Singletrack Reader Awards 2015: Best Bike over £2500

This is the ultimate bike award. If you spend more than this, you’ve been bitten by the bug BAD, and there’s possibly no escape. You may have a garage but this bike would live in the house. Possibly in the bedroom – possibly in your bed. It would be polished and cared for. Licked clean. It would be a bike to covet.

And here are the finalists for this year:

• Kona Process 153
• Yet SB 6C
• Orange Five

Kona Process 153

Ah, the Process. When Kona launched this range they really pulled rabbits out of hats. Not, perhaps the lightest of machines, truth be told. But very, very long, low and slack, with a super short, super stiff back end. A bike to get you in to an huge amount of trouble, and then pull you out of it again. A bike which will rarely be overfaced by anything you throw at it, even if you are. It’s probably way more capable than you are, bub. And that’s the way we like it.

Yeti SB6C

Built as an enduro machine, the SB6C (catchy name, Yeti) will take whatever you throw at it. It’s gorgeous. It’s long, it’s light (carbon fibre will do that to a frame). But it’s so much more versatile than that. Long all-day rides, leckin’ in’t woods, thrutch-core – this bike will do it all. And it’ll look awesome doing it, too. And the switch infinity sliding pivot thingy seems to cope pretty nicely with UK conditions, too. Sweet.

Orange Five

What’s left to say? The venerable five has been around for longer than many have been riding. It’s always been made in Yorkshire. It’s always been made of bent bits of aluminium. And it’s always moved with the times – to the point where it’s now seen as the de-facto British mountain bike by many. Still single pivot, it’s longer, lower, slacker and (arguably) prettier than ever before, and its glory never seems to fade.

Click here to cast your vote

Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

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