Just moved from Sheffield to Harrogate – so far, Operation ‘Find some MTB Trails’ is huge failure. Have spent a few hours messing about at Stainburn, but fundamentally I find it boring and repetitive.

It’s also pretty evident that I’m comprehensively over biked:

The toy box currently consists of:

Cotic Soul with Magura Thor 140mm forks, 2.5″ rubber + other nice kit (XT/XTR etc)
Yeti 575 XT/XTR build, DT Swiss XMM140 forks, EX1750 wheelset

Most of my MTB riding is now XC Enduro type events – Would I be being a total eejit for flogging one or both of the above to acquire a 29er?

Thinking along the lines of:

Canyonerooooooo

Solaris

Mr Big

Fugly

Canyon looks good from here – anyone ridden one?

try @fatladrides on twitter or http://www.garagebikes.co.uk/ in Morley for local knowledge?

Not that far from the North Yorkshire Moors or Dales. So not realy lacking in options

Consider the Swale Dale Outdoors club for mates…

On the bike front I usually swap tyres rather than bikes. So try that first…..

If you can’t find trail round Harrogate, then you’ve got to be doing something really wrong!

You can barely go anywhere without tripping over some amazing trails. Have you tried an OS map?

Hooky Woods, Crimple, Stonerings lane , Harlow Pinewoods, Birk Crag, Oakdale, Nidd Gorge, Plumpton, Hay-a-park, Stainley, Ripley – and thats all without getting in the car!

Regular rides out from the local shops too.

One trip down Birk Crag might well be enough to get out over your ‘overbiked’ crisis too!

Dales isn’t far but I have 2 young kids so buggering off for half a day is off the cards sadly, hence the need to get some doorstep riding sorted. Have explored quite a few bits on OS maps & not found anything great so far.

Based around Harlow so if anyone rides locally and can show me some decent loops, that would be handy.

As for tyres, if anyone wants any, let me know. Think I’ve tried everything….

I’ve found some cheeky trails through strava and map-my-run. Might be worth a ganders..

Put some quicker tyres on your Soul and cover some miles on the hunt for good trails – Strava’s good for finding stuff.

Based around Harlow

OK – nice and easy then!

Harlow water tower – ride in there, past the bowling club next door and follow your nose through the pinewoods to harlow carr lane past the gardens and cafe – follow that, and either wing left past the Arms and over the footbridge, or on past the kennels to the bridleway which looks like this:

and goes down these steps:

Pete at Psychlosport does a shop ride on a Wednesday evening I think. Give him a ring.