As above really.

Do you keep off the roads on the MTB as much as possible and get in maximum off road for smiles or do you ride miles of the stuff to get in a few bits of off road, so it looks like you’ve done a monster ride??

I try to keep off the roads where possible (don’t see the point in riding 35km for the sake of 12km being off road) and will always opt for maximum Off-road whilst out or planning a ride, but that said it does depend on the group I’m out with and/or if I ride from the door (8km to the trails). Mondays for example are very sociable, arranged by some-one else and tailored more towards getting the “not so fit” out. Always have a great laugh and always ends up in the pub.

I get it depends where you live and time available etc.. and was just something that got brought up in conversation

So, I’m a Smiles person 😀

Carlos

😀

Can’t avoid a bit of road around here. Still smiles though. Unless I’ve just battled through a 25mph headwind for 10 miles to get to the top of a tailwinded descent, get a flat after 20 yards, then find my pump isn’t working… 👿

Riding for anything other than smiles seems a bit odd to me…

I live about 25km from any decent trails.

I tend to drive…

this. Sometimes a long hard ride with nice views makes me smile, but last night’s ride was under 10 miles and I was beaming all night

I’m not adversed to a few road miles to get in some offroad, probably because I’ve cycled every bloody way possible from my front door many many times so I do like to explore. I do always incorporate some aspect of ‘epic’ into every ride, even if that epic aspect is very small. So that could be a deserted hilltop, a very fast decline or a wild area I’ve not visited before. Then I’ll go and do a ride in the dark peak and the whole **** ride is epic. 😀

What are these ‘roads’ of which you speak?

*adopts smug, gloating tone*

Pretty much all my riding nowadays is from the back gate. Because I’ve just got so much good riding that starts from there. Other than fairly local-ish for the MNPR, I can’t remember the last time I drove anywhere with the bike in the boot. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty for being lazy. Then I just think “**** it, why should I?” I live here…..

[url=https://flic.kr/p/LV59SV]Trigger-on-the-Range[/url] by bin lid, on Flickr

😀

Where I ride my mountain bike I’m 33 seconds ride from some very good trails – so smiles for me 🙂

But all rides are about smiles anyway – you can combine smiles with miles.

Definitely smiles, it’s the main reason I mtb instead of road ride, it’s the limited time available to return the most fun. I know road riding “if it’s done right” can be fun but it still requires lots of time and mileage. Maybe when my kids are grown up and I don’t have to work shifts and my house doesn’t need DIY and…. yeah right.

Smiles. The more smiles I’m having the more miles I’ll cover. So I tend to keep away from the roads and get as many smiles and miles off road as I can.

Fortunately I am able to smash out many miles of off road smiles

If I’ve enjoyed it I go round again

Roads get you where you need to go, they are great and easy to ride up.
I ride because I enjoy it most of the time

Smiles definitely I went out exploring some Cannock off piste the other week and was very upset when I found myself going downhill on a fire road. What a waste.

I get it depends where you live

Mate of mine lives in Bath, mtb rides from his seem to consist of decent sections of road to link up fun stretches of bridleway.

I live with Surrey Hills AONB 2 mins north, and South Downs NP 5 mins to the south, and plenty of other woods and common land either side.

Smiley mtb miles are limited by how many of them I can do before I stop smiling, not much call to spend more than a few hundred yards on the road at any one time.

Both.
They’re not mutually exclusive.
Nor is MTB/CX/Gravel/Endural-Grail/Road.

I ride lots of miles off-road. No need to go on road really.

and was very upset when I found myself going downhill on a fire road

You feel cheated, don’t you?

When I was younger, and less clued up, I was unaware of the running joke of people sending in back-to-front routes to MBR. So I’ve ridden up plenty of technical sections where you’re thinking “this would make a great descent!!”, only to find myself trundling down a section of straight double-track.

Is this still a thing? I haven’t even looked at MBR in about 10 years

Very little round my way in terms of trails so I just enjoy it for what it is and have to get a bit creative with routes and finding things along the coast to ride off to keep it interesting.

I often view photo threads on here with jealousy.

Smiles. Roads round here are awful for self-entitled **** drivers. So best to minimise them as much as possible.

Local to me is the Ridgeway. No car, so I do the 4-5 miles of roads to get there.
Back home in Weymouth its road to the quarries on Portland or train to Puddletown or wherever. Always smiles because I’m on my bike.

