
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Faith and Friction
Don’t you just love the Grit? No? Me neither sometimes. It really is a love/hate relationship for me because climbing on the Grit is all about the three C’s, commitment, confidence and cajones and the chances of me demonstrating all three on the same day is remote. Add to that the fact that I’m not […]