We asked some ex-staff to reminisce about their times at Singletrack. Good, bad and zany…
Words: Chipps. Photos: mostly Chipps.
The magazine has never just written, designed or organised itself. Just a quick reckoning of full-time staffers, part-timers and those who’ve taken a wage, or spent the night on the office sofa, comes to near-on fifty. We asked a few old staff members to jot down some of the memories of their time in Singletrack Towers.
Sim Mainey – Singletrack’s first full-time designer
As a mountain bike-obsessed youth, most of my university days – and student loan – were spent on the Singletrack forum and classifieds. So, it was probably karma that I spent the first part of my career working for Singletrack trying to earn some of that money back. I’m not sure that ever happened, but I definitely got paid back in other ways.
I was Singletrack’s first in-house designer. In truth, being just out of uni, I was very much a junior designer, and being trusted with the crayons of a proper magazine was an act of great faith by Mark and Chipps. I hid my inexperience by giving myself the grand title of Art Director. I was told I could have any job title I liked but I’d still get paid the same.
I was at Singletrack for eight years and, like many creatives, I struggle to look at my past work. I only see the mistakes, missed opportunities and poor font choices. That said, when I was given the opportunity to redesign the magazine from scratch, it was a dream come true, and I still look at issue 72 with much pride. I see the naivety of a young designer who was learning his trade, but I also see the formation of a definite taste and aesthetic. Mark and Chipps’ generosity and trust in offering me the job, and then giving me freedom to make it my own, have never been forgotten. And I’m by no means the only beneficiary.
Singletrack has always been willing to give people a chance and been a great talent feeder for the bike industry. There are plenty of writers, photographers and marketing types who have Singletrack to thank, at least in part, for their careers. A personal highlight was hiring a junior designer, Grace, and being able to pass that generosity (and a bunch of ‘can you just’ jobs) on. Despite my lack of management experience, I’m proud to say Grace has gone on to great things. She’s even managed to escape the bike industry – something I’m seemingly not willing, or able, to do.
Thanks to Singletrack, I got to ride some incredible bikes. And some proper duffers. I’ve forgotten most of them, good and bad. Because, in the end, despite what my younger self might have thought, bikes don’t matter. What matters are the people, places and experiences that bikes bring together, aka The Ride. Staying relevant for 25 years is a tough task. I think because Singletrack has never lost sight of what matters, and brought us all along for the ride, it’s never lost its way. The media landscape has changed dramatically in a quarter of a century, but Singletrack, like its namesake, has followed the lie of the land. No one wants the singletrack to stop – here’s to the ride continuing a good while longer.
Grace Abell – Junior Designer
My best memory of working at Singletrack was the high production standards, led by former deputy editor, the late Jenn Hill, and art director Sim Mainey. They didn’t use the deadlines as an excuse for subpar creativity. This made Singletrack the best place to start my design career. I’m now implementing that level of detail as a head of brand. As for a worst moment, few things got quite as bad as seeing the office at midnight. All’s forgiven, though… I was plied with enough coffee the following morning!
Barney Marsh – Ex-staff writer and actual brain scientist
I was a wide-eyed naif, dew-plucked from a basement laboratory, when I was unceremoniously thrust, mewling, into the vaunted halls of Singletrack. I’d written bits and pieces for them before: a backpack review here; a wheelset there, but when I was sent to La Garda to cover a tyre launch for Kenda, I jumped at the chance. My ensuing word-spaffage must’ve impressed/deluded someone at the mag, as I was then asked if I’d be interested in joining up full-time for a few months. As history (a spectacularly niche branch of history, granted, but history nevertheless) recounts, I said yes.
A huge variety of hijinks ensued – my first ‘on location’ gig involved live tweeting the Fort Bill DH without the armour of any knowledge whatsoever about the current state of DH, or any vestiges of competence at the sport; I felt very much as if I was the apotheosis of the (then current) fish-out-of-water features, which exhorted a variety of journo-types to try something a little out of their comfort zones. And there I was, pretending not only to be knowledgeable about DH of any stripe past the 1990s, but also pretending to know how to behave like a mountain bike journalist. Bwahahaha!