I dont ride for distance, or really ride anywhere at all. Everyone has a different view of what riding is to them.
Mine is going to a bikepark with features, pushing or uplifting to the top, bombing down & repeat. Thats smiles for me.

So many trails from my front door that I’ve become very lazy about driving anywhere else and have to make a special effort to do so. A mate and I were showing some friends around last weekend and the stand out comment for me was “do you guys ever go home?” 🙂

Where I ride my mountain bike I’m 33 seconds ride from some very good trails

Where is this then? 8)

Ah, ye got me, I’m thinking Killie, you mean Dalbeattie! 😆

Ride from my house to the local trails.

Just around 10 minutes on the road to get to some good off road routes.

On the way back, back on the road, but there is a local pub just 5 minutes from home.

Smiles all round.

Have always ridden a bike wherever for smiles. Since I had a Raleigh Tomahawk (my first bike). For me this smile-making is anywhere, except maybe v-busy city-centres? That said, I choose to use a Dutch-bike for grocery shopping and ride a big ‘unnecessary’ loop to the city stores at night-time, when the traffic is quieter. This makes me smile too. Any terrain, whether paved or unpaved, uphill or downhill or flat. Cycling just makes me smile. Multi-surface cycling is somehow extra-attractive *because* of the transitions. It flows ina way that feels like a panoramic movie-montage with tactile feedback. Ie – zipping across tarmac, onto concrete, across boardwalks, down a track onto towpaths, across a cattle-grid onto moorland trails, woodland bridle-ways, gravel, old town cobbles.

Biggest smiles? For me they are either:

1. Through swooping moorland and woodlands on an MTB, smattered with metallic-tasting lung-bursting climbs and arse-on-rear-tyre technical descents. Plumes of autumn leaves feel good.

2. The feeling of stretched t i m e when setting out on a loaded tourer for a spring or summer multi-day ‘lanes and tracks’ bimble in far-flung little-frequented places like the Marches.

The sounds. The ‘snick’ of accurate shifting. The barely-humming tyres on hot tarmac. The deafening birdsong, the babble of the brook and bees as you rest the bike on its side and hunt around in the pannier for that peanut-butter sandwich. The sounds of the tent/bivi coming down to be packed away for yet another day in the saddle. And most of all, the knowledge that you can just keep going*.

Cycling (from the very start) became so very much wrapped up in ‘freedom’ for me. I do it to explore, to exercise, to push myself and skills, to commune with the outdoors and nature. To take the weight off (both literally and figuratively). I imagine it’s how some people may view cars (something I never really felt). For me cycling is all smiles. Except for commuting in the rain in winter. Then it sucks, but that is mostly because of the lack of facilities at work. Even in vile winter weather a short local off-road loop just to get a ZAP of fresh stinging rain in your face and mud up your back before hopping in the shower/bath – is heaven! Being outdoors is ace. On a bike is double-ace.

*As long as the water, sandwiches and apples and keep coming 🙂

I remember a Mint Sauce calendar pic from the 90s with Mint and his mates lifting their bikes over a road like it was a river. Sums it up, I try to avoid road where possible and love the off road stuff. Mind you, road biking has it’s place, for me that’s mainly a way to get fit to improve my mtbing

I always try to maximise the amount of off road, feel cheated when descending on fire road and enjoy singletrack climbs.

However back “home” in Bavaria and the Tirolean alps where some climbs are over 1000m I’m happy to spin my way up on asphalt where the gradient generally isn’t so steep. Can mean that some rides are up to 80% on the winding black stuff, but the upside is the descents are long and pure single-track.

I’m surprised, back “home home” in Essex, at how few roads need to be negotiated on epic pootles to the pub.

I used to guide transalp tours. Many guests were disappointed to find that much of the riding was on the black stuff. I would always try and use fire roads where possible, but having to cover ~550km in 6 days kinda meant it was necessary.

I just ride whatever roads i need to to get my favourite trails, I don’t add in “extra” roads to “make it look like” i’ve done a bigger ride, as you put it. I’ve got a road bike for that.

It’s as easy as riding a bike, no need to over-think it.

so it looks like you’ve done a monster ride??

“looks like” to who exactly? Who are you riding for? This bit confuses me greatly.

