[Closed] Is mountain biking now a rich man's/woman's sport?

I bought my wife a new full suspension giant yukon for £400 last year. It's about the same weight and better spec than the rift zone I bought in 96(?) for £1300.

A guy passed me on the Dyfi riding the exact same bike as the wife's. I reckon he came top 30%.

I can't see anything to complain about.

yes thread closed.

I think pound for pound it's cheaper than it was 20 years ago when you take inflation and disposable income into account. The top end has always been expensive, but you can get a good bike for well under £500 with a bit of shopping about.

Not at all, why only last weekend my butler and gamekeeper were admiring my bike and expressed a desire to "have a go" as they put it.

It's not the cheapest thing in the world to get a OK bike but £ per smile it's good value and apart from a few parts now and then it's free.

Also it's a leveller the best kit does not equate to the best rider. Rich people I know prefer golf to getting covered in mud in the woods.

I think the lower end is no less affordable than it was 10, 15 years and the bikes are miles better. But the top end carbon bikes from brands like Trek, Specialized etc, they're stratospheric. You could get a custom steel hardtail and have change for a Pitch.

Polo, yachting etc are rich mens sports, not riding a bike.

Like any sport theirs your cheap side and the expensive side. Been on both sides, now tend to be somewhere in the middle.

Yes it is and thank God, all the poors can stick to their football and what have you, and leave us nice middle and upper-middle class people to enjoy the countryside. Mountain biking is perfect for getting away from the be-tracksuited plebians we all have to encounter in daily life. If anything I want it to get even more expensive, the higher the barriers to entry the better.

Nope, you can have fun on a £300 bike, an average person's weekly take-home pay. In '97 my GT Karakorum was £600 - rigid forks, 7 speed. Cycling is cheap if you want it to be, and it can be done almost anywhere; there's no need to join a club or travel to take part.
It's a very democratic sport.

Are you being all ironic RJ, or just a git?

mountain biking is only as expensive as you make it. As a kid I used to love dicing around in the woods on my raleigh sabre, saving up my pocket money to buy anodised blue cantilever brakes (to match my Tranz X riser bars), like wise I used to play football every night with my mates, in the road. kicking anything that would roll (tennis balls were popular)

Mountain bikes can be silly expensive, but so can footballs/boots/kit/going to matches. I appreciate its not in the same league price wise but it needn't be expensive for the sake of it. One of the best riders I know rides a bike that cost £450 5 years ago. If you've got the money then spend it, but you don't need to to ride.

Until it got nicked, I was still having fun on the bike I bought for £525 6 years ago, which was reduced to £400 not long after I bought it.

Most people I know who ride have 'normal' jobs, earning 'normal' wages.

In 1987 my mate bought a brand new fresh off the boat Hard Rock for 400 quid from York Cycleworks. Pauper spec an all. Today, same bike with discs and decent entry level groupset: 450 quid. Anyone know what the inflation rate has been overall over the last 23 years?

Its only expensive if you bow to the dirty world of everyone telling you what you should have. You are considered out of date, not with it, way behind if you don't have a phone with 200 pointless apps, one of which tells you when to breath.

The truth is, you can spend £300 on a bike and still have loads of fun. Then you get into it buy a magazine, and they tell you you need to spend at least £700 to get a lighter bike. Then you look down and wonder where your feet are and come to the conclusion that 3lbs off your bike is not really worth £400.

Fortunately there are muppets out there who have loads of money and little sense and what to shave 3grammes off a stem for £100 - their old stem goes on ebay which is now full of good equipment at a low price.

It takes all sorts.

randomjeremy, £1825 to watch 11 millionaires you've never met kick a ball around a field several weekends a year.
http://www.****/sport/football/article-1300279/Ipswich-Town-expensive-season-ticket-Manchester-United-Liverpool.html
You could buy a bike for that.

