Polaris Terra – though the only place I see them now is Go Outdoors for £20. These were excellent – we got them off his cousin, and they’ve now been handed on at school (sorry).

We have some Altura inners you can have – I can bring swap for tyres (-: Decathlon also do some good ones I think… and £5-£6

I’ll ask about at the school as well as we have a few 7-8 year olds.

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Royal Racing do good kids (‘youth’) stuff, but I think that’s all too big… 11 up. RRP is not cheap but I think I got Alec’s for £20-25.

I use 18650 cells in a £5 DX charger… The charger is on a timer and it’s in a LIPO bag. It has all worked just fine for the last 5 years.

I had MG1s on one bike and Nanos on the other for a couple of years, and for me the Nanos are just that bit better – so when the MG1s gave out I got another set of Nanos. They feel slightly bigger and more grippy, and they are thinner. But MG1s are lighter and are often a bit cheaper (though my 13 year old now has Nanos as they were 30% off for a day last Christmas!)

Not a great deal in it… both are great value.

Very smart indeed – it’s a shame more kids don’t have the chance to ride bikes like this.

Options seem to be:

1 – Rigid e.g Islabikes or Frog 26er… Very lightweight and size appropriate, and not too bad on the rougher terrain if you put large volume tyres on. Expensive but good resale value. Easy to maintain.

2 – New hard tail. Most come with so-so spec (not that big a deal IMO) and with poor forks (a big deal) and are heavy. High end ladies entry level e.g. Myra are not bad, as forks have soft springs and some sort of damping. Boardman Fi used to be an option but Xs bikes are pretty rare. Will look the part, be new, and they will enjoy it – but not cheap and rarely light. Cheaper models are usually heavy with rubbish forks.

3 – Build your own 2nd hand – Xs 26er and maybe an air fork upgrade. We went from an Islabikes 26 to an eBay Rockhopper with added Rebas. Takes some searching about but cost about the same as 2 above, and you get a fantastic bike. Upsize path is another frame – which hopefully gets easier as you are into S which is a common size… but 650b and 29ers have not helped as a Spesh frame swap will be for a 5 year old frame set.

http://youtu.be/cymXIV_8ymc

13″ Rockhopper frame – there is one up on the Southern Bike Shop Facebook group for £75. They build up into a great little bike….

http://youtu.be/cymXIV_8ymc

http://youtu.be/7g33ow-zwk8

I thought it was excellent – showing that tension between the idealism of peaceful protest and the hard-nosed political realities of driving a civil rights campaign. It showed MLK as a clear headed visionary – but also a man focused on ‘the prize’ at the expense of almost everything else. And the ‘reportage’ style worked for me. Great film.

I have had a Reverb for 3 years, and have noticed 2 scenarios where it starts to sag a bit:

1 – when the pressure is too low… so pumping it up to 240 does the trick. This I have to do about once a year.

2 – when the seat clamp is done up too tight… had this happen today after I adjusted the height a couple of mm and then over tightened. Try using some assembly paste and doing the seat clamp up pretty gently.

I’d have a look at this blog as there are a number of options discussed:

Pedals for Kids – Options

Coming up for 3 years, and over 5,000 km… I’ve had to put more air in it a couple of times, but that’s it. Great bit of kit.

Some Miyazaki… I’d start with Nausicaa and then try Princess Mononoke though my boys also loved Laura – Castle in the Sky.

Princess Bride, Ferris Bueller – and you have to see Home Alone.

We also had great success with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, as well as Zang Yimou’s Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

Books… Skullduggery Pleasant, the Knife of Never Letting Go series and The Amulet of Samarkand.

I Get this same issue every so often on my iPad mini using Chrome, so it’s not just an Andriod problem. It’s a poor user experience, and I’m pretty confident it’s not what the advertisers would want either.

I think that the XML2 is the ‘latest’ LED…. in whatever configuration you want. I have an older XML-U3 C8 torch on my bars and an XML2 501b for my lid… for less than £8 the XML2 501b takes some beating.

I have had the Carboncycles carbon risers on my Anthem for a couple of years and more than a couple of thousand miles now… paired with on of their £14 stems. Great kit. I’ve not worried for a second, and as I recall they seemed very solid when I trimmed them down from 750 to 730.

QECP is 30 mins away, and Stoughton (Kingley Vale) is about 40… great riding. But you also have the SDW and plenty of linked bridleway right on your doorstep, and there is good riding at Easbourne too, though I don’t know it too well. Join up at ‘Kingley Vale Mountain Bikers’ which covers this area… and I’ll also dig out some Strava routes (should have a copy of my Heatmap).

As scottfitz (my neighbour) and m0rk have said, you’ve lots of good riding at QECP as well as at Kingley Vale / Stoughton and then a little further afield there is ‘Whiteways’ which is Houghton Forest near Amberley… and all points in between.

Check out the Kingley Vale Mountain Bikers forum for a map… and join our Strava club to see where everyone is riding.

Some great builds in this thread – it’s a shame there aren’t more decent off the shop floor options. @nickmsm that’s a quality set up… I too have been working on the ‘swap it all onto a new frame’ concept, so I hope it works!

Bird Aeris

I’m with Dezb on this… You do need to give most kids some basic tips, though thy pick up a lot just be watching. The most important thing IMO is to get them in the Ready Position if they are not pedalling or ‘doing something’. So heels low, pedals level and head up. I’d also cover doing a little ‘push’ to get over obstacles… I see a lot of kids bounced out of their saddle and off their pedals on roots etc. All secondary to going somewhere fun and exciting of course.

I’ll be doing this with some school kids on Saturday… should be exciting.

The DDs are pretty tough – mine have survived the local chalk rubble and flint with only one significant cut in the last two years. But we have nothing properly rocky round here.

