Sussex-MTB

If you want to know how long a route is in distance, have a guide time and know the distance to the nearest cake shop, then go to a Trail Centre. If you want more of an adventure then go and ride more remote stuff.

I’m only talking the Lakes here, but after a couple of hours riding, (well, pushing and carrying might be a more honest description) it had become clear that at least one of our group (of 6) was more a Trail Centre rider than an ‘adventurer’!

We were staying near Patterdale in a cottage that had been recommended (and didn’t disappoint!) which happened to be within a mile or two of a route in the March MBR mag. It did involve a bit of a slog from the house up an un-rideable trail to get on to the MBR loop. The blurb that went with the map said it took some “top X Country racers 6 hours to cover the 23 miles” now if that’s not a challenge I don’t know what is!!

I love the physical challenge of the riding you get in areas like the Lakes, our route was to take us up to 840m but we had to miss off the last peak due to the time constraints of the hours of daylight at this time of year, sure, most of us had lights with us, but I’m not that comfortable with being out in the wilderness after dark. It was great to have good long climbs without having to “do a Sparky” and session Cardiac Hill!!

We did seem to do a lot of climbing, there were lots of false summits and my motivational speech to my disgruntled companion went along the lines of “well, you never know, we might get over the top of this peak and find the best bit of downhill ever” did I believe it myself? Of course not, but it’s all part of the team work, and besides, he’s not that stupid! – We were both in for a surprise!!!

We hit what for 98% of the year is a probably a very boring grassy field (with at least one stream running through it as I will mention shortly!) in absolutely perfect snow field conditions! I honestly can’t think of a better time I’ve had on a bike, you had to learn to ride it while picking up some serious speed, gentle movements gave slight changes in direction, more severe movements left you going straight ahead with the bars crossed up, either way with a big smile on your face!

This levelled the playfield a little, Sos, who’d accidentally(?) left his virtual slick London to Brighton tyres on his bike, was now hooning along next to the others! What a laugh, I was about to trudge back up for another go, despite having spent a large part of the day doing just that! Unfortunately time was against us.

Having stopped to take some pics I was playing catch up, going a little faster than was safe/comfortable I noticed, slightly too late, a telltale hole in the snow and as my front wheel plummeted through the ice in to the stream below and I was overtaking my handlebars I also noticed the set of tyre tracks going around the aforementioned hole in the snow!! Oops.

Undeterred I had to go even faster to catch up and did exactly the same thing again, Doh!! This time with the bike on top of me trapping my leg between the frame and bars and getting a nice dose of cramp in my thigh!!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Trail Centres, but I love a good Journey too. I’ve ridden from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn over 8 days, done the Coast to Coast in 5 and they aren’t guaranteed good fun, there are miserable times in harsh conditions but you get a hell of a sense of achievement at the end of them!

From my 30 quid Cateye computer we covered 21 miles in 3hrs 53 mins at an Ave of 5.3mph. Obviously this wasn’t recording much when my bike was off the ground being carried or at times going too slowly to register!!

Stats from one of the guys GPS’s
Length 32.4km
4 hrs 36mins travelling
Av 7.1kph
Total ascent 1224m
Max height 802m
Max rate of descent 76m per minute (Don’t ask me why you’d want to know that!)

Pike

09-03-10 leith hill ride

Originally uploaded by www.sussex-mtb.com

Tuesday night’s ride route from Leith Hill. We’ve had a pretty tough time with the weather in the last few months. It’s amazing that a couple of weeks of dry have turned some trails into near summer like conditions in places! Leith Hill’s ‘Summer lightning’ trail is running like an absolute dream, so much so we did it three times!

Catching up with people not seen for a while, fast dry trails, good times

I’ve never known anyone get through cars like Hoops. It seems that every nine months or so, he needs a new one. And, it must be a VW and it must originate from Milton Keynes. Which is great as Chicksands just happens to be really close by. Therefore, the inevitable post went up on the site (the one that was straightforward to use…) that a new car was required and a ride was in order.

For a while it was looking like not only was there going to be quality, but also quantity as many and varied names appeared on the list, and plenty of jostling for car spaces took place, but, cometh the hour, the throng melted away, and we were left with Hoops (obviously), the mighty Tony and my good self to wend our way up the M1 in blazing sunshine.

The plan was for Tony and I to go direct to Chicksands, with Hoops joining us later. There was a slight chill in the air on arrival, but (at long last) the sky was blue, and despite hysterical ramblings on the forum about needing mud spikes, the ground was dry and lush. The steeds were readied – myself on my trusty Ellsworth Joker and Tony on his Mythic Rampant and we headed off for a few warm up runs on the 4X track.