I soon found myself writing all manner of articles in a variety of different voices for the mag and the website, ranging from ‘knowledgeable omniscient’ through to ‘monumental clot’. Probably my favourite thing to regularly write – at least initially – was Fresh Goods Friday, into which I managed to cram an enormous pile of bollocks: the opening to a dodgy (fictional) sci-fi movie, pantheistic gods, poems about the weather and whatever else crossed my mind that day. It became something of a millstone, though – I’d like to imagine it had its fan(s), but at the very least, I managed to turn in a weekly screed of stream of consciousness and terrible puns that was so polarising we even received hate mail. I’m quite proud of that – even though the hater later wrote in again to apologise.
We slept in tents, one of us nearly lost an ear, and there was so much dust that you couldn’t actually see.
Probably the most extraordinary thing I did on behalf of Singletrack was also one of my last – a press trip to Chile to ride the latest carbon 29er from Santa Cruz. This was in 2016, in those halcyon days when marketing budgets were REAL marketing budgets. A load of journalists from all over the world were shipped to Patagonia, along with loads of Santa Cruz employees and Cédric Gracia, to ride the brand’s brand spanking new full-carbon 29er trail bike, the Hightower. Some issues with flights meant that an enforced layover in Santiago with a bunch of other journos was on the cards, but when we got to Patagonia, it was an absolute revelation: the bike was excellent – although re-reading my enthusiasm in the write-up for the relatively progressive (2016) geometry is a bit of a hoot – and there were scads of absolutely sublime backcountry riding.
We luxuriated in incredible scenery, trails that – in at least one or two cases – were freshly cut in for our arrival, while the rest were previously walked by fishermen. The mountain biking scene in that part of Chile didn’t exist, for the most part, and Santa Cruz was trying to promote a new event, the Rally Aysén. We slept in tents, one of us nearly lost an ear, and there was so much dust that you couldn’t actually see before you’d emerge to yet another absolutely jaw-dropping vista. It was the most adventurous press trip I’ve ever been on, and I’ll never forget it. My time at Singletrack definitely had its perks…
Jorji Frederiksen – Ex-Singletrack Art Director
Happy Birthday, Singletrack! It warms my heart to know the paper and ink Singletrack is still going strong. Reflecting on my years at the magazine, what an amazing rollercoaster of mountain highs and soggy, wind-lashed not quite so highs. No two days were ever the same; you’d be flying off to Europe on a press camp one day, shooting up the hill behind the office the next (cameras, that is), not to mention the all-nighters around deadline time.
And some of those were intense, usually fuelled by Scampi Fries, cheese, and The Cure.
It’s probably a common theme in people’s contributions here that you can’t beat being paid to do what you love, especially with other lunatics who feel the same! There are so many highlights from my time designing there, but the trip to Ibiza was undoubtedly the cherry. Amazing riding, but also a fateful trip as it’s where I met [Jorji’s now partner] Swedish Tomas. And now here I am, living in north Sweden with our two junior mountain bikers. Though there’s less pedalling now, and more sliding as we swap our bikes for cross-country skis for a good chunk of the year. So, raising a glass of akvavit to you, to the next 25 years.
Hannah Dobson – Ex-Managing Editor
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say working at Singletrack changed my life. I came to Singletrack to organise, and I strongly suspect that Chipps would say I did far too much of that. But I also brought with me a love of bikes – in their most general and niche-agnostic sense – and the feeling that they were the key to a lot of happiness.
Life before Singletrack included project management burnout, then full-time parenting. Singletrack showed me a completely different world. People did high fives and hugs, not handshakes – which led to a lot of awkward fumblings. They lived for fun and today, not tomorrow’s pension contributions. Gradually, I started writing, and discovered that I was actually pretty good at it – and enjoyed it. Better still, the readers seemed to enjoy it too. I learnt to write without a filter, and write only what I believed. A couple of early forays into writing for clicks still make my teeth itch, and I learnt better.