I suspect it's just like golf or fishing etc - kids can do it for next to nothing, as could anyone. However middle class tossers like, um, me get to spend loads on it and then have less fun too as we compare ourselves and our stuff to everybody else

No,

A good mountainbike is a luxury item but it is by no means a rich mans sport. I would have thought your average guy in the street could take up biking if they really wanted to. They may have to give up other luxuries (like having the latest phone, a sky subscription, football season ticket, drinks down the local 2 nights a week etc.) but I think they could do it. Especially if they then cycled instead of driving. Most of my bikes and trips are funded through not needing to own a second car.

Cars- now there's something that's really expensive.

I think as per the above, we all tend to live in the world of top end bikes and kit. I got back into mountain biking about 18 months ago on a second hand trek 6700 from ebay. A bit of shopping about and I'm now sat on a Giant Anthem X1, full XT, Revelations and hope hoops. I've spent about £1400 in total (including the first bike). To put that into context, I bought an Orange Clockwork frame in 1995 for £300 from Stiff cycles, I was earning about £10/week then for a paper round! For me I'm on cheaper kit now than then and damn it's better!

Couple of years ago I bought a second hand Hardrock for £140 - had to spend another £30-40 on bits to get it working smoothly, but most people could afford that with fairly minimal hardship. I rode that bike on pretty much all the same stuff I ride now on my Pitch, and had a great time (until it got nicked).

My mate follows Glasgow Rangers every home and away game also to Europe he reckons he's £4000 p/a for the privillage I don't spend anywhere near that on biking and I'm out 3 times p/w

Cycling isn't a rich mans sport at all.

It's when you get into it, like with any other sport, that it gets expensive.

But yes, to get the decent kit now, you have to spend the dollar. Cycling isn't cheap any more!

Look at other outdoor sports, a kayak, diving kit, climbing rack, surfing kit, hang glider etc etc
It's all expensive!

My first mountain bike was a £240(?) Peugeot Tim Gould "replica". It weighed 38lb. I had loads of fun on it, and I'm still enjoying razzing around in the woods on bikes 18 years later.

It did its job, and I'd imagine a similar amount of money would get you a better bike now, especially if you bother correcting for inflation.

So no.

Anto 164 - Thats the point - someone tells you what is considered decent and you go and buy it. Its shocking that the decent stuff costs loads of money.

However, what is meant by decent? I am fairly sure that if people out there downgraded their carbon bar to an Easton 30 bog standard bar, they are not going to die in a horrible fireball at the bottom of a mountain.

It is a decent bit of kit, fairly light and mine has always managed to move the wheel in the direction I want and it fits grips on it and everything. But somehow I should feel inadequate because I didn't spend enough money! Shame on me.

Good on you for not getting caught up in it all. I am, I can't help it. I'm a tart.

I got 6 months riding fun out of a £300 CLAUD BUTTLER and that was day in day out use guiding and instructing novices on the same bikes. All the bikes including the one id been smashing around are still fully functional if a bit tatty.

Its less of a rich mans sport more of a everyman sport that has got carried away so far up its niche arse its comical.

I dont think going to go football matches really is a fair comparision 5 a side fee would be more reasonable.

I pay £2.50 twice a week to play 5-a-side every now and then I'll get to play in an 11 a side is more expensive.

It all adds up though if the your only expense MTBing is the bike and you cycle from home. In some ways it can be quite cheap after the inital outlay.

Mind what I write above might be the equivalent of doing races etc which are more expensive I suppose the football equivalent is just turning up down the park which is free!

It's a hobby for most of us and it keeps us fit. Other people play golf, pay expensive memberships to fancy keep-fit places and whatever!! I spend what I think could be to some people too much money on bikes because I like them/riding them, but that is all I do for hobbies/fitness stuff!
Each to their own then! 😉

backhander

You tart.

You are not the only one, I was having a spot of lunch at Rutland Water once after scooting round on my second hand 'dale F500 and I overheard this chap talking to his mate about how his front forks are now carbon shaving a couple hundred grammes off his previous forks. His mate looked in awe.

I couldn't help notice that this blokes hyper expensive saddle failed to properly support his ludicrously fat arse. He must have weighed 17stones at least and here he was jabbering on about saving grammes off his front fork.

Like I said, it takes all sorts.

If it is, I need to have a SERIOUS chat with my bank!

