Out of touch? – Page 2 – Bike Forum – Singletrack World Magazine Forum

eatmorepizza · 2025-11-04T10:56:33Z

Posted in bike forum because it's riding related but does anyone else feel out of touch these days? Or is riding just less popular than it ever has been before outside of the local teens sending big jumps in the woods for instagram bangers?The past 15 years has seen me on and off the bike for various reasons, in that time a lot of my riding mates have packed in altogether or moved away, or maybe fit one or two rides in a year when they manage to find time between work and family life, which has lead me to try and branch out and meet new riding buddies. I usually ride my local which has lots of kids on the jump sections, I'll see other riders my age and older there on the odd occasion and we have a chat but then never cross paths again, at the weekend I returned to my old stomping ground of Guisborough woods expecting it be just as busy as it was when it was my local in the 2010's but it was just dead, loads of dog walkers, trail runners and hikers but virtually no riders. I did see one large group of riders going the opposite way down percy cross rig, a solo female rider, a couple of guys on gravel bikes and 3 teens hovering near the top of a shale hill. It used to be 3x as busy as that on a Sunday, big groups crowded round the top or bottom of the popular trails, loads on the fire roads it was always swarming. So I re-subscribed to Strava to see the local leaderboards for riders this year with the plan of 1. Knowing they're active and 2. Following them so there is some familiarity and a comment here or there on recent rides with the plan of bumping into them and tagging along at somepoint or arranging a ride. But mate, it's an absolute ghost town, bare bones, dead. The chute up Guis, which used to be like the M2 in terms of traffic has had 109 riders in total this year, the Les's trails have had 107 riders total over 2025, the climb up to Highcliffe nab tops out at 341.It looks even worse when I look at the stats for my local riding spot with one trail only having had 10 riders total this year float down it. Now I know these leaderboards will be tied to non eeb rides, but still, this is absolutely bonkers to me!So what's going on? Is everyone just on eebs these days? Are people no longer using Strava? Has mtb dropped out of fashion again? has the FC clamped down on unsanctioned trails? Have the trail fairies called it a day meaning the trails ride rougher and people don't enjoy the tech as much? Has the CoL put people off/made MTB more unattainable? Or is it a combination of all of the above?Discuss please guys I need some answers for my adhd brain, and new riding mates actually so if you're local to Guisborough or Errington Woods and want to follow each other on Strava let me know I'll paste my link in here

Marin

Posts: 2735

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Probably because eBikes are great fun.

Posted : 05/11/2025 8:10 pm

zerocool reacted

wbo

Posts: 1794

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And people who want to get fit are riding road, gravel.

Given the trends to ebikes, gravel/road , trail centres, yes its changed, and thats ok

Posted : 05/11/2025 8:14 pm

scotroutes

Posts: 44046

Full Member

Posted by: Kramer

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I’d heard that 19 out of 20 new mountain bike sales in Europe were ebikes now. Plus there’s been the move towards trail centres that’s been going on for years.

I can't find any figures to back that up but I can certainly believe that 19 out of 20 of ebike sales are mountain bikes 😉

Posted : 05/11/2025 9:11 pm

Duggan

Posts: 1903

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Slightly different take from me but I wouldn't under-estimate the amount of people who ride (or run or whatever) without using Strava. I still track all my exercise with Strava and enjoy it but I joined a local triathlon club a while ago which has tonnes of members and it seems 50/50 really if any random person I chat to uses Strava or tracks their exercise at all which quite surprised me.

Posted : 06/11/2025 12:54 pm

ayjaydoubleyou

Posts: 4862

Full Member

Posted by: Kramer

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I’d heard that 19 out of 20 new mountain bike sales in Europe were ebikes now.

I think that came with the added condition of "mountain bikes over x amount RRP" which conveniently was high enough that your basic accoustic halfords/decathalon hardtail was excluded, but low enough that anything with a motor and battery that you would reasonably call an mtb was in.

Posted : 06/11/2025 2:10 pm

zerocool reacted

muddyground

Posts: 910

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Defo happy to be out of touch if asked what I do, the reply would now have to be "I ride an accoustic bike." Call me old fashioned, and I expect stones to be thrown in my direction, but I prefer the term bike.

Posted : 06/11/2025 4:10 pm

singlespeedstu

Posts: 17783

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@scruff

Posted by: scruff

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Oooh, Handbags 👜 😀

No handbags from me mate.

I've just spent the last two days showing a group of tourist ebike****ers round.🤣

Posted : 06/11/2025 4:16 pm