Joker at Chicksands

Tony's Mythic

We spent a while on the track, but I find it difficult to master and prefer the dual course, so soon headed over there to start sending it properly. Off the start ramp and into the first double (containing the one area of dampness we encountered all day) then on into the first berm and drop we headed, side by side, succumbing to the competitive urge and adrenaline rush…

Tony dual

Daddy dual

We rode the course over and over, gaining confidence and speed, jumping bigger, further and faster, and after a while a familiar character in a SMTB shirt joined us at the top of the hill. Hoops was straight into it and wanting to try out his helmet cam, so we continued to fly down the track and push back up, enjoying the fantastic conditions…

Hoops railing berm

Tony on start ramp

After a top session on the dual track, playing with the helmet cam, racing each other and generally looning, we decided to move to the freeride area. At this point I was happy to play with my dad’s SLR camera as my hand is still not properly fixed from my road crash and riding drops was not a great idea!

Hoops went straight for the big run – a large cut away drop into steep descent, straight into a very large double jump, completing it with ease, adding more speed and height. Very impressive.

Hoops drop in

Hoops high time

Meanwhile, Tony was sessioning a different line and building up his confidence to get airbourne – both riders in their zone and egging eachother on to bigger and better things. Tony went for a drop in, riding sooo smooth…

Tony drop in

Then Tony and Hoops were both eyeing a double with a difficult bermed entry and trying to work out the speed needed to clear it. After a couple of aborted run ins, all of a sudden Hoops came in, railing that berm and set for take off – clearing it with some style…

Hoops double

We were doing really well, the standard of riding was top notch and things were going great. There was one thing though. Hoops had something on his mind. Something that he couldn’t let go of. He kept going to the bottom of the big run and looking at the monster double that has been on his mind for a very long time. Last time I was here with him it was the same. Looking. Thinking. Looking. A few mumbled words – speed. Trajectory. Speed. I can do it.

All of a sudden the covert visualisation technique seemed to win out. There was light in his eyes. He had belief. After all, what was the worst that could happen? Actually, best not contemplate that – don’t want blood in a new motor…

Before I knew it, he was at the top of the drop in with fire in his eyes and I was lying on my belly, camera set up thinking that I’d left my phone and first aid kit in the car… He set off, tonking into the drop, carrying massive speed down the bank into the first jump, which he cleared easily. He carried his speed down the second slope and into the final berm, pedalling hard. He set himself, full commitment now – no time for backing out – and hit the take off….

Hoops big double

Hoops big double 2

KIN HELL!!!! That was awesome! He hit it perfect and nailed the landing on the downslope as if he’d done it a hundred times. Much respect to that man for that jump…. There was plenty of whooping and yelling from Tony and myself, and then the muffled and understated words from inside the full face lid… , “what a rush…”. Even the steady Hooper hands had a little shake going on!

He repeated the jump a second time, capturing it on helmet cam, and a third – at which point came the “I think it’s time to stop’ words from inside the lid as he dropped the nose big time on landing, using the full 180mm of travel, and now needing a new pair of pants.

Hoops double 3

After some collective gathering of breath, we headed back to the dual track for some final looning about, filming with the headcam whilst all 3 of us raced down, fighting for the same landing space, and generally having a ball.

We packed it in around 4 and headed our separate ways, it seeming fitting that the first thing hoops does with a new car is fill it with stinking bike gear and bung a bike on the roof. Nice one.

Now, there was a deal that whatever happened on the trip stayed on the trip, so all I can say about the journey home for Tony and I is…

How’d we miss that????

Big Daddy

I’d been looking forward to riding the 2010 Genesis Alpitude, I rode last year’s and loved it so I was keen to see if this year’s model was as fun to ride.

The Alpitude differentiates itself from the Altitude by it’s slacker angles, beefier tubing and longer travel fork. When you first lay eyes on this bike the low slung frame and long fork make it look mean as hell and you know it means business.

The top tube is dropped with a neat gusset linking it to the seat tube, not unlike the Pace hardtail frames. The main triangle tubes are made from Reynolds excellent 853 steel and are oversized (although still skinny when compared to an aluminium frame), the compact rear triangle is made from much more slender tubing and the overall result is a very pleasing looking frame. It also has the nice (almost essential) UK friendly addition of crud catcher bosses on the underside of the downtube, which proved very handy on my two test rides! It also has chain guide mounts should you want to fit a chain retention device or perhaps a Hammerschmidt crank.