Guilty as charged but I'm only 14 stone with a reasonable waistline so it could be worse 😀

Hmm I'm having a tough month of it and its starting to feel a bit pricey. Its just bad luck but my used once FS bargain bike has just blown the shocks at both ends in 2 weeks. The forks I might have done myself but the rear shock

I think getting a good durable, reliable sub £500 pound bike is harder than it was

But the thing that nw one here has talked about is your kit relative to other peoples. Yes entry level bikes are amazing in many ways but in the mags and on the trail you see alot of expensive kit and that changes perceptions of what you need. On here its common to talk not just about one posh bike but several. "I've the Ti 29 er for the flat stuff and a five for gnarr looking fore something in betwwen now"

I use to Windurf and I remember reading that the tech is now cheaper and more versatile than ever. One board 2 sails will do loads of stuff, more than 3 sails or even 4 just a few years ago...

But if the people on the same lake have 6 brilliant sails and 3 brilliant boards they are almost always better off than the guy with less kit.

I think 2 things sort of killed it for me. One was using expensive higher kit and realising I could sail much better with it. The other was asking the guy who blasted past my every week, as he had the right board and sail, how much he spent on kit. He said over £3000 every year.

So Windurfing has great entry level kit but is now less popluar than it was in the 1970s by a huge margin

So yes I think that Mountain biking and even road cycling breaking free of recreational cycling to become a small elite bubble

Rock climbing is loads cheaper at the top end

If you spent £1000 ish would probably buy you everything you need such that you could climb every weekend for the next 2 or 3 years any where in Europe and never ever be able to say that you needed better kit or that if you spent more you could have got up a harder route. From thee on you'd only be topping up the odd rope. Ropes aren't much more than shock builds

You can reduce your climbing expenses if your partner and you each have one rope

But Forks at £900+ Lottery winners sport now!

£900 for fork? Yes, is too far!
Cars! £2000 to £1000000?
Extremes in everything then! 😯

No, I buy a bike every ten years (on my 3rd). Last bike cost about £3k, and will probably cost £500 per year to keep rolling. So annualised cost £800.

Compares favourably to a season ticket or a golf club membership, or hanging out in a pub for your leisure.

The collecting of bikes that goes on round here is a bit obscene, and will skew the replies this thread gets. It's a rich mans sport if you buy bikes and don't use them because of internet forum addiction. Mind you, that's consumerism and a social issue, not mountain biking.

No its not a rich man's sport. As many have said an entry level bike £300 is so much better than it was 10-20 years ago. You can ride the mountains and have as much fun as anyone on a £4-500 hardtail.

I bought my first new mountainbike in my life last year. I've been riding since 1990 and never had new. I've scrimped and saved and got by and most importantly had fun.

Now? Now as in it's just happened??? If so, then no...it's been a rich man's sport for the last 10 years and then some...bike companies are creaming themselves at how much money they can make from stuff...mainly because the MTBing population are daft enough to pay for it...yes, it's almost always been a rich person's sport...

I don't think it is entirely. As said above, what you get at the bottom end for the same nominal sum of c£400 is waaay better than what we were getting 15 years ago.
Sometimes it feels like I'm spending loads on bike kit but if I wasn;t spending it on bikes I'd probably be driving a more expensive car, going on a pricer holiday, buying more clothes etc.

if you think biking's expensive, try motorsport. Even at a non-competitive level (ie just doing track days), you're looking at a bare minimum of £2k outlay, and probably in the region of £500 per day of driving, once you take into account the cost of the session (~£200), fuel (£50), tyres (£50), and repairing something that enevitebly goes wrong (less than half the cars at the day i went to were running at the end, none due to crashes). If you want to add track day insurance, or running something tastey (there was a full range of cars there from my snotter up to a v8 vantage race car - there were probably a dozen cars there that cost over £100k).

If you want to do racing, you need a licence, track-only modified car, transport for that car, etc etc etc.. I'm very happy I didn't enjoy it as much as biking

For me it's getting expensive just on fuel to drive places. My bike wasn't that expensive by some standards, though probably cost about £600 in parts. It breaks way more frequently than my old bmx that probably cost half that, though.

