In this new illustrated series, Anders Engberg looks at the relationship between trail builders, the earth they work, and their views on riding. First up, we take a trip to Pacific Northwest to talk to trail builder Adam McCoy. Massive conifers stand guard as a…
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Rider Gallery and Debrief: #JennRide 2021
The #JennRide is organised by Rich Munro in memory of our late Deputy Editor, Jenn Hill to raise funds for St Gemma’s Hospice. It’s quickly obtained a reputation for being a fun event with a challenging route. Race around s fast as you like, or…
10 Flat Bar Bike Checks: BC Epic 1000
As the riders prepare to set off on their 1000km ride around British Columbia, all eyes are on the weather forecast. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your perspective) for you, you’ll be dot watching rather than bug swatting or melting in the heat. These ten…
BC Epic Bike Checks: the Ti, the Custom, the Vintage and the Homemade
The BC Epic 1000 is one of those long distance unofficial organised events in the tradition of the Tour Divide or Highland Trail 550. With this year’s Tour Divide disrupted by border closures between the USA and Canada we thought the dot watchers out there might be…
Readers’ Rides | Joe’s Marino ‘Ultimate 40’
What are you all riding? This is where we find out! You send us your submissions, and then we cast our judgemental expert lustful eyes over them and bring them to the world to ooh and ahh over. We’re picking the prettiest, the most curious, and the ones with…
6 Surly Bike Checks – Taking On The BC Epic 1000
The BC Epic 1000 is one of those long distance unofficial organised events in the tradition of the Tour Divide or Highland Trail 550. With this year’s Tour Divide disrupted by border closures between the USA and Canada we thought the dot watchers out there might be…
A Day With Chris Porter – Everything Is Connected, Except Us
Hannah and her partner – a paid up Geometron owner – visited Chris Porter for chat, coffee, a leafy ride, and a whole pile of setting the world to rights. On the hottest day of 2020 I miss the turning for Chris Porter’s Mojo Rising…
Bike Check: 10 Ways To Salsa the BC Epic 1000
The BC Epic 1000 is one of those long distance unofficial organised events in the tradition of the Tour Divide or Highland Trail 550. With this year’s Tour Divide disrupted by border closures between the USA and Canada we thought the dot watchers out there…
Readers’ Rides: Dan’s Banshee Prime
What are you all riding? This is where we find out! You send us your submissions, and then we cast our judgemental expert lustful eyes over them and bring them to the world to ooh and ahh over. We’re picking the prettiest, the most curious, and the ones with…
How Anyone Can Get A Job In The Bike Industry
It’s not so long ago that I was an outsider – I rode bikes, but beyond my local bike shop, Wiggle, and a few brushes with British Cycling, I had no real idea about how things worked. Having spent my working life in the public…
Readers’ Rides | Charlie Kelly’s 1983 Ritchey Annapurna
What are you all riding? This is where we find out! You send us your submissions, and then we cast our judgemental expert lustful eyes over them and bring them to the world to ooh and ahh over. We’re picking the prettiest, the most curious, and the ones with…
Readers’ Rides Bike Check: Shia’s Production Privée Shan GT 935
What are you all riding? This is where we find out! You send us your submissions, and then we cast our judgemental expert lustful eyes over them and bring them to the world to ooh and ahh over. We’re picking the prettiest, the most curious,…
Why You Should Discover The Joy of Singlespeeding
If you have dotwatched the latest edition of the Highland Trail 550 like me, you’ll have noticed that Liam Glen, the winner in 3:10:55 (days:hours:minutes) has done this amazing feat on a rigid singlespeed bike. Liam is no stranger to singlespeeding or the Highland Trail.…
Readers’ Rides Bike Check: James’ BTR Ranger
What are you all riding? This is where we find out! You send us your submissions, and then we cast our judgemental expert lustful eyes over them and bring them to the world to ooh and ahh over. We’re picking the prettiest, the most curious,…
Readers’ Rides Bike Check: Andy’s Geometron G1
There are so many great New Bike Day threads on the Forum – often the result of other lengthy ‘What Bike?’ threads – that we thought we’d create the opportunity to bring some of them to the front page for a bit of extra love…
Gallery: In Celebration of The Group Ride
After a long spell, group rides are back in much of the country. In celebration of the joy that is the group ride, with its giggles, its slithers, its mechanicals and its chat, we asked you to send us your photos from this week’s return…
10 Bikes of the Highland Trail 550
It’s the first event we’ve seen in a while and all those long distance riders must surely have the pent up energy of a spaniel that needs a wee. The Highland Trail 550, 550 miles in length with over 16000m of climbing, kicks off this…
Binners Has Axle To Grind After Ordeal