Ready position – basis for pretty much everything else (head up, ‘eels low, heavy feet/light hands)
Weight shift forward-backward and leaning side to side
Braking (from Ready position with weight shift back)
Cornering leaning the bike (from Ready position and leaning – focus on pushing inside hand down)
Manual front wheel lift (from Ready position with weight shift back… push bars not pull)… all kids want to bump kerbs
Basic jump (like the Manual front wheel lift, but just a small push on the bars)… every kid wants to jump

You can’t do all of this, but I do it in this order as one skill links to another, and all use the Ready position… a lot of kids don’t immediately get that if you aren’t pedalling you want to be in the Ready position, and that the Ready position is what makes you ready to do stuff.

I’m no great shakes as a rider, but I do take lots of kids riding. The BC coaching stuff is good, but it helps to link the skills together.

As said, go for it, and just ride behind. It’s worth telling kids not to be worried about riders coming up behind them – they can let them through when it is safe to do so, or pull over and let them through, again where it is safe to do so… or just keep going. Most riders seem very considerate, in my experience.

I thought the GT Force was a great bike… not light, but it still climbed well, and really confidence inspiring going down (which I liked as I’m a bit rubbish).

XT shifters and clean cables are very light… my 11 year old used to struggle with Deore, which were OK but needed a push especially once the cables were dirty. XT sorted it… so now my bikes have XT shifters too.

It’s a slippery slope – my son is already eyeing up a Reverb. But going 1 x 9 or better still 1 x 10 sounds better to me as that would bring the bike down to 27lbs or less, and kids don’t need the really big gears.

My son has had a 13.5″ Rockhopper since he was 10… the basic bike came from eBay, but had an immediate change of bars and stem to get the front lower, as well as some better pedals.

I still have the original 80mm Dart IIIs but a pair of 100mm Rebas from eBay were a huge improvement. I already had a stem – but otherwise I’d have gone for a Carboncycles Exotic Meta II which comes in a 60mm for £13.24. Bars here are 600mm flat from On One which are only £8 new (since replaced by some 685s now he’s nearly 13). Pedals are Wellgo LU987s which are £11 new… he now has Nano’s thanks to Superstar having a sale at Christmas!

He does have XT shifters though… not cheap, but the light action of SLX or XT makes a big difference to small hands.

It’s very hard to get good hardtail for an 11 year old as decent entry level bikes are usually a bit heavy and often don’t come small enough… though it is worth looking at women’s bikes. At 5′ you are looking at XS frames though an S may work and you may have the option to get a better fit with e.g. a short stem, different bars and maybe an inline seat post.

Like many others I went 2nd hand and made mods… my son has a 13.5″ XS Rockhopper with added Rebas (air forks are lighter and more adjustable so definitely the way to go). A 55mm stem and some £10 600mm flat bars from On-One sorted the front end, and with some better pedals we had a really nice bike for £400. Weighs about 28lbs.

Two years later he now has 685mm flat bars, and next year I will be looking for a new frame I guess.

Lightmalls – Ultrafire 501b XM-L2 5 mode 18650 for 9.25usd. Cheap, solid, great driver with >2 amps HI and about 1 amp on MED so medium is usefully bright and gives about 2.5 hours, while HI is very bright. Much more trail friendly than my older XML-T6 which gave only 0.6 amps on MED. I’m on my 4th gen of 501bs (at the price it is worth a yearly upgrade) and while the T6 were good, these are great.

Like all the Chinese lights I have used these need to be tightened up, and you need to wrap cells in tape to keep them snug – I also use 1 or 2 x 2.5mm magnets as spacers, as the cells I have are from old laptops so are ‘unprotected’. This means they are 2.5mm shorter than protected cells. Cells need to be v snug as a sharp knock may move them which will interrupt the current… which is how the mode change works on clicky-clicky.

2010 Giant Anthem, bought new at the start of 2010, and a 2010 GT Avalanche, bought 2nd hand at the start of 2012. Both still great fun, though if I had the money I’d be tempted to try a more modern trail bike.

Strava shows you ‘moving time’ as well as the total time for ‘this effort’ so you can easily see if you’ve been short changed by the segment end point.

Panasonic SD-253 here… which I think I have had about 10 years now, and which is still going strong as you can get spare parts. Just need to fix my raisin/nut dispenser now as I think a fruit loaf would be good.

I had this on my iPad mini – but only an issue in landscape: if you switch to portrait the ‘x’ is visible and you can get shot of it.

+1

At least I discovered that in portrait I got an ‘x’ so could shut the stupid thing…. In landscape it stopped my browser altogether.

Decathlon 700… Waterproof/windproof, with a good cuff design and vents under the arms. Zip is a bit cheap… But for £60 I’m happy.

Pedalo from the Rijksmuseum to the Westerkirk… It’s a fun way to see the canals ( especially if your are 12). The Westerkirk itself was interesting, with great views from the tower. If you are going to the Anne Frank house then take a book as the queues can be very long.

Unless the newer V8s are very different, then the Nanos are lighter, and have a bigger platform… Much, much better in my opinion. MG1s are also good – but if you can get Nanos in another Superstar sale then go for it. I got my son a pair for Christmas – at £26 they were too good to miss.

Daily disposable contacts and cheap safety glasses for me… I don’t want to damage my expensive prescription glasses. The only trouble is that I now need varifocal lenses or maybe a monacle so I can read a map without holding it at arms length!

I like the Superstar grips: their modular system means you can try different grips reusing the same locking rings and caps.

I started out with the thicker Excel grips, but after a while I switched to the standard SuperGrippas… and now I have the thinner Zeros. New cartridges are 5 or 6 quid.