Why punish your body more than you have to?

I'm not exactly a youngster but have never found all day on a HT to give me anything more than than a sore face from grinning, aching legs and the odd bit of sunburn.

Never had this 'beaten up ass/back' thing, I've always thought if your back aches you're sitting down too much or your bike doesn't fit properly…

vinnyeh – it really depends on what UK riding you do. In my eyes my DB Alpine is the most versatile bike for my needs. With forks wound down it climbs well and is good fun on the 4x track. Wind them out and they are good for messing around at Woburn sands etc. A change of wheels and a little more travel it is ready for DH.

It may not always be perfect and there will be some compromise, but for my needs it covers all the riding I want to do. What other type of bike could do this? A 5inch susser would be pants on 4x and a 100mm HT you can ride all day on isn't great for anything other than xc.

I currently have a DH bike, but when my baby arrives I doubt I will be able to justify keeping it (the bike that is.)

My UK-designed bike – a 456SS with CF rigid forks and 69er wheels is the most suitable machine to give the Irish some serious headaches:
1. Why do you ride with such big tyres? (2.1 Continental semi-slicks)
2. What happened to your rear wheel so it's small?
3. Why do you have disc brakes?
4. What is this frame?
5. Why do you ride a heavy bike? (it's 23lbs)
6. When did you get changed? (I walked into the cafe in baggies, no lycra)
7. Is it Raleigh? NO??? I thought Raleigh made good bikes…
Marketing, huh?

Could I suggest that, for example, a Bionicon is defintely NOT a 'designed for UK' bike.
I tried one and it's great, but would really only suit somewhere very steep

hilldodger – Your lucky, having my backside bounce along 25 miles of dalby forest just is not my idea of fun.

dirty nap – stand up then?

Most stuff in trail centres, and outside of them, is perfectly rideable, and enjoyable, on a 100mm hardtail, but an LT hardtail looks hard- it's the poseurs equivalent of having an RS4 instead of an A4.

That's sheer bollocks.

Having slack angles allows you to attack really steep stuff (I mean really steep chutes/drops etc) rathern than mincing down it with your tongue out and your arse in the air like we used to.

And you don't choose a bike for 'most stuff' you choose for the bits you really want to enjoy. I might spend 45 minutes say winching myself up the hermitage climb in the Black Mountains (aka Tal y Maes) but I'll choose a bike to enjoy the 10 minute excellent DH on the other side. Which by the way is extremely rocky (or am I thinking of the one off the reservoir climb?) and far far more enjoyable on a 7" Patriot than a 100mm ht.

What's all this marketing stuff that people keep referring to?

I've never designed a bike for the UK. I've only ever designed bikes for riding (not riding in a particular place or country).

Well it's not really about designing a bike for a particular country so much, mud considerations aside; it's about designing it for a market. And that depends on the kind of riding that most riders do which may or may not be linked to the terrain…

Marketing and if these companies can make it in other markets they'll probably lean on another aspect to trade their wares..

@mike

I think the original comment was regarding bike companies that release 'UK specific' bike models – I think Giant, Kona and Commencal have done it. This obviously doesn't apply to DB.

Maybe the thread has gone off on a tangent, but the OP seems to be referring to bikes "specifically for UK riding".

I ride upwards of 100 miles every week offroad in the UK, and while the majority (in terms of miles) of my riding is on bridlepaths in the Chilterns – I still like to go to Afan, The Peaks, Malverns, Lakes and spend a few weeks in the Scottish Borders (7 Stanes and trail riding) every year.

I need a bike that is comfy, safe, light, fast, plenty of mudroom, strong and will stop plus XC (ride, race, enduro), uplift-semi-DH, 4x (with my sons) and trail – in no particular order. Also one that doesn't require constant and expensive LBS/specialist maintenance – I can do most DIY myself.

I use to have a number of bikes, now I just have one – I choose a 456Ti, with a selection of 'builds' (120/140/150mm forks, light to heav-ish wheels/tyres etc.

So 'UK designed', but is it 'designed for UK'?

On the whole yes, with the only moan been that rear mudroom is not great once on +2.25/2.4 tyres.

I've only ever designed bikes for riding (not riding in a particular place or country).

says the man who's called one of his bikes alpine!! 😉

"Specifically for UK riding" presumably means the same as "designed for the UK" – I assume no bike manufacture is saying that the bike is not suitable for use abroad.