Sometimes I feel like a longer one, but I might not feel like a long, intense, gnarly one (or, to be realistic, I don’t have the skills or legs for that) so instead of the usual 10 – 20 miles of mostly “proper” off-road, it might be 25 – 35 miles but 10 of them will be a steady cruise along a towpath.

Other days I might not have the time or inclination to do that so it might be 8 – 12 miles, but in that case I’ll want more ‘bang for my buck’ and a much higher proportion of that will be steep and rooty, much less easy paths or roads.

In either scenario, road miles will be limited but part of it for reasons of practicality – there’s decent riding near where I live, but it’s in self-contained pockets with several linking road bits along the way.

In summary, it varies, but whichever configuration it is, I do it for me, not for how it looks to unspecified third parties.

Then I just think “**** it, why should I?” I live here…..

Could’ve got your garden in order…

Fitness is my primary goal but the ride has to have some smiles to make me want to go out and do it again. I’ve been mixing up road and dirt lately with a fat tyre adventure bike and fast rolling knobblies. I’ve found proper route planning on my PC/Garmin really helps balance the dirt/tarmac ratio.

Miles give smiles?

Ah, ye got me, I’m thinking Killie, you mean Dalbeattie

Yep, oot the site gate, cross the road and onto the trails, Killie’s not quite the same 🙂

I know road riding “if it’s done right” can be fun but it still requires lots of time and mileage. Maybe when my kids are grown up and I don’t have to work shifts and my house doesn’t need DIY and…. yeah right.

It’s the absolute opposite for me.

I can fit road (or mixed surfaces on the CX bike) riding in relatively easily, eg the 50km run to work, and whatever length ride I want to do it starts from the door. The huge rides I used to do are hard to fit in now we’ve got two kids, admittedly, but still.

MTBing on the other hand isn’t a viable way to get from A to B, and most of the year it results in everything getting covered in mud, meaning some time spent cleaning the bike and more faff washing clothes. So I’ve barely ridden an MTB since we had kids.

Put it this way, if I have a two hour window to ride I can go out on a road/CX bike and get a two hour ride in, or I can go out on the MTB and by the time I’ve accounted for some slow trundling along the road and doing some cleaning I’m left with a bit over an hour on an overly-familiar route close to me.

Anyway: off-road for smiles, on-road for miles. But you get some of each either way.

Also: cafe/pub stops for smiles, and they crop up on any route 😉

Smiles, definitely. 99% of my riding is from my doorstep and usually no more than a couple of hours/15 miles long. But I can ride some flippin ace stuff in that couple of hours from sublime woodland singletrack, moorland stuff, super steep techy stuff, man made etc – can do a bit of everything.

Apart from a weekend down to BPW a few weeks back, the previous time I hadn’t ridden from my doorstep was Ard Rock last summer.

On the Isle of Man I can ride practically from my door and have to do little more than cross a few tarmac roads, which is how I really like it.
Here in Greece, however, it’s more difficult to put together a totally off-road loop, so I’ll often be climbing 400 metres on asphalt to get to the next nice descent. In fact, from my village, I often descend about 300 metres, winch back up on asphalt, descend by a different route and repeat until I’ve run out of descents or energy .
I’m sure people wonder why I’m riding through the platia every thirty minutes………..

Actually, they’ve written me off as a bit crazy anyway and they’re used to it now.

I can ride to trails and join sections up with road. Good for cx blasts.
Recently been driving to the trails and enjoying that at the moment.

Generally mtb=smiles cx=miles.

In truth any bike=smiles

Both. Riding = smiles = miles. Always as much off road as possible. I don’t do it for the miles necessarily, I just like to keep on enjoying the smiles and that clocks up the miles.

I do like to explore and do different routes, and not so much into the sessioning same stuff, though can be depending on the mood. I like to get in a lot of singletrack though, but with as much variety as possible.

Depending where I go there’s road bits sure. I don’t have any bike other than MTBs though so actual road riding is never in my plans. Nor do I pedal stationary things at home. Nothing worse than pedalling and not actually riding. Some I know do the indoor home stuff even on really nice sunny days. I mean WTF!

Both, this week is smiles, since Sat I’ve only ridden 170km but I’ve ridden 17 hours and nearly 6000m up, which has been almost 8000m down due to uplift today, best riding, best fun, sod all distance.