Demonstrating that age and experience are no guard against stupidity, Singletrackworld.com near-legend status Forum regular, Adam ‘Binners’ Rawlinson has had what some might describe as the most testing week and a bit of his life. His ordeal started as he prepared to head for a…
Riding DJ Brandt’s X Games Canyon Gap
For most of us, stumbling across a canyon gap would be something to be avoided, probably with plenty of dragging of the brakes, a careful keeping back from all edges by at least three metres, and a good dose of definitely not looking down. For…
Interview: Rocksled Suspension – doing things differently
There are few things that please me more than spotting a curious bike being built by someone and getting to ask them about it. Unlike some that I’ve seen, this creation from Rocksled Suspension doesn’t strike me as beautiful, or as a piece of technically…
Zen And The Art of Buying Bike Parts
We now live in very challenging times for buying bike parts and accessories, and indeed bikes. Covid has kicked production in the plums, lockdown has turbocharged demand, Brexit has made bike part shopping in euroland more complicated, and some idiot crashed a boat on a…
Bike Check: Kingdom G 600 Belt Driven Custom Titanium Hardtail
Graham Stock of Sixth Element hasn’t matched his bike to his Porsche – instead he’s had himself a rather nice custom titanium hardtail built, and of course added his own company wheels. I suspect a few ears pricked up at the mention of ‘titanium’. Now…
Podcast: Bowhead Corp – making bikes for life
A life changing spinal injury is one of those things that we really hope never happens to us – but as mountain bikers we know it’s a risk. When it happens, as well as all the obvious and potentially major health, work and accessibility implications,…
How Does The Female Hormone Cycle Affect Cycling Performance? Part 1
Hormones, the ‘chemical messengers’ that tell our bodies what to do and when to do it, aren’t optional. We can’t turn them off, at most we can try to balance them with the use of more hormones. But can we use them to our advantage…
Interview: Making The Earthbound FS Bamboo High Pivot Bike
Building bikes with bamboo isn’t new, but this is a particularly lovely example of what you can do with a little time, patience and a whole heap of skill. Having spotted Earthbound Bikes on Instagram, we had a chat with maker Jason O’Nions about the…
10 Reasons your bike will cost you more this year
It seems like there’s been a lot of bad news about price rises on bikes and components recently, so we thought we’d look at what’s driving it – and whether it’ll change any time soon. 1. High demand 2020 saw half the world go out…
Editor’s Choice Awards 2020 – Hannah and Ross pick their favourites
First published in Singletrack Magazine Issue 134. It’s been a ‘special’ year, for sure, but the sun has continued to come up and bikes have still been ridden. We’ve perhaps not been to as many far-flung places (even in the UK) as usual, but that’s…
Editor’s Choice Awards 2020 – Mark’s Picks
First published in Singletrack Magazine Issue 134. It’s been a ‘special’ year, for sure, but the sun has continued to come up and bikes have still been ridden. We’ve perhaps not been to as many far-flung places (even in the UK) as usual, but that’s…
Editor’s Choice Awards 2020 – Chipps’ Pick
First published in Singletrack Magazine Issue 134. It’s been a ‘special’ year, for sure, but the sun has continued to come up and bikes have still been ridden. We’ve perhaps not been to as many far-flung places (even in the UK) as usual, but that’s…
Editor’s Choice Awards 2020 – Andi’s Pick
First published in Singletrack Magazine Issue 134. It’s been a ‘special’ year, for sure, but the sun has continued to come up and bikes have still been ridden. We’ve perhaps not been to as many far-flung places (even in the UK) as usual, but that’s…
Editor’s Choice Awards 2020 – Amanda’s Pick
It’s been a ‘special’ year, for sure, but the sun has continued to come up and bikes have still been ridden. We’ve perhaps not been to as many far-flung places (even in the UK) as usual, but that’s not necessarily been a bad thing and,…
New To Cycling? Let us help you get rolling over the hills and far away
We welcome you to the gang with some helpful advice for new cyclists. Hopefully actual good advice that makes you want to ride more, further, and off to new places! New to cycling? Welcome to the greatest club on earth! We’re delighted you’ve discovered the…
Top 10 Singletrack Forum Threads of 2020
Our Forum is a place where many minds meet. They don’t always see eye to eye, but if you want to know the answer to something obscure, there’s every chance that someone will know the answer. Has anyone got one of those left hand widgets…
Singletrack’s 2021 Predictions
New year, new us, that kind of thing. It’s at this time of year that we ask our team for some predictions for the year ahead. No cheating or open textbooks (or 2021 OEM brochures) allowed – just based on what they’ve seen and how…
The Singletrackworld.com Mountain Bike Quiz of 2020
