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

TheBrick – Member
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?
POSTED 31 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

I’m an insurance assessor.
I just put it out there that increasing popularity might be a good thing, better facilities etc.
But too popular could have an impact on access to the countryside I suppose.
Keep posting.

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but I’m thinking beer money, knitting and woodworking are not comparible

Maybe not knitting but easily comparable to drinking or woodworking. Drinking could get pushed out if you are spending big money but at £1000 per your on bikes (that would be a new £3000 bike + running costs every 4 years) that’s only £20 it’s comparable in quantitative terms.
My point is that every hobby effect your income stream and hence free income to do other things and hence quality of life in other areas and any hobby can do so disproportionately.

I’m an insurance assessor.

It wasn’t meant to be a dig btw.

I just put it out there that increasing popularity might be a good thing, better facilities etc.

I suppose depends on what you want to ride in that respect.

But too popular could have an impact on access to the countryside I suppose.

In some very popular areas I expect this to happen at some point.

Well, I have never been to a trail centre in 20 years of riding. It’s very good natural riding here in Calderdale but I’m trying Gisburn this weekend to hopefully test the change to flatties in advance of Morzine in 6 weeks.

“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”

and so, he was enlightened ) jus kidding. do it.. (i have a set of rigids you can have, PM if you want them) i went rigid ss for a while, hated it. came back to it for a winter, on and off. rode it again all next winter. liked it more and more. now ride it >50% of the time. i had more time on my hands when i was younger, but i have a fair bit now still. simpler bikes make shorter rides on simpler terrain more demanding and more rewarding in a way. thinking about it, the simplest bikes i’ve owned have been my favourites – a BMX, single-ring Chameleon, rigid ti ss.. not always the most fun in every way, but the bikes i enjoyed owning most.

it may be a rich mans sport to some but it looks like a great poor man’s sport to me.

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

I bet the golf course is a far shorter drive tho. Transportation costs are huge in mountainbiking. This Sunday alone I spent £90 on fuel to do 4 runs of FortWilliam DH track (Ok, so it’s not often referred to as a trail centre but 100% manmade and managed). Luckily my lift pass is free but add that in and it’d have been £120 for no more than 24mins riding, makes your projected golf club costs seem a bargain

This Sunday alone I spent £90 on fuel to do 4 runs of FortWilliam DH track

Could probably have got the train for 20 quid if you booked in advance.

£22 min fare from Glasgow return. Just so you know 😀

Booking in advance is compulsory with a bike. It’s a crap service to be fair, takes an hour longer than a smooth road trip.

£22 min fare from Glasgow return. Just so you know

Booking in advance is compulsory with a bike. It’s a crap service to be fair, takes an hour longer than a smooth road trip i was close! General point is though, that you’ll get by if you canny afford certain things! And if i didnae have the £20 quid, a fiver on the train out to lanark and tinto hill would have to do! 😀

last time I looked, Fort William train station was nowhere near the Nevis range.
Thanks for letting me know Waderider, always handy to know train fares from destinations I live nowhere near. 😉

Mountainbiking need not be expensive at all. A £300 bike will be perfectly good for most trails ( nearly as good as the best bikes from 20 yrs ago and the land has not changed) Buy secondhand and you get great value

Just go ride locally to you.

I have a reasonably expensive set of bikes now but other than teh capital cost of buying them I probably spend less on riding that I do on drinking – and I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to

GW – sorry that’s a rubbish argument!

This Sunday alone I walked nearly 3 yards from my shed before I started my ride! On the other hand my father in law flew from his home in Northern Ireland to Scotland for 2 rounds of golf then he is off to Spain next month for more of the same.

You could say that to ride the sort of terrain you want to ride involves travelling, but you could say that about any sport – wanting to play links golf and living in the English midlands would mean a lot more travelling than you seem to need to make riding worth your while.

Just because you can spend a fortune on kit or travel does not mean you have to.

6 miles GW You need a bike you can pedal 😉

Is it more that the media makes it look that way – top gear effect?

everyone on here is a big bike fantic we know folk with 3k + bikes tell a normal person you spent £100 on a component and see their reaction.
Still get a bike good enough for relatively little money. I am lucky enought to be able to ride trails straight from my door I **** wish 5 miles by road to rivvy but a nice warm up. too expensive get a road bike or ride BMX

no need to apologise, I know it’s a rubbish arguement. 8)
I was a junior member of a Lynx club as a kid but I’d just as often play golf in the playing fields at the end of my road as it was more convenient. Infact, one summer we all got together and borrowed gardening equipment and made ourselves our own (free) 9 hole pitch and put course. “jumpers for goalposts” style. My Point, if there ever was one, is, there’s nothing stopping golfers from not getting dressed up like **** and taking some clubs out to the park for a play. same as some “mountainbikers” would not dream of even riding their bike without getting dressed up like a **** or driving miles.

It’s only expensive if you buy stuff. Riding bikes is free. £100 a year would be a reasonable budget for esssentials e.g. new tyres, brake pads and lube.

My Point, if there ever was one, is, there’s nothing stopping golfers from not getting dressed up like **** and taking some clubs out to the park for a play. same as some “mountainbikers” would not dream of even riding their bike without getting dressed up like a **** or driving miles.

Hammer, nail, spot on.

Most (not all) of us aspire to improve our skills, buy better equipment, ride more challenging trails, and as our lifestyle changes to accommodate it and our income adjusts to pay for it, we do the things we wanted to do when we started.

MTBing is like a drug, it’s difficult when you can’t get the full fat, kick up the arse, high adrenaline rush of riding the best trails on the best bikes. For most people, it’s easier to just go cold turkey and give up altogether than go back to riding local trails on a low end bike…

100 without reading the thread 🙂

Let’s face it; you spend as much as you want, but after a point, it’s the law of “diminishing returns” – over, say, £1,500 for a full suss, add £500 for a higher spec model in the same range & do you get a 25% better performance & ride? – Probably not. In the same range (Zesty, for example) leap from £2k to nearly £5k, do you get 2.5 times as much bike? … almost definitely not.
However, the pleasure is not always in the tangible riding advantages of a more expensive model, it’s also in the feel-good-factor that the perception of quality gives you. Let’s face it, many of us are suckers for a marketing image! … I know I often am!
The media has a big part to play … they promote the idea that cheap is bad & expensive is good … their revenue is brought in through companies that sell expensive gear. And, you know what, we keep paying the prices. I’ve just spent more on a new bike than the first two cars I bought … ouch!
However, is my new bike better than the first MTB I bought? Hell yes! … Is it 4xbetter … now that’s a discussion to have over a beer 🙂

One absolute fact; there are riders that could ride a Raleigh Grifter better than I ride my bike … ah well, I can only try.

I spent a bit of time at the top car park at glentress on saturday, just doing laps of the trails round there to finish my legs off after a morning at dirtschool… And saw everything from little kids on £2000 bikes, to whole families whose bikes couldn’t have cost £200 between them. All seemed to be having fun.

Having said that I doubt the families with the cheapo bikes could afford a single cake in the Hub, which would render the whole exercise pointless I think

my wife spends more on prams you would think i owned an orphanage