Here's another question. Do more people in the UK have only one bike than in say the USA, or in Germany?

high5 dialled mike 🙂

thomthumb 😆

Having slack angles allows you to attack really steep stuff (I mean really steep chutes/drops etc) rathern than mincing down it with your tongue out and your arse in the air like we used to.

Or alternatively, just lower your saddle.

Admittedly, that's not going to change the head angle of your bike but the effect on stability and centre of gravity means it's easier to tackle stuff like really steep chutes/drops etc. and your arse won't be in the air.

There's also something called adjustable fork travel….

My UK-designed bike – a 456SS with CF rigid forks and 69er wheels is the most suitable machine to give the Irish some serious headaches:

tbf, that's a bloody odd bike, tbs, tbs… Plus your northside, you don't have anything even remotely resembling an incline, never mind a mountain. Did you take a look at the NPS1? it was in slade, which is about as close to you as you can get and be up a mountain.

Or alternatively, just lower your saddle.

It's not the same. My 5 with the saddle down is nothing like as good as my Patriot on the super steep stuff, because of the head angle.

And adjusting a fork longer (or fitting a longer fork) puts your centre of gravity higher.. which is why on a bike designed for a long fork you might get a lower BB or a slacker seat angle etc etc.

my comment was based on why your arse would be in the air. 😯

and considering the fact most the time at trail centres is spent riding upwards through narrow winding trails before you can blast down the other side – makes you wonder really what is the most suitable bike.

Santa Cruz County in Califormia gets an average of 770mm rainfall per year, and Marin County even more… considerably more rain than we get here in East Sussex.

Yeah, but a)it is very concentrated in some months of the year, and they get heavier rain followed by dry days, rather than a lot of on and off changeable days and b)in many Californian riding areas, they officially close the trails for 3 days after a rain storm – I don't know how much notice people take of this, but I've gone on rides with californians, where they said that the ride was only on if it didn't rain in the days beforehand, as the trails would be closed.

Why all this talk about trail centres? Do you know anyone who rides only at trail centres? And is that the majority of UK riding? I think not.

interesting thread……

you very rarely see steel frames here in Germany. those that you do see are usually old rickety things with shopping baskets and a rack or dirt bikes.

i ride a DB Alpine and over here it really is one of a kind.

we were talking the other day as a friend of ours wants to come riding with us. one guy suggested a 100mm XC FS, the other a 80mm HT and i suggested a HT with 120mm-ish and got laughed at by all three. one guy said that anything over 100mm on a HT was over kill. the other that 120mm was only for FS.

i'd also agree that most riding here is either on a saddle up-head down xc HT or big'un bouncy FS. there doesn't seem to be much inbetween other than 100mm FS xc rides. oh, and steel is massively frowned upon as it weighs "alot". there are a few German designed frames built to take a 140mm fork (liteville 101, 800€ frame only) but they are few and far between.

i'd also suggest – certainly where i am currently – that even for those with 'proper' bikes their idea of biking is riding long stretches of fire road. there is a serious glut of single trails. but then on the other end of the scale there are quite a few bike parks around here. i recieved a few funny looks when i turned up on my Alpine, although there was one other guy on a HT and he was verdammt schnell.

the same can be said when last year a mate and i rode across the alps. not one single steel frame. quite a few XC HTs and plenty of racey FSs. they may have been quicker than me on the climbs (much quicker than my mate with his 150mm FS – he was walking up, mostly), but they were soon caught on the downs where they were either mincing down with the saddle slapping against their spinchter or sinply carrying their bikes down/across the techy, steeper sections.

needless to say one mate has caught the LT HT bug (from me) and is now the proud owner of a 456 with a Lyrik. he rants and raves about sections of trail that now "come alive" whereas on his FS he found them dead or boring. he also shouts about how he can actually get uphill without having to push the last 20m.

i think most "designed in the UK" ideas are just common sense. why restrict your tyre choice or encourage dirt/muck to enter the seat tube?

Most bikes which are designed in the uk,, are suited to uk conditions as thats where they were designed test ridden and developed

carrying their bikes down/across the techy, steeper sections.

See, that's just not acceptable in the UK 😉

I suspect there's more to it than marketing talk, even if it's not hugely deliberate (ie, a UK based designer isn't going to make something with very little mud clearance). We have national preferences for a lot of things, even stuff as well developed as cars, so I can't see why we wouldn't have national preferences in bikes.