For me, it was never about the bikes – it was about the people. Luckily, the readers of Singletrack and its fuddle of forumites proved to be a largely supportive and receptive group. Between the inevitable gear reviews (and videos – which were a real skills stretcher, and podcasts – which I liked) I had the freedom to write about bikes yet also the industry, politics, mental health, divorce, kids, the environment, access, and even sex. Some of you blushed. I mentioned my unmentionables a lot. It was an incredible privilege to have such creative freedom and a platform to share it.
My memories may seem mostly about the writing, but it’s the riding that made the words happen. Bike rides were always the key to finding the words, even if they ended up being very tenuously linked to the topic. I met so many interesting people, and got to visit places I’d never even dreamed of going. Bikes were the means to bring us all together, and they allowed us to explore ideas and feelings, as well as the world. For nearly ten years I was lucky enough to call bikes and words work, and it changed how I see everything. Hopefully, my kids will be the beneficiaries of my new outlook, where the world seems full of unconventional paths. And perhaps along the way, I nudged one of you into looking at things differently, too. What a ride.
Best bits: Laughing hysterically on a tandem ride with Chipps, accidentally doing the last Mountain Mayhem as an off-the-couch 24hr solo, recalibrating my preconceptions on a Muslim women’s mountain bike weekend, being at the first Women’s Red Bull Rampage, writing an obituary for Sudocrem Cat.
Worst bits: Facebook live-ing the Megasack daily videos, the misprint in the 20th anniversary issue, having to nag people about deadlines, writing obituaries for Mike Hall and Jez Avery.
Amanda Wishart – Ex-Art Director
When I joined Singletrack, Chipps was away on sabbatical. By the time he returned, I had built up some preconceptions about him… mainly, I believed he was a scary Miranda Priestly (Devil Wears Prada) type of editor who I needed to be ‘professional’ around. The first thing he said to me was “Does anyone ever call you Mandy?” to which I replied “Not twice”; a knee-jerk response that came out far more aggressively than intended.
I thought I’d blown it, but as it turned out, Chipps is far less intimidating, or serious [or easy to offend – Ed], than I expected. He’s ended up being one of several really good friends to come out of Singletrack. Fast forward to now, as I’m typing this, I’m sitting in his Pyrenean hideaway as he pours me a glass of champagne to celebrate nothing in particular. He’s shown me his coffee roaster, I’ve sampled a brew (it’s really good), and we’re going for a bike ride tomorrow.
Lifelong friendships aside, some of my favourite memories from working at Singletrack aren’t from the big events, the press trips or the bike rides. They’re the pre-Covid office-based shenanigans, particularly during a magazine deadline. Hannah would be in a flap, frustratedly rushing to and from the office printer for feature proofs, Chipps would be strumming his guitar at his desk or trawling AutoTrader for something irresponsible, and I’d be hovering somewhere in the middle of their urgency levels. Maybe a beer would appear on my desk. Hannah might make a ‘party on a plate’ of snacks for me, because I was good at forgetting to eat, and she was good at looking after me. Wil Barratt would be sitting with headphones on, having a silent rave at his desk. Ross and Andi would be bickering about some new bike or component, and the tech team would be at the far end of the room talking excitedly in acronyms. Mark would be doing latte art for anyone who wanted a coffee.
There was a collective buzz as we all built a lovely, memorable thing of a magazine, and a sigh of relief when it was at the printers. It’s only on reflection that I’ve realised the Singletrack office was my last taste of ‘normal’ office life, though it was far from normal, as I’m sure this feature will outline.
Wil Barratt – Ex-Technical Editor
I was fresh off the boat from Australia when I started my Singletrack tour of duty back in 2016. I had long been an avid reader of the magazine, and I’d met Chipps and Mark at various press camps before, but I otherwise had little idea of what I was getting myself into when I arrived in this place called ‘Tod-mor-den’.
I otherwise had little idea of what I was getting myself into when I arrived in this place called ‘Tod-mor-den’.
