I feel more comfortable wearing a skirt on a singlespeed than a geared bike, so it wins for me

cannot be bothered to read everyone elses replies but i hate it with a passion.

god gave us gears to use .

to me it would be like buying a car & driving everywhere in third gear ……..pointless & utterly pathetic ..they even have there own races an all….lee quarry is handbags at dawn when thats on.

perfect on my bmx.

Er…not sure it was God that gave us gears to be honest, although I'm sure Tullio Campagnolo would have been chuffed to have been referred to as such… 😉

ok ive now read the whole thread & i hate it even more.
next you will be all buying like-a-bikes & pushing along with your muscley legs ….in fact i quite like that idea .

barney you dont fancy a hebden ride sunday 8.30am robin hood in pecket well!!!!

Ha ha u ride in lee quarry

you been recently you may think differently.

i ride the black only

Its good in a bike park, find it rubbish everywhere else, it just doesn't suit my riding style.

I don't get the riding the quarry thing, especially when there's so much riding to he done in that area, if there was a lack of riding and no alternative yes, but ride in a treeless grassless hole in the ground instead of the myriad of routes there must be locally seems a bit odd to me

have you ridden there Rocketdog? It is good fun and concentrated. If there are better short routes from there though i would be interested to hear about them, as my brother lives there so it is my 1-2 hour play session when i go and see him.

Thanks for the offer Big-Bud. I've got a few gears now so I'd have been up for it, but my brother is getting married this weekend so I'll have to pass it up, have a good un!

i love the old singlespeed…good for the bike park…the commute…and the local woods (woburn)…to be honest the only place i would reach for the gears are some of the trail centres and if i,m out for more than a couple of hours. It,s managed to keep the full suss on it's peg for over a year now. Oh and i have no beard…..

I like single speed and I like 1×9 as it adds more of a challenge to your fitness than mincing through the gears.

Alfine anyone?

Alfine anyone?

Pah! I've got a 3 speed Sturmey Archer – a classic 😉

I'd love Alfine as it solves the main problems I have with gears as far as I can see, but so expensive 🙁

alfine/single speed preston a bike for all occasions

I've just been pointed in the direction of this thread by a friend who thought it was me – so hello fellow Calderdale Barney!

For what it's worth I don't have a problem with singlespeeding around Calderdale; I have a rigid 29er with a 32×19 on it, and it seems to work for me, even on the more gnarly stuff. I also have no beard 🙂

I love gears. They help keep the local bike shops in business.

And I'm going to fit them to my bike when I get old and frail.

I've found that my SS is much more involving to ride than my geared bikes.

It's very easy for me to just ride along, dropping gears when the terrain points upwards without really thinking about it. When I'm riding the SS I'm more aware of what the terrain is doing: a "is the hill sprintable or will I run out of steam halfway and be worse off than if I just cranked out a slow, steady pace from the off?" sorta thing. As I'm more "involved" in the ride I enjoy it more.

When I'm with mates I prefer the geared only because it's a lot easier to stay as a group, no sprinting off to get a run at the hill before being dropped on the descents when the gear spins out (or when the rigid fork slows me down but that's for another "hater" thread)

At the minute it's the only complete build I've got so I'm using it everywhere in the Lakes. I've decided not to change my routes etc to accommodate it but just see what I can and can't ride. If I have to push then who cares? There'll always be some steep rocky climb I can't clear on any bike anyway…

I guess you're either the kind of person who wants to make the gnarliest terrain as easy as possible to ride by using technology or you're not.

I have been riding my geared bike a little more often after about 9 years of singlespeeding… my knees thank me, but then I am old and portly these days…
However.. on the odd occasions that I ride my geared full-susser, I find myslef wondering if I could have gotten up that hill on my SS…. so the next ride is usually on the SS just for some variation (and clatter-free cycling).

I almost exclusively take the SS bike when I am riding alone with a good soundtrack…. but if it's a group ride and the others are on geared bikes I'll choose the geared bike… which is also useful for the road sections to and from the trails…

I tried the motorised type of off-roading a couple of years ago… and hated the fact that just when the trail got interesting, motorised vehicles were banned, I sat longing for a bicycle to explore the trail that weaved over the hilltops towards the fjörds..

I still think that my rigid 29er SS is the nicest and most rewarding bike to ride though…..

Somebody said horses for courses and that sums it up…..

Hammer.

My singlespeed's rubbish and I never go anywhere nice on it;

Wow, I never realised there was such animosity by some towards single speed. Talk about an irrational hatred!

Ride the bike you like / need. Change the setup as you like / need. I mainly ride around surrey (due to the fact that unfortunately I live in London) and for me personally if I rode gears and suspension I'd be bored as there would only be a handful of trails that would interest me. If I lived in Wales I would ride gears except for maybe in the muddiest trail inducing weather to as to save some wear on expensive cassettes. Someone else though may be happy to ride SS in Wales all the time, fine.

why do people care who rides what I ride my SS locally as it will get up all the hills, with effort, and is fairly low maintenance.