To be honest there's no need to buy a 600 quid bike, 250 (last years models) will get you one that will get you started and last a bit, 400 will see yo one that will do just fine. That's sod all when compared to a lot of sports. Sure its not as cheap as football, but it's 1000 times better.

And who wants the sport to grow massively anyway, the trails are crowded enough as it is.

I dont think going to go football matches really is a fair comparision

not really, I bought a 700 quid bike 4 years ago, and it's still doing me fine, probably spent that in parts that have broken on it mind, but 1400 quid over 4 years isn't a great deal..suppose you could factor in trips away, trains, hostels, food, drink etc, during those trips, you are probably talking about 2-3,000, so over 4 years about 3-4500 quid, still not alot imo. Also you can factor in minus 40 to 60 a month with the commuting too, so that helps even it up quite considerably.

As people have said going to see the fitba costs you alot more, I did the home away and europe thing with celtic, probably cost me about 4-5000 a year for a few years, why i chucked it, was just far too much, fitba is the rich mans game if you ask me..

As for going to the fitba not being a direct comparison, I disagree, biking is a pasttime/hobby for most., same thing as the fitba.

If you can't afford to fill your camelbak with Bollinger then don't bother riding you pikey

The collecting of bikes that goes on round here is a bit obscene, and will skew the replies this thread gets. It's a rich mans sport if you buy bikes and don't use them because of internet forum addiction. Mind you, that's consumerism and a social issue, not mountain biking.

Guilty as charged (though not as guilty as many), but I know that if I had to pare everything back to the bare bones, as long as I had a bike to ride offroad, even if it had V brakes and no gears (heaven forbid!) I still wouldn't be without mountain biking. Money enables us to buy nice stuff, and that's what many of us do, though to be fair I have minimised the effect myself by going down the 2nd hand route 9 times out of 10.

For me it's getting expensive just on fuel to drive places.

This is my problem, and part of the reason I have bought a road bike (that needs to get ridden more!) recently. It's at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails. I spend a lot more on fuel in the car (even in a diesel) to get to ride my bike than I spend on the bikes at the moment!

I don't think its too expensive. I built both my bikes from a mix of online parts new and used fron here and ebay. Two nice bikes to ride now. Bikes are going to be more expenive now, due to the simple fact of the raw material being a lot more expensive for a start. It could get expenisve buying a new bike from a fancy shop where they give you Kit Kats and other tasty biscuits and pick your pockets while you eat them with your free cup of tea.

This site is at the extreme end of the spectrum of the sport. Using this site as a guide to cycling in many ways would put you off riding. To me a bike is a bike! Its nothing more than a golf club. You choose your equipment to your level of riding. If I could ride DH like Peat then I would not mind shelling out a few grand. I'm quite Sh it at that, so I spend less on a more XC type of bike. I seem better at that. Cycling as been taken over by too many people having the gear but no idea! This as made it seem more expensive than it really is!

It's a pitty that some people are so chippy about others spending their money on lots of expensive bikes. There are worse and more frivolous ways to blow your cash, and at least it helps to pay for development that people with cheaper bikes eventually benefit from. Why should you care?

Not a rich man's sport but a man who knows where to spend his hard earned dosh.

How many times have you seen a £2000 worth of car with £6000 worth of bikes on top!

It's at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails. I spend a lot more on fuel in the car (even in a diesel) to get to ride my bike than I spend on the bikes at the moment!

So, ride there. Once you add up the time taken to load and unload the car, faff at the car park, etc. I bet it won't take much longer and you'll be lots fitter.

but he'll spend a fortune on cakes to fuel the journey...

Once you add up the time taken to load and unload the car, faff at the car park, etc. I bet it won't take much longer

Mountain biking is the new golf.

Mountain biking is the new golf.

It is in the sense that there are a lot of middle aged enthusiasts doing it wearing clothing that you'd never consider wearing if it wasn't the current fashion for the sport but otherwise, it's pretty different.