20 mountain bike news based questions to see whether or not you’ve been paying attention to anything this year! Not sure if you know enough? Why not do a little homework. All the answers can be found within the pages of Singletrackworld.com Or if you’re…
Top 10 Singletrack Podcast episodes of 2020
In 2020 we relaunched our podcast. Relaunched, because according to the Singletrack Magazine Wikipedia entry we were the first mountain bike media to have a podcast way back when podcasts were first a thing in the early noughties. Back then our podcasts were simply recordings…
Top 10 Singletrackworld.com Stories of 2020
With millions of readers every month, there are lots of different paths to reading an article on Singletrack. Maybe you come straight to the homepage every morning over your coffee, or maybe you click through from Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps a friend shared a post…
Top 10 Bike Reviews of 2020
It’s been a pants year for a lot of reasons, but we’ve still managed to test some great bikes. Here are our top 10 bike reviews of 2020. Below are the 10 most read mountain bike reviews of 2020. If you’re after eMTB reviews, we’ll…
Your Top 10 Singletrack Videos of 2020
What did you watch on our YouTube channel this year? There are plenty of ‘old favourites’ that you keep viewing, plus new videos that caught your attention too. Here’s the Top 10 of most watched Singletrack videos this year. 1. Mountain Biking – The Untold…
Deviate Highlander Long Term Test Bike Build
Ladies and gentlemen, please allow myself to introduce… my new Deviate Highlander long term test bike. Or at least it will be once I’ve cut it down from the ceiling and put it all together. For now, let’s just take a moment to appreciate the…
What’s In A (Bike Company) Name?
The Stories Behind Some of the Bike Industry’s Most Well-Known Monikers Our super-sleuth, investigative reporter, Tim Newcomb has been digging around to find exactly what's in that company name. Some are obvious, but some are more than obscure! For the most part, you can forget…
2020 World Cup Winner, Marine Cabirou’s 5 tips to a successful Winter
Winter’s dark nights, cold weather and dirty trails take their toll on your motivation but Marine Cabirou has a few tips to keep on riding. Sometimes it is super hard to train when the weather is not nice, I especially find it difficult when I…
Charlie And The Search For The Singletrack Members Gin Offer
Part of my job as “Overlord of The Leftovers” at Singletrack is to bravely search the Kingdom for the finest quality product offers to present to you our glorious Singletrack members. This is by no means an easy task. Yeah sure, for some member offers…
Ling’s Bike Trip – The Pre-Ride Interview With Ling Valentine
There's no denying that Ling Valentine is quite a character. Her vividly-coloured, car-leasing website, LingsCars.com has been described as 'contract hire's RyanAir' and with a small staff and efficient practices, it has propelled her to become the UK's "biggest individual seller of new cars" -…
Neil Sutton’s 2021 Sonder Evol Dream Build
Neil Sutton, the designer of the Sonder bike range, shows off his newly built 2021 Sonder Evol boasting electronic shifting and kitchen tune suspension. For 2021 Sonder has updated the Evol to run on larger 29in wheels while also stretching the frameset out to give…
12 Things That Mountain Bike Magazines Need To Stop Doing
The response to our ‘Ten things the bike industry needs to stop doing’ feature a couple of years ago has been very good, with readers outraged and in agreement in equal measures. So, just because we like giving the hornets’ nest a prod every now…
Identiti AKA Bike Check: Versatile Hardtail For Trails or Tracks
Here we have another hardtail build by Amanda, only this time she’s gone alloy with the Identiti AKA. For her first stray away from steel, she’s gone for ultimate comfort by choosing all her preferred components, and some very noisy wheels. Identiti AKA 27.5 /…
North American Scrap Lumber Bicycle Symposium | Bike Check
Pushing the boundaries of bicycle technology, taking innovation to the next level, and setting new standards, it's Hannah and Fahzure's lockdown creation. No, it's not a baby, a sourdough loaf, or a pizza oven: it's a bike made from wood. With so many cancellations of…
10 Mistakes We Made When We Started Mountain Biking
Antony brings us some tips for new mountain bikers (and perhaps old hands too) that he thinks will help add fun to your off road rides. We’ve all been there. Some of us still are there. Riding bicycles off road isn’t the easiest sport to…
Masks of Singletrack | Here’s how the staff are helping curb the spread of COVID19
This is a public service broadcast! Masks are now required to be worn in shops, on buses and trains and in the commission of bank robberies. Here at Singletrack we are taking that responsibility seriously – in fact we’ve been following a masks in the…
Diversion Diary | In The Zone
Hannah’s partner, BK, lives in the USA, and lockdown has kept them apart. Each week in the Diversion Diary she has brought us some lonesome ramblings, plus a selection of internet finds. But this week, they’re reunited. Sorry this is a bit late, but I’ve…