Hi all,

For various reasons, I don’t have a mountain bike at the moment, and don’t foresee getting one until next year at least. I live near Stratford, east London.

Today I drove to Bedgebury Forest and hired one of their “premium” hire bikes, a pretty decent Whyte hardtail, for £33 for 2 hours. The trails were fairly fun, but not amazing (I’m used to North Wales and Scotland).

Can anyone recommend any other trails, which have half decent hire bikes for a half decent price available nearby, within 1.5 hours drive of east London?

Swinley looks alright – although their regular hardtails don’t look that great (but they are cheap to hire).
I’d love to ride Penhurst (old PORC), Chicksands, Aston Hill etc, but don’t know much about nearby bike hire?

Thanks in advance,
Duane.

If only there were more folks like you, we would have an actual buy-to-let biking market.

£33 for two hours is a better rate than my temp job yields at the minute. I’d far rather lend you a bike (Whyte T-130 C RS*) and show you the South Downs from Winchester for that hourly rate. I’ll throw in the guiding for free, plus find you secure parking, food, etc.

*I had a well paid job when I bought that.

I think Soho Bikes will let you borrow a bike for £75 a weekend to try it out. Then you could head down to the Surrey Hills or wherever. Not quite the same as just hiring for a few hours though.

Swinley would have been my first thought as well.

You can hire a bike and protection etc from Lovelo in berkhamstead for Aston Hill, no idea what bikes they supply lately so give them a call

Mountain Trax (a few miles from Swinley) will let you test as many of their demo bikes as you want in a month for £50 (one at a time, obvs). They stock Orange, Cannondale and Santa Cruz. Whether you feel it’s ‘ethical’ to use it as a rental service is up to you

There used to be a shop around Peaslake that did rentals – think Pedal and Spoke.

Thanks for the replies.

Caspian – if that was even a half-serious offer I’d love to take you up on that!

Soundninjauk – thanks, but £75 is a bit steep!

Mehr – had a look at their site, and they either have GT Fury DH bikes (£100 per day) or pretty low end HTs. Will give them a ring to see if they have anything else.

Flashinthepain – hmm interesting – surely they must be aware that people do that?

Gribble – cheers, that looks great, will definitely check them out.

Thanks,

Duane.

Nirvana Cycles in Westcott (near Dorking) also hire bikes, but may not quite be what you were hoping for in terms of high ended-ness.

Caspian – if that was even a half-serious offer I’d love to take you up on that!

It is! How tall are you? All my bikes are XL, I’m 6’2″.
Could do any day next week.