Golf typically requires a golf course which are generally private/expensive/etc. MTBing can be enjoyed by just about anyone who can get out of the city (or even if you can't actually speaking as a Londoner who found plenty to ride in the city). You also don't need expensive kit. £300 (£200 if you're very lucky/picky) second hand will get you something perfectly useable if not fashionable that you can have as much fun on as someone riding a £5k wonder bike.

It looks a far more expensive sport in comparison to 20 yrs ago than it needs to mainly because it is now possible to manufacture very expensive components out of exotic materials that simply were not available previously. The sport has also diversfied enough that it is possible to have bikes that are specialist enough that you need another (or 2,3,4 or 5!) to ride in different ways.

The truth is that a base model bought today is more capable at riding the sort of trails we were riding 20yrs ago than a mid range model from that time. Looked at in that context it is a cheaper sport now than ever before.

"It's at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails"

it was between 8 and 20 to my 2 'local' riding spots when i was getting into MTBs at around 12-13yrs old. we rode there, rode for a few hours, rode back. we owned £180-280 Raleighs for the first few years, upgraded a bit as things broke or wore out, and i bought most of the kit from a weekend gardening job i had.* After a while of racing, i had a £600 bike.

i don't enjoy riding any more or less now, the only thing that's changed is my ability to buy better kit and the level of kit out there to 'aspire' to.

So, no, it's not a rich man's sport. Cycling never has been and never will be, even if people will pay £4k + for a bike it's a 'can + want + why the hell not' rather than 'need'.

*this may be related to the fact one of my most ridden bikes these days is a rigid ss, but it does make me appreciate the HT / FS when i ride them!

PS edited to say, this isn't mreant as a 'we used to so you should' comment, just to say that if funds and car access is limited but the desire is there you'll find a way to have fun all the same, and it's by no means limited by lack of money.

Couple of points to make.
First off, maybe not correct to term it a 'rich mans sport' as that's a bit of cliche. But almost all of the serious bikers I know and ride with have made adjustments to their lifestyle so they can afford to ride their bikes in the manner they do and as frequently as they would like. That might mean buying vans for transportation, having more than one bike for different riding purposes, replacing worn and damaged kit, uplift days, fuel money, trips to France and Whistler etc etc. They are all on varying incomes, (some quite basic incomes) but they tailor their outgoings / lifestyle away from bikes accordingly to allow them enough disposable income to accomodate all of the above for their biking.

I hear the comments about £4-500 starter bikes. Yeah that's an affordable way to take part in the sport. But I can't help thinking from that how we all have such a different view of mountain biking - probably dependant on where we live and the terrain we ride/how we ride. If I took a £500.00 bike (like my brothers Spec' Hardrock currently sitting in my garage) down the usual trails I ride it wouldn't last very long. The rims and wheels would fail, the rear mech wouldn't take much abuse and the brakes, although wouldn't necessarily fail or fall apart, wouldn't be able to stop the bike as needed. The suntour fork wouldn't last very long either I don't think!

Anyway, the point is that a sturdy bike with sturdy components will cost you around £1k (new) for a hardtail and £1500 for a FS? And even these 'stronger' components fail and break too so you find yourself shelling out for new rims, wheel trues, rebuilds, new mechs, brakes, fork servicing etc far more constantly than you'd like. But you find a way to do it because it's part and parcel.

Rich man's sport maybe not. But it's bloody expensive if you take it seriously and ride full-on.

I wouldn't say mountain biking is a rich man’s sport.

I spent far too many years racing on a crap'y second-hand low grade parts and doing quite well despite all the mechanicals and lead quite a few but due to bike failure never won any. My bike mush have cost me less that £200 (years ago) and every week it need a new part but couldn’t afford to buy good kit so I had to get rubbish or second hand or worse still rubbish second hand parts, So i vowed never to use cheap, crappy, or part that i had to get because they was cheap and i knew i didn’t want.

I am a great believer in spend £1 on something you don’t use it becomes expensive but spend £1000 on something you use a lot it then becomes good value.

i think that point ^ about terrain is big part of it. When more basic rigid bikes were the norm riding wasn't portrayed as 'extreme' as it is now so basic modern bikes can be comparable for basic off-road riding, but not for DH or drops etc.