Genesis Alpitude

It’s kitted out with pretty much an entire SLX groupset, the only differences being the rear mech (upgraded to XT) and the shifters (downgraded to Deore). As is usual with a full Shimano build it all works together faultlessley, with the light action of the shifting a real pleasure to use. The highlight though is the buttery smooth Rock Shox Revelation fork, but more on that later.

After a bit of fiddling with the set up I finally arrived at what seemed to be a good compromise on the tyre pressure, it was very muddy and 25psi seemed to stike a good comfort / grip balance.

One of the unique features of this bike is despite the slack head angle the seat angle is quite steep, this makes it an exceptionally well mannered climber, there’s little in the way of front wheel wander when climbing, except on all but hte steepest climbs, and even this can be dialled out by dropping the fork down to a shorter travel temporarily.

Genesis Alpitude

So how does it ride? Well in a word fun. It wants you to ride quick, it needs you to ride quick. When you really start to push it the bike comes to life, the ‘twang’ of the steel frame is really enjoyable as you speed your way through the singletrack. The compact back end makes manualling over roots and obstacles a piece of cake.

Turn the terrain steep and gnarly and it excells. It’s easy to get your weight off the back and the fork does a great job of keeping everything tracking smoothly in the direction you want to go. Popping of jumps and drops with ease is the name of the game, again the fork saves you if you get it a bit wrong.

You can push it as hard as you like on the downhills and it just laughs back at you, it’s a bike for scaring your mates who have paid significantly more on a full suspention bike as you buzz their rear tyres and then overtake with a grin on your face!

Genesis Alpitude

The only real downside would say is maybe it would climb a bit better if it was a bit lighter. But that said it would probably be at the expense of it’s bombproof descending ability, so perhaps it’s just that I need to get a bit fitter.

For the price this is an amzing bike for riding round these parts, South or North downs singletrack will be hammered with ease and in all likelyhood the only limitation will be your ability to hang on when it encourages you to really go for it.

Hummerlicious

Ice Bike 2010 – Saracen Kili Flyer Ti

Originally uploaded by 18bikes

A lot of you guys out there probably see Saracen from their ‘Ur bike iz saracen’ Halfords days, but some of us can just about cast our minds back to the first explosion of popularity this MTB’ing thing we love so much had.

Saracen were there and their steel frames were something to aspire to, the top end models were sweet. Well Madison have set out to rejuvenate the brand and they have some pretty nice looking bikes too.

But here we have the Saracen Kili Flyer in Ti. Will it get made in 2011? Well I hope so, it makes me go all misty eyed and nostalgic!!

It’s taken me a while to get round to writing this review, mainly because I was hoping to get another go on this bike. But it’s popularity has proved such that’s it’s been pretty much booked out from Quest since it came in.

I’ve managed to get two good rides in on this bike, one on the last month’s Quest ride on the south downs and one on a Sussex-MTB ride on the north downs. Also I did the SD ride with the chainstays on long and the ND ride with them short just to see the difference.

Unfortunately though the weather was pretty appaling for both so I’ve not really had a chance to fully let rip on the 19, hopefully I’ll get it again some time in the future though, I certainly hope so as it’s great fun to ride!

So what about the bike? Well the first thing I really noticed was the weight. This bike weighs around 24lbs and as such is nearly 4lbs lighter than my Hummer! My god you notice the difference, though most of that is probably down to the fact I have a coil Pike on the Hummer and that does make it rather lardy.

Whyte 19 trail - excuse my fence!

So back to the Whyte, it’s really nicely specced, to be honest the same sort of spec that any of the Sussex-MTB boyz (or indeed lots of other riders) would actually choose themselves; Fox forks, SRAM X0 gears, Thomson seatpost and stem, Easton carbon bars and of course the lovely new Hope brakes which look like lush machined jewels!!

Hope brakes

So really there’s nothing there that you would want to change from the off, except maybe the crank, but that really depends how much of a tart you are. Truvativ have come a long way with their styling now and the Stylo chainset fitted not only looks good but goes with the styling of the bike very nicely.

Bling!

The ride? In a word nippy! They say “light enough to race, tough enough for trails”. I certainly wouldn’t argue with that. Point this bike uphill and it’s like having an invisible hand pushing you, it’s so light it flies, the balance is great with the 120mm fork long enough to soak up the bumps, but not so long you struggle to keep the front end down the the steep climbs.