I had a soft landing thanks to an unusually warm summer spell, but soon enough I was learning about mid-layers, shoe-driers and SAD lamps. Once equipped with proper riding gear, an appreciation of real ale, and a crash course in the Yorkshire–Lancashire cultural divide, I loved riding in t’valley and have many fond memories of my time there. Shooting photos under falling snow at Lee Quarry, then drifting and nearly bogging the work van on the way back to the office over Bacup Road. Having my mind expanded and my body’s sodium threshold tested during my first trip to Eurobike, travelling all around the UK, and discovering the Disneyland that is Tebay Services. It was an action-packed couple of years where I learned a bucketload, got to work with some incredible people, and was a part of numerous projects that I’m genuinely proud of. The Bamboo Bastard was perhaps my favourite article ever, despite the love-hate relationship I had during the build (it was mostly hate).
I owe a huge thanks to Chipps, Mark and Sarah for giving me a chance in the first place, and for making our time in Tod such an unforgettable experience. Happy 25th birthday to Singletrack. I’ll be drinking a flat, room-temperature bitter to celebrate!
Jeff Lockwood – Ex-editor of sister magazine grit.cx, and Ameri-Belgian…
Being an American transplanted in Belgium for nearly two decades, I was… and still am… quite an outsider in the UK. As such, many British colloquialisms fly well below my radar. This became painfully clear to me during the weekend of the 2014 UCI Cyclocross World Cup stop in Milton Keynes. Singletrack’s gravel/cyclocross sister publication, grit.cx, was in full swing at the time, and we set up a stand at the event to promote our muddy content and branded merch. I spent much of my time walking the muddy course to take notes, gather photos, and press some flesh with athletes, potential advertisers, and friends from afar. Before I knew it, my shoes and clothes were caked in a deep layer of earthen soil; particularly the bottom half of my attire.
This weekend was a big deal for cyclocross in the United Kingdom – and to celebrate the occasion, Chipps and Mark organised dinner for our tiny staff at a nice-ish restaurant in town. Unfortunately, I had decided a few days earlier that I didn’t really need a change of clothes since it was such a short trip. But wearing half of the course splattered on my clothes meant I was going to need a change. On the walk back to our hotel, my colleague and I stopped in a Sainsbury’s to get me some replacement apparel. As I wandered around aimless and muddy, a store employee approached to ask me if I needed help. I looked her in the eye and calmly stated, “My pants are filthy, and I need a new pair.” And that’s when I learned that y’all wear ‘trousers’ over your ‘pants’ in the United Kingdom.
James Vincent – Singletrack’s newest ex-Art Editor
My first proper memory of Singletrack was back in the early 2010s when I was a fresh-faced photographer, hassling Sim (Mainey, then Art Director) and Chipps to print my photos. I was astounded to receive a quite detailed reply from Chipps, which made me realise that these mythical beings inhabiting Singletrack Towers were actually just regular everyday people like you and me, who just so happened to have dedicated their lives to riding bikes and writing about them.
Fast forward a couple of years, and an email dropped into my inbox from the late Jenn Hill, asking if I wanted to shoot an ‘ebike into the wilderness’ feature (Issue 98). Bingo! I’d made it. My first actual proper mountain biking photography commission. Except that my ebike never turned up, so I was left to chase Mark, Jenn and Chipps around the Howgills on my weighty Yeti, while they razzed about like loons on ebikes. Gits. Probably the only time there were no complaints when asking them to ride a trail feature “Just once more…”
Since then, I’ve shot plenty of daft big mountain epics here in the Lakes and beyond, travelled to many, many countries and had an absolute blast, all in the name of riding, photographing, and writing about bikes. The European road trip taking in Trickstuff, Merida and Innsbruck with Wil, Rob and Hannah was one of my favourite holidays, sorry, work trips ever, mostly because the people involved were ace. I’ve made some genuine lifelong friends through Singletrack, and for that I thank you!
Charlie Hobbs – Singletrack’s merchandise guy and recipe writer
The Day All Hell Didn’t Break Loose. We’re now five years on from the 20th anniversary issue. Let me take you back to the colossal balls-up that unfolded in the office the day we received the printed magazine.