The truth is that as we aspire to 'higher end' bikes that often mean more travel, more capable, better brakes - ie safer at a given speed than a basic bike. so then we look for places to ride them that give us the buzz of 'pushing it'.

You can have fun by simply feeling on the edge of what you can do on any bike. if you've tasted the speed and drops of DH, rigid XC may never seem the same.

So maybe the question is, has expensive technology 'spoiled' the majority of natural UK XC riding for many, meaning we need to look for more technical terrain, or in other words has it added an element of comfort and safety that removes the 'on the edge' feeling that a more basic bike provides so easily?

i'm a fan of back to basics XC as well as uplift holidays in the alps btw.. see it from both sides here.

Quite a few years ago I bought an ooold Marin Bear Valley off E-bay just replaces the cables and off I went with my wallet £70 lighter. Now after several other more expensive purchases the bike is still running well with most of the original parts. The bike is now being used for a college project with a group of supported studies students who are stripping the frame down cleaning, greasing, stripping the frame and respraying it. You make mountain biking as cheap or expensive as you want to or can. What I do have objection to though are riders who get criticised for having expensive kit and not many skills. It's their decision to spend the money and if they get pleasure out of that so be it - they are still out on the trails enjoying what they do, surely that is all that does matter.

Haven't read much of this thread so don't know if this has been mentioned, but....hasn't the technology surrounding cycling (especially mountain bikes) moved on considerably is the last 20 years? Should this technology be given away for free then?

But it's bloody expensive if you take it seriously

Should this technology be given away for free then?

The bike is now being used for a college project with a group of supported studies students who are stripping the frame down cleaning, greasing, stripping the frame and respraying it.

You're getting some students to sort your bike out for you? Genius! 😛

You wouldn't say that if you knew the students.

You might think so if your only exposure to MTBing was reading this forum - and particularly some of the "money is no object" bike advice threads.

But in reality I still see people riding all sorts of cheap, old tat in the woods.

Even passed some teenagers on BMXs who looked like they were having a great time out on the trails the other day.

And I've always thought it was quite affordable and accessible compared to surfing, windsurfing or snow sports where you have to travel hundreds of miles, perhaps to another country, to take part in your hobby.

it's as expensive as you want it to be really. sure there's loads of people with a disposable income with high end latest trend/technology bikes, other folk with all the gear and no idea, some people with ancient rigid kona/ss's etc etc but if someone's enjoying the outdoors and getting fit on a £200 halfords or old 2nd hand bike thats cool too. plus everyones got to start somewhere, i think the image that some of the mags give that you NEED a £2k bike just to ride off road puts many people off the sport and is a bit detrimental to the public image of mtb'ers. personally i have just as much fun on my old rigid raleigh as i do on my heckler - horses for courses really

at the end of the day we're probably all over-biked for what we ride and there is a huge industry telling us we need new stuff in order to ride well but a lot of it is fashion. it wouldn't surprise me if , after everybody has bought shiny anodised flat pedals that they bring out a new type of clip-in that everyone will need all of a suddenty

Golf typically requires a golf course which are generally private/expensive/etc. MTBing can be enjoyed by just about anyone who can get out of the city (or even if you can't actually speaking as a Londoner who found plenty to ride in the city).

You also don't need expensive kit. £300 (£200 if you're very lucky/picky) second hand will get you something perfectly useable if not fashionable that you can have as much fun on as someone riding a £5k wonder bike.

"It's at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails"

£1000/52 = £19.23 a week. So if you decide to spend £1000 a year on a bike then it's comparable to going drinking in a cheap pub once a week. I defiantly spend less than £1000 a year, but I'm poor. I don't have a big t.v or sky or a nice stereo so money saved there more than covers the bike. I don't drink much any more either. My bigger expense is a addiction to evening courses!

£20 a week is not insignificant but hardly extravagant.