Adjustable drop outs - in 'short' mode

The bike is super stable descending, especially with the chainstays on their ‘long’ setting. However I enjoyed it the most with them as short as you could run it. It gave the bike a more playful feel and made it a piece of cake to manual off roots and drops. Initially I struggled to bond with it on the more technical trails of the north downs, however I stopped for a while and took the time to adjust the fork more for my riding ’style’ (I use the word loosely). Speeding up the rebound made all the difference to me as the fork was packing down a bit over multiple root sections. With the rebound adjusted though it was more to my taste and I was able to forget that I wasn’t on someone else’s bike and really let rip on it and just enjoy the ride. Most notably when Michael shouted “Come on grandad” to me at the top of ‘Barry know’s best’. He was forced to eat his words as I overtook him into the first big berm and beat him to the bottom

So what do I think? This bike is a lightweight trail mashing monster. You’d be hard pressed to find something as light and as durable for blasting around these parts. Thoroughly recommended.

Now I’m looking forward to trying the next demo, the new Genesis that’s in the shop.

Don’t forget you can swing your leg over the Whyte or indeed any of the other bikes that are lined up for the 2010 DEMO DAY which is on March the 20th. Contact the shop for more details………

Hummerlicious

I’m a bit late with this one so I’ll just say that it was an amazing turnout, 31 people! Probably rather too many for one ride, but we managed to keep it all together, although the puncture fairy was out in force

As per usual there was a nice wee climb in the route as well as some sweet singletrack

Big group

A nice route profile!

Climbalicious - few made it, but everyone gave it a good go

A few more pictures here…..

Phnom Penh

We started early on a Saturday morning and we were lucky with the weather as it was slightly overcast and not too warm. It took us the best of 15 minutes to get away from the hectic traffic in Phnom Penh before we hit the muddy tracks that immediately reminded me of APE.

Neil through another puddle

Oh, the villagers laughed when they saw us riding through the mud

Enjoying a noodle soup

Price $1

Most of the ride went on small tracks past villages, colourful Buddhist temples and miles after miles of lush green rice fields. As the morning went the weather got hotter and we ran out of water. Not a problem in Cambodia where you always can buy cold bottled water on ice either from a café or from one of the many street sellers.

Neil knew the route very well, but he hadn’t take into account  the chicken that ran out in front of his wheels when we passed through a poor village. He had no chance to avoid the chicken and hit it with his front wheel. The people in the village stared at us and I suggested we better left in a hurry. But Neil was a real gentlemen and offered to compensate for the half dead chicken. Initially, the villagers didn’t want to take the money but in the end he persuaded the girl to take  $ 2 (although he still thought it might had been too little).

Cows, too big to run over…

However, the run over chicken was the only accident we had during our 4 hour long ride. The last 10 km back to Phnom Penh was on tarmac. We didn’t mind, having already had our portion of muddy tracks that day.

Back in Phnom Penh

We returned quite muddy and so were our bikes. But no problem. At home we just handed the muddy bikes to the day guard who spent the next hour cleaning the bikes while we had a well deserved cold shower followed by a cold beer.

The day guard cleans the bikes

Great ride even though we hardly climbed any hills

There’s a few extra pics here.

Kim

This one was posted a bit late so it was no surprise that only 5 of us turned up at The Lookout car park on the outskirts of Swinley Forest, Bracknell just after 10.30 last Saturday. The weather was changeable and the remains of the previous 2 weeks snow was clear to see but looked to be melting fast so rain or not this one was going to be wet.

After my normal amount of faffing (double most peoples) we were ready to role and headed out of the car park and straight in to the singletrack which seemed to be a lot clearer than the fireroads which still had about 2” of snow across them.

Chilly riders

We started out along some of the singletrack that I had been shown by one of the locals when I did the Singletrackworld forum ride in November last year. This took us out towards “The Corkscrew” over Caesar’s Camp way where we stopped for a play on some of the jumps and natural drop ins and Hummerlicious got to grips with the Marin Attack Trail he had borrowed for the weekend from Quest Adventures and as his report shows, he quite liked it.

Jumpin' Jimbo

After a few photos and a bit of tuition from Hummerlicious we decided to head off and started out towards one of the newer trails that Swinley has to offer which I have called “The Berm Trail”. It’s not much to look at as you stand at the entrance but after about 500m of mud and roots the armoured singletrack begins. This has some fantastic berms and even a shore bridge in it and is worth seeking out just for the first of these berms which needs to be taken as fast as possible in order to be able to whip round the 2nd of the berms which comes straight after the first one. None of us managed to master this as the photos show.

CTD

Jo

Dougal

BigSi

Popping back out on the fireroad we hung a left then first right in to my favourite Swinley trail “Tank Traps”. It’s a nice long section of singletrack running round the side of a ridge. Open and flowing at first it ends in a series of switchbacks with exposed roots all over them and today a stream running along the bottom of the gully which meant that keeping speed was a bit of an issue.