I liked SS when I has an SS bike, but for most of my riding it would limit me a bit, I won’t deny that gears can allow you to act like a jessy a bit too easily on occasion, but then being able to moderate your output using gears on a long ride can also help you keep a bit in the tank for later..

It’s easy to say MTFU but everyone has a level of fitness and many have limited opportunities to improve it, I found riding SS was only any fun so long as my fitness could keep pace, once your beasting yourself up the 15th climb of the day, you’re flagging and you know it won’t get any easier then it looses it appeal a bit…

Having said that I can see me building a new Rigid forked, SS winter MTB just to minimise maintenance, should still be good for local loops in the cold, the extra effort on climbs should warm me up, not having to worry about wearing out a pricey drivetrain is a bit more of a motivator to get out and ride on a grim day…

Couldn't decide which bike to ride tonight, thanks to you guys I've made my mind up! SS it is, Calderdale too! 😆

Good lad, Yorkshire Pudding, good lad 🙂

My gears are making weird noises again. Once again the temptation to SS is rising.. doing a merida marathon in September though and don't feel I'd be able to power round a whole 50k track in one gear – sit and spin on easier gears seems more likely.

I have just found myself without a SS for the first time in maybe 10 or 12 years*. It is a bit of a culture shock and I may well have to buy another frame to build up for the winter.

I ride Thetford mainly so it probably explains why I get on well with it.

*Apart from a fixie road (hack) bike

TheBrick – Member
Wow, I never realised there was such animosity by some towards single speed. Talk about an irrational hatred!

Nah, it's entirely rational. When you get old and frail, you need gears, and it makes you grumpy to see people on proper bikes.

It gets even worse when you get so decrepit that you need suspension as well. 🙂

I actually really quite like it, plus it's a good niche gang to be in.

Hey Hammer you been out trail mincing again people will start thinking your in training ;-)))

Love ya x

Riding ss is so much better when you keep it to yourself shh

Jupp…. been out mincing and bimbling twice a week 3-4 hours at a time since SSEC… next ride is tonight… we have been very lucky with the weather too so far.. fingers crossed..
Finally got my 36t front ring from CRC, so I might fit that and test it tonight.. just have to leave work a bit earlier and that's not a bad thing!

Love you too.. xx

Nothing against SS per se, just not my cup of tea. It does annoy me though when a fruitcake on an SS stalls on a singletrack climb in front of me a forces me to stop to – I have gears because I want to ride up climbs not push so get the **** out of the way :p

have there own races an all….lee quarry is handbags at dawn when thats on.

actually they don't have their own race there is a sub category prize sponsored by Charlie the Bikemonger for the fastest SS, they still can win their category prize

http://www.brownbacksracing.co.uk

not sure about the handbags either, it's more a bit of a laugh on a Sunday morning 🙂

was it Eddy Merckx who said "gears are OK, for older guys"…? 😉

I ride both SS and geared. I agree that if you live in a very hilly area then being a beginner on SS is a totally dispiriting and painful experience. I am fortunate in that I live in a very varied landscape. My local forest is maximum single climb of about 50 vertical meters but I can drive an hour and a half and point my self up 200-300 of vertical climb … and everything in between.

as for SS fruitcakes stalling in front of geared riders, more often I see the opposite; geared riders in a low gear hole weaving at walking pace up the hill while the SSer tries to maintain cadence and get past. Hey, it all happens, anyone would think we should be sharing the trail

Fruitcakes on ss holding people up on climbs the bare faced cheek of not being as good as you !

Surely in any instance it is the rider who is behind who ultimately has to judge if or when a rider up front will stop or move of line wether they have gears or no gears it makes no difference

Cuts both ways when a quick ss riders gets stalled out by someone chomping down a fistful of gears when there is really no need

I certainly didnt hold up any riders whilst climbing l'alpe d'huez last summer on my ss non stop

have single speedified my 456 summer season super slack thrasher having ripped off a (brand new at the time) super short road mech.

its pretty cool.
bike weighs a tonne ANYWAY, so pushing up anything more than a gentle slope is fine by me, and its nice and quiet on the downs, with the gentle wirr of a chain guide roller.

looking forward to the weekend. dyfi last weekend, lots of pedalling.
this weekend is gonna be pushing, and gravity descending.

Did somebody mention fruitcake…. I'll put the kettle on!

At the end of the day there are numerous configurations. If someone want's to go SS then that's fine, if they want to run 20, 30, internally geared whatever.. It's personal choice and if it floats your boat then I don't have any issues with it.

I'd happily have a SS alongside my geared bike and choose which one is appropriate for the ride.