"Why punish your body more than you have to? "

that sums a lot of it up for me – it's a british thing, like riding rigid singlespeeds (that's been overlooked as a uk quirk here with most talkiig about LT HT's), like that stiff upper lip stuff, we just don't go for the fastest/lightest/most efficient. it makes no real sense and is a bit of a luddite approach, or a bit more enlightened some would say, but there is as much an element of truth to it as any of these generalisations.

'designed for the uk' also doesn't have to mean for UK terrain / conditions, it's often more about UK tastes and attitudes.

tron, totally agree. it's just another aspect of cultural differencs.

Also think it depends what you mean by 'punish'. I never really consider my full sus being more comfy than my Soul, it's just faster. I stand and sit in most the same places regardless of suspended rear end or not, because it's generally about negotiating tricky terrain. A good frame, seatpost and big tyre makes sitting down on a hardtail perfectly acceptable IME. And it's less punishing in other ways, because my Soul is about 4lbs lighter than my Hemlock, which makes it shoot up smoother, longer climbs much more readily. I notice the difference in how tired my legs and how hard they're working on climbs due to the weight difference way more than how beaten up I am.

The other key thing that drives the cultural 'UK bike' thing was alluded to above when talking about the whether. The UK is one of the only countries where the climate is such that people ride all year round, in pretty nasty conditions. The SoCal thing about closing trails keeps them out of the mud, and the snow on the mountains keeps a lot of the Europeans out of the saddle in winter. That informs our bike preferences.

😉 :wink:my Soul is about 4lbs lighter than my Hemlock, which makes it shoot up smoother, longer climbs much more readily

carefull Cy this sort of talk causes huge threads of arguments

My understanding too was that 'designed for the UK' incorporated such strange inventions as the forward facing seatpost slot – and bushings that will survive a winter in the Peaks. In fact, the way some articles are written, it sounds like UK mud is unlike anything else in the world for abrasive stickiness!

nicko i reckon it is, when rockshox wanted to really sort their bushings and guarantee their forks were as reliable as poss, they gave forks to big-mile year-round peak dist testers. or so the story goes anyway. peak mud / grit combo is about as abrasive as it gets.

re: the culture argument

uk riders tend to go for trail type bikes.

euros tend to go for race bikes (wheter this is xc or dh)

even in xc races i see a lot of bikes which aren't perfect 5in FS and so on – are we just out there for a bit of fun whilst euro riders facy themselves as racers?

and the snow on the mountains keeps a lot of the Europeans out of the saddle in winter.

That as to be a joke right… I rode all year long in France too, and so does a lot of people. Snow will stop people riding only in the ski stations, where most of the people use lifts in summer (as they have a year long lift pass). This year between december and march I rode in the dust in the mud in the mud in the mud in the snow in the snow and in the snow/ice.

That as to be a joke right… I rode all year long in France too

Mmm. Europe is bigger than France you know. Lots of it (Scandinavia, Central Europe etc etc) is under snow all winter and whilst you could ride if you were really determined it's a lot more fun to XC ski for instance.

thomthumb – Member

says the man who's called one of his bikes alpine!!

I also called one Prince Albert, but that doesn't mean people have to have their knob pierced to ride one 😉

Oh shit, you don't?! But the guy in the shop said….

says the man who's called one of his bikes alpine!!

The European Alps span 8 countries

and the snow on the mountains keeps a lot of the Europeans out of the saddle in winter.

That as to be a joke right… I rode all year long in France too, and so does a lot of people. Snow will stop people riding only in the ski stations, where most of the people use lifts in summer (as they have a year long lift pass). This year between december and march I rode in the dust in the mud in the mud in the mud in the snow in the snow and in the snow/ice.[/quote]

Oh come on Juan, you're just being argumentative now, Cy said "a lot of Europeans" not "all" 🙂 It's alright for you; you live on the med coast where snow is *usually* pretty rare. Try coming up to the Swiss Midlands / Jura / etc and riding all winter long 🙂

p.s. here's me riding near Nice in December (on a UK-designed LT HT ;-)) — it was fun, for about two hours…

"designed for the UK"

Comes in a series of slate and dull grey colours for miserable men who have never seen the sun.

Given the seeming inability of the average STWer to ride anything without a considerable debate regarding what tyre to use, I suspect that 'designed for the UK' is the least sensible marketing strategy ever…
To be truly designed for the UK, it would have to come with free WiFi access to check whether any fashion faux pas was being committed on each ride…