By the time we had finished these sections the effort of pedalling through the slush and mud was starting to tell and Bikerbabe, who had not been seen on a bike since I don’t know when, looked like she needed coffee & cake. It was decided that we would head on over to “Labyrinth” and then back to The Lookout car park.

On the way over to “Labyrinth” we hit the singletrack that runs around the downhill course and I have to say it gets better each time I ride it although I think that I have found a weakness in the 29er. It doesn’t handle tight technical rooty downhill’s too well but that could just be the rider, still it’s a good excuse to look at getting another bike in the near future and yes it will still be a 29er.

Labyrinth

We finally make it to Labyrinth via the wall climb rather than the more acceptable but longer “Deer Stalker” trail. With hardly a break at the top we set off down the trail that runs to the left and has more berms but fewer jumps when compared to the right hand trail but we did still manage to find plenty of water in between the final two table tops. At the crossroads which signals the start of the long singletrack section I some how managed to get in front of Hummerlicious, Dougal and my other riding buddies, CTD & Bikerbabe. I was going to pull over and let Hummerlicious & Dougal past but instead decided to put the hammer down and see how long I could sensibly keep them behind me. I didn’t want to hold them up but I also didn’t want to let them past me before we got to the end. I soon found that I could pull away on the flatter sections but was being reeled in by Hummerlicious on the short downhill sections as he was really flying when the Attack Trail was pointing downwards. We soon got to the end with massive grins on our faces, soaking wet from the massive puddles we had been ploughing through and completely knackered.

Looking at my watch I was surprised to see that we had been out for 4 hours and were at the furthest point of the forest from The Lookout so there were no arguments when it was decided it was time for coffee & food. We pointed the bikes along the fireroad and headed for the cars.

30 minutes later we were clearing the café out of its cake supply & still grinning.

BigSi

Excuse my fence!

This weekend I’ve had the new Marin Attack Trail 6.8 for company. I’ve been looking forward to riding this bike since I saw the new catalogue. I was a big fan of last year’s Attack Trail and I wondered how the new one would compare. There have been a few changes and some weight shed too, so it all looked promising. The travel has been pushed up to 150mm and last year’s Pikes have been replaced with Revelations, the rear shock is a Monarch. Gone is the large plate gusset on the front end, replaced by a much more pleasing looking tube.  The headtube is tapered and the downtube has been beefed up a bit too. The shock links have also been machined out and lightened up too.

New links

Tapered headtube

It would also seem that finally Truvativ have managed to make an attractive set of cranks with the Stylos, very nice. Not bad in the weight stakes either, hopefully the black will stay on the sides and wear well. Amazingly I am well known for my rather cack footed pedalling style but despite all the mud I never scratched it up with my heels.

Stylo cranks

Speaking of which on last years bike I caught my heels once or twice on the swing arm and on the links too, but it didn’t happen at all on this bike, maybe it has been slimmed down a bit?

So how does it ride?

Well I think my companions on the Swinley ride will tell you I was loving this bike from the off. I’m not quite sure how my ’style’ of riding is best described, but this bike fits me like a glove. I never once even thought about how it was preforming, I just rode it with a grin on my face.

Tweakage

The Attack Trail is well at home on the singletrack, but you do have to keep an eye on your pedals as sometimes you can clout them on trail obstacles. But it’s the downhill sections where it really announces it’s intentions, somewhere along the lines of “Is that the best you can do?”. It’s really stable, flickable, and unusually it manuals at the drop of a hat. Those last minute hucks off trail obstacles are easily accomplished and the 150mm of travel are a real get out of jail free during those awkward moments!

Berm fun

The downside? Well I guess if there is one it would be this bike is never going to win any uphill races. However that said it does seem to be lighter than the previous model and you don’t really notice the weight that much. Coming from a bike that is a few pounds lighter than this I can’t say I really felt handicapped. There is an unexpected bonus though, on a steep climb when the bike is in the granny ring the quad link system seems to seek out every last bit of grip there is, providing you can get forward on the saddle and get low you’ll still be riding when your fellow riders are off and walking. It shouldn’t be possible on a bike like this, but it is

Verdict:

So what do I think? I love it. Is this much travel really necessary on a bike round here? Well I ride a hardtail, so clearly no! But if you want a really comfy bike that climbs well, descends like a mini downhill bike, is quick and nimble through the singletrack this is the daddy. You can ride the Attack Trail all day and not feel beaten up. It really is a hoot to ride. It encourages you to ride like a loony and rewards you by getting you to the end in one piece with a big grin on your face, you can’t ask for more than that!

Hummerlicious