GW - yep, loads of people ride purpose made centres but what does it cost to do so? Cost of parking normally, so £3-4 a ride. My local municiple golf course is £22 a round and the local golf club is £995 per year with a £700 per person joining fee and it's not that posh. The point the person you quoted was making is that the cost of the venue (free or minimal to the mtber) to the user is significantly different not that both have purpose designed venues.

There are already loads of people who only ride mountainbikes at purpose built mtb trail centres

Names and addresses please?

Or could that just be a myth perpetuated by snobbish STW users...

First off, maybe not correct to term it a 'rich mans sport' as that's a bit of cliche. But almost all of the serious bikers I know and ride with have made adjustments to their lifestyle so they can afford to ride their bikes in the manner they do and as frequently as they would like. That might mean buying vans for transportation, having more than one bike for different riding purposes, replacing worn and damaged kit, uplift days, fuel money, trips to France and Whistler etc etc. They are all on varying incomes, (some quite basic incomes) but they tailor their outgoings / lifestyle away from bikes accordingly to allow them enough disposable income to accomodate all of the above for their biking.

So dose everyone depending on their interest, they just may not realise it. If your time off work is socialising you will have subconsciously budgeted for bear money. If your time off work is knitting you will have budgeted for equipment and supplies for knitting. If your hobby id wood work you will have put money and time aside for tools / materials e.t.c, it may have influenced the house you buy so that there is a good sized work shop.

There are already loads of people who only ride mountainbikes at purpose built mtb trail centres

It's true, I know a few of them. My gf annoyingly doesn't generally like biking apart from at trail centres - she's just not into rocky stuff. There's also quite a few that would probably like to explore more BWs etc but don't really have the navigations skills/confidence.

Also the op seems to want to increase the popularity of MTBing. I con't give a flying **** what the popularity of MTBing is, maybe he owns a shop or mtb related business?

I find that very hard to believe, I've never been anywhere in the UK where I haven't spotted something I'd like to ride.

Never been to the East Midlands? It's utter shit for off road riding round here. You have to stop every few minutes for gates and the bridleways are so boring I tend to prefer riding my road bike on which I can at least achieve a good speed! There are a few short singletracky bits (well under a mile long) which aren't really worth the hassle of getting to on a mtb.

Nearest decent trails to me are at Woburn which is about 35 miles away.

The Brick - The point I was making is in context to the original question of 'IS MTB NOW A RICH MAN's SPORT'. Pointing out that MTB'ing at the extreme end is damn expensive but, even so, some poeple forego and sacrifice other desirable things in life to make sure they have enough money to dedicate to the sport. I'm talking about a significant %/proportion of their income in order to pursue it. Some might argue a 'disproportionate' amount of their income...but it's their choice. So to answer the question it's an expensive sport but not necessarily a 'rich man's'.

Yes, other sports are comparible or possibly worse (motor sport a prime example)...but I'm thinking beer money, knitting and woodworking are not comparible. 🙂

I find that very hard to believe, I've never been anywhere in the UK where I haven't spotted something I'd like to ride.

There's a few bridlepaths and a small wood (that you can't legally ride your bike in anyway, its not a bridlepath) that I know of within about 3 miles, a small wood (of about 3 acres) about 5 miles away, everything else is a car journey sadly!

t was between 8 and 20 to my 2 'local' riding spots when i was getting into MTBs at around 12-13yrs old. we rode there, rode for a few hours, rode back.

Yup, did the same when I was younger too, but definitely had more time on my hands then...

So maybe the question is, has expensive technology 'spoiled' the majority of natural UK XC riding for many, meaning we need to look for more technical terrain, or in other words has it added an element of comfort and safety that removes the 'on the edge' feeling that a more basic bike provides so easily?

Yes/No/Maybe, but I can tell you I've been considering buying a rigid fork (of all things!) to stick on my hardtail to bring back an element of that on the edge feeling for tamer trails. Technology has allowed us to ride more and more terrain, more competently/safely than ever before, and I think that then makes us have to search a bit harder for our buzz. You certainly don't get much thrill riding a slack angled long travel full sus bike round the local woods, whereas riding a rigid hardtail brings a different element to it. After many many years of questioning it, I'm almost beginning to see why many people ride singlespeeds! 😉