I’d had one of my rare cunning ideas that was actually also a good idea. I blurted it out of my face without thinking, heard it before I had finished thinking it, and it was received well by the team. I suggested we have two ends to the mag, two front covers, with half the magazine upside down and starting at the other end. You could start either end. One half would be looking forward to where adults playing on toys in woods (AKA mountain biking) will go, with the other half looking back at the 20-year ride we had been on.
There was a genuine sense of anticipation as the freshly-printed mag arrived in the office weeks later. You know you get a good hit of fresh ink smell when you open up the box. It’s almost a ceremony concluded with a large inhalation. Quickly dished out to every desk, we all start thumbing through the mag, and one by one, we could see there had been a monumental balls-up. Some pages had been printed twice, some adverts were missing, half an article or two had been left behind. Shit! Twenty years and we had effed it right up.
The editorial folk figured out what had gone wrong. It was a last-minute edit that had bumped things along and off the end of the digital page. I believe somewhere there is a computer with bits of old articles and adverts jammed up inside its cogs and pulleys, or whatever goes on in there. Chipps said, incredibly calmly, “Well, we won’t be making that mistake again.” There was no meltdown, no thumping fists on desks, no raised voices, no heads rolling. No one fell on their sword. In fact, there were no swords whatsoever. With Mark in crisis-management mode, minutes later we had a plan. Ross started to call the advertisers and tell them they’d get an extra ad next issue. Hannah published the missing words online. I emailed subscribers and sent them the missing words. A pretty bloody good sticky-plaster job. Go team balls-up!
The STW gang are amazing, kind and lovely people. They have not only created a commercial scene, but also an office where being lovely really works. But also, maybe because mountain biking is constant problem-solving – ‘Argh, crap! Big root! Dog poo! Marbles! Ahhh, stinging nettles!’ – maybe because of our bikey nature, we are also really bloody effective. It really was a rare and beautiful thing to behold. At work and elsewhere… be more Singletrack. (And check the bloody proofs, won’t ya.)
Matt Letch – Ex-Singletrack ad editor, columnist and northern southerner
“Where does all the time go?” Right, Fairport? Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years. I’ve not actually worked for Singletrack for about fourteen years now, and I was only there for nine. But I was indirectly involved with the print magazine from issue one, when the bike shop that I was a partner in took an advert without ever seeing so much as a mock-up.
Before that, I was already a forum dweller, back when dial-up and endless scrolling meant Singletrack (formerly GoFarMTB) had my undivided attention. That – and then moving up to Calderdale to work for them (it says a lot that they gave me the job as ad manager; I think I was the only person they knew who’d had a proper job and helped run a business) – wholeheartedly formed the second half of my adult life. My wife might contest the ‘adult’ part. It pivoted me from ‘boy down souf’ to tolerated northern hill dweller.
It pivoted me from ‘boy down souf’ to tolerated northern hill dweller.
In my first issue working there, aside from trying to coax in some ad revenue, I ended up doing a Mountain Bike Leader course with Benji, being the coldest I’ve ever been on a bike between Blair Atholl and Braemar with Chipps, and writing the route guide for the Purbecks, along with a fair bit of ‘go and do it again’ for the photoshoot. It was busy but good.
It was a job that let me leave a business I was bored of, ride all over Europe, be beaten up and down hills by world champs, test some really great kit (and some really shite kit), and spend weekends either baking in the sun or standing in puddles while occasionally being allowed to call myself a writer. Between the riding, there was a remarkable amount of boozing and partying. The bike industry then was remarkably tolerant of hungover people, so long as you got the job done. It sounds clichéd now, but there was a real dirtbag edge to it: sleeping bag, Thermarest, and a bottle of something – drinkable or otherwise. That made producing a magazine on very little budget doable. In all the years I went to Eurobike in Germany with Singletrack, we never once paid for a hotel room. [or had actual beds… – Ed]
I’m glad of that now (I wasn’t always at the time). Meeting the weirdos at the Eurobike campsite, being dragged to genuinely terrible clubs because you couldn’t go to sleep until the owner of the room decided to – those hazy nights made memories I’d otherwise have missed. In 2010, because of the magazine, I got to race (and I’m sticking with ‘race’ because I really tried) the second edition of Trans Provence – a seven-day stage race where most of the timing was on descents, sight unseen. It was without doubt the hardest and best thing I’d ever done. One of those moments when you realise how far you can actually push yourself. I was hooked. After a few discussions, I became the sponsorship and marketing guy for the race and spent the next six years, once or twice a year, in France riding some of the gnarliest terrain you can imagine. An opportunity I’d never have had without Singletrack.
