kids reviewin bike radar if anyone is interested

Thanks for the link. I hope someone will be interested to buy kids bike for their kids!

good to see Isla Bikes coming out top. My 5 year old got round the red route at Glentress on one the other day.

nice to know about the isla as we are off the buy our boy his 3rd one !

andyfla – do you trade in the old ones with Isla, or sell them on ebay?

The Beinn 24 is great, but, and it’s big but, when are they going to do them with a suspension fork?
Looked at some 2nd hand ones at Glentress in the summer but lack of bouncy fork ruled them out.
If I’m riding a front suss bike off road can’t really expect the kids to go rigid.

The trouble I have found with kids forks is they are generally cr*p, and I have always thought that they give with the bounce but take away with the weight.

I follow my lad round on his Beinn 20, and the bikes does skitt around a bit on the rough stuff. However, I reckon it helps in the development of feel and skill on the bike. No suspension when I was growing up on the old “tracker” bikes, and never did me any harm. And he can get up more hills on a light bike, so I don’t need to “boost” him up with a hand on his back quite so much.

5 yr old and 9 yr old boys here, Beinn 20 and 26 respectively. Ace bikes, light, fun, well biult, great resale – what’s not to like !

they are fine on most stuff within their capabilities, which includes sections of GT – up to Buzzards and down blue descent. When I take them riding I take my BadBoy so I can suffer with them without a suspension fork 😆

Just ordered mini Loco’s first bike Scoot in Citrus lime along with a Ridgeback MX12 for her cousin 😀 it’s going to be an interetsing christmas teaching them both to ride/scoot as I’m sure it’ll be left to me 😀

All well and good, but with a comment like this:

Though we couldn’t get a weight confirmed, the kids reckoned it was one of the heaviest on test.

Does that mean that they took the manufacturers weight, and didn’t actually weigh them? 🙄

I think its a bit crap to just judge the bikes on weight. The Isla bike is just a hybrid that can be pootled off road. The Scott and the Spesh are way more capable.

The Spesh Hotrock 24 was top of my list but I eventually bought a 2nd hand Kona Hula. It only arrived yesterday so it’s not been put through it’s paces.
My daughter helped me put it together, had a quick ride up and down the road on it and she’s excited about a proper ride at the weekend.

rthomas, haven’t got round to selling them yet, we are hoping to adopt another sprog so not sure what age we will get – they will go on ebay after they have used it

mine oldest is soon to graduate from her Islabike 14, is the step to 20″ too much (ridgeback or islabike or Carrera sol)? we are keeping the 14 for the little one btw!

mine oldest is soon to graduate from her Islabike 14, is the step to 20″ too much (ridgeback or islabike or Carrera sol)?

My eldest went from a Cnoc 14 to a 16 because I thought the jump to the Beinn 20 was a bit big, but it wasn’t long before he then moved onto the 20. After 6 months the Cnoc 16 started looking a bit on the small side.

He rides practically every day and got plenty of riding done on the 16, so I wasn’t too fussed that he didn’t have it for long.

the little man has outgrown a 14 and we are going straight up to a 20, but he is fairly big for his age and has grown quite fast

I got a 20 from the Islabikes factory – they reckoned it was just a bit too big for him, but I got it anyway and he was fine with it. They soon grew into them – I’ve raised the saddle twice in a year.

thanks! <goes off to the internet to look for a 20″ girls bikes> 🙂