But mostly, what I take from that time – and what still endures – is the friendships. For someone who has been professionally gregarious, I’ve never had loads of male friends in my personal life. Now, when I look at the people whose company I enjoy – whether online because of distance or in the here and now – it’s all through bikes. I’d also say they’re people I’d want the company of without bikes. I sometimes railed at Singletrack’s identity as a magazine for mountain bikers who have grown up (I still think that’s an oxymoron), but it clearly was – and is – a magazine for mountain bikers who like to think while they drink, and who take a more open-armed, liberal approach to life.
I still live in the Valley. I met my wife here. I’ve had two kids here. I’ve built my working life here. I still mostly ride here. For that, I’m very grateful. I might not be here in another 25 years – but I hope Singletrack will be. As a space for stories. As something that excites. As a forum that can support as well as rib. In some ways we’ve come full circle. I’m genuinely happy to see the ‘returned from the wilderness’ Benji Haworth becoming Editor of print and digital – a man who, somewhere between obsessively compiling an entire mountain bike tyre ecosystem in a Rolodex, has also always been a seeker of the truth about why something so apparently unimportant can mean so much to us. The transfer of eclectic editorial decision-making is, mostly, in safe hands.
Since I left, there have been loads of great writers and designers, many of them women – that door kicked open by the incredibly forceful, gone but not forgotten Jenn Hopkins. As it should be, it continues. If you make something people love, you’re probably just its custodian until someone else takes on the mantle.
For never quite hitting deadlines, almost missing planes, being pretty skint, but always having a pint.
I’d really like to say thank you to my era – Mark and Chipps, Benji and Sim, and Dave Anderson, who was kind of permanently there at the time – for welcoming me in. For not telling me the complete truth, so I made the jump up to the Valley. For sunburn and hypothermia, scabby knees, great drinks and bad dancing. For never quite hitting deadlines, almost missing planes, being pretty skint, but always having a pint. For living precariously, but living well. Here’s to the future.
25 Years of Singletrack, Co-Starring…
We know that everyone who’s ever worked on the magazine will have their own eclectic tales to tell, but we simply don’t have space for it here. However, should you see any of the following folks in a café or pub, please give them our best and ask them about THAT story from their time here.
Ann/Lisa in Accounts, Rich Lane, RHS, Joolze Dymond, Craig Woodhouse, Dave Anderson, Claire Cox, Rob Mitchell, Patrick Ward, Jamie Ware, Tom de Bruin, Sarah Nolan Bell, Andy Armstrong, Zoe Alker, Sanny, James Love, Stanny Stansfield, Beate Kubitz, Fingers Kershaw, Ali Chant, Drac (and the mystery Mods), Aly Turner, Tom Chipps, Steve Makin, Andy Sykes, Samuri, Jeff Lockwood, Jason Miles, Dan Bladon, Jo Allen, Shaun Murray, Jon Woodhouse, Carvel Lonsdale, Chris Garrison, Matt Wenham, Andy Carter, Kane Allen, TA Design, Nathan Clarke, Roly Lambert, Tom Alker, Piers Barber, Sam Alker. (And apologies to anyone we’ve forgotten.)
Never forgetting
Steve Worland, Jenn Hill (née Hopkins), Rob Fisk, Nick Wallis, Pat Adams, John Pitchers, John North, Michael Bonney, Colin Meagher.
And still here
Chipps, Mark Alker, Benji Haworth, Ross Demain, Jim Clarkson, Sean Igoe, Heather Oliver, Anthony Weighell, Andy Pigg.
