The south is a great place to ride:

You can do things like go to Nice, get a train north into the mountains with your bike, then ride back to Nice – with a bit of gravity help, plus a bit of climbing.

yup – you could do worse than a visit to riviera bike – although not really france – You can probably see france from there!

Sospel is great + loads of great riding down south, which is where you should head at that time of year if you want some warmth!

If you want lifts at that time of year you’re best off in Switzerland where they have a lot of lifts that act as public transport and can take bikes. South facing mountain sides are obviously the best bet!

my stag do was the night before my wedding. Plenty of booze, pubs, clubs, into bed at 6am.

married the next day at midday.

isn’t that what a stag do should be?

the original post was very specific – if anyone had had this problem and managed to overcome it with some special method other than the usual stuff.

She’s very easy to train to DO things, but training an animal NOT to do something is infinitely harder…especially if its an ingrained reaction

And I can say that we’ve never seen another mountain biker on any ride we’ve gone on – I’m not stupid enough to take her anywhere popular – thanks for the advice though 😉

Thanks TooTall – i appreciate I need to train her not to bite. Hence the post – to see if any training methods were suggested.

Pretty sure nipping and biting is basic herding behavior for an Aussie BTW – she’s not ‘attacking’ the tyres (or children)…

blimey MrTall – that doesn’t sound fun!
Mine doesn’t go for cars when she’s on a lead – not interested at all

Just about the first thing I read after getting her was something like “….also known as ‘tyre biters’….” missed that when reading up on them before!

She’s managed to cause one puncture, luckily outside my garage. Riding today with no pack made me a little more paranoid than usual! Maxxis EXO tyres FTW!

Here’s some videos for you

And a photo from our first ever guests all those years ago..
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Morzine 1[/url] by guybowden[/url], on Flickr

Lyric all the way. I ran one all summer in Morzine – didn’t need to fiddle with them – they just work well – and no dreaded stanchion wear.

We’ve run a few trips to Morocco – price wise it’s very hard to do something like that any cheaper than the €900 our trip goes for. All the package trips include drivers + 4x4s for the duration – which don’t come cheap! Plus the cost of research, the guide, the accommodation etc etc.

If you’re doing your own thing, then a personal 4×4 + driver is obviously going to be expensive. But you will be able to lob your bike into a taxi and get out to the mountains no problem.

There’s three bits of advice I’d give you to help plan the trip:

1 – Anyone in the mountains who has any form of transport (4×4, donkey, car etc) will be willing to take you and your bike somewhere (like up a big ass mountain) for a small fee.

2 – There’s loads of Gites all over the place to stay. They cost about €10 for dinner + bed. They’ll most likely serve you chicken tagine though – which starts out great, but after 6 nights of it it gets a bit repetitive!

3 – If there’s a more direct route than the 4×4 road between two villages, there will be a mule track. And 90% of the time it’ll be great fun to ride.

haha. True true – we’re happy to employ a frenchman who can speak english as well as an englishman who can speak french.

or a woman of either nationality. In fact any nationality, so long as you can speak English and French 🙂

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Juno jumps for snow[/url] by guybowden[/url], on Flickr

Thanks for the good words about Torico – much appreciated.

We had Mondrakers last year, and I have to say that the freehubs did tend to get a bit sticky and, in some cases, fail. We ended up putting Pro2 hubs on our worst offending bikes because there is nothing worse than coming back to the shop after lunch with a customer already there waiting for you with a duff bike (apart from being that customer of course…) – luckily this only happened on a couple of occasions.

Thankfully the guys in the workshop did a sterling job keeping the bikes up and running.

The Prayer is a cheap bike – it’s great for the money, but not quite up for the constant pounding our customers gave it.

The Summum is a great bike – but took a lot of looking after though – not helped by unreliable 2010 Boxxers and tiny pivot bearings. The rental price reflected this all too well – high maintenance or what!

We learnt a lot in our first year, and know that reliability is key – so we’ll be speccing the bikes with that in mind.

As for next year… we’ll be keeping it British – we shall be buying a fleet of Orange bikes – 224 Evos and Alpine 160s.

They’ll cost €75 a day (either bike) – and you can book them online right now.

Cheers,

Guy
toricomorzine.com

Glad it arrived safely…

Try this:
http://www.ridemorzine.org/2010/03/maps/%5B/url%5D

Yep – we’re doing a self catered option this year – Flowmtb self catered chalet [/url]

Can’t see Monster being so popular if it didn’t do some serious sponsorship.

Then there’s the Iron Horse Sunday – before the CRC offer, there were still shed loads of them around in Morzine (now there’s a few more!).

….and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more Demo 8s next summer.

Sure there’s a lot of great bikes out there, and on of the deciding factors between them will be the image you’re trying (sub consciously or otherwise) to convey.

I’m sure Continental will get a bigger bite of the tyre market with the Athertons on board.
Even Kenda probably sell more tyres because they sponsor World Cup teams even though those teams just use Maxxis anyway.

Sponsorship sells stuff – when it’s used in the right context, and the event / person / thing you’re sponsoring reflects the brand. It can equally go the other way if the event / person / thing goes wrong.

2nd week is still free – the chalet is rented out to one group at a time – so the whole place is yours for your entire stay.

That chalet is now our self catered option and can do 12…

We can always find you something else suitable if that’s not big enough..

I can highly recommend ours 😉

Take a look[/url]

Although we do have some bookings for July already – hopefully we’ll be able to squeeze you in!

I’m guessing I just had a chat with you on our site chat thing…

Forgot to mention that all rooms in Musardiere have their own DVD players – so no worries with Peppa Pig (disturbing you perhaps, but not the others!).

As Mark says – there’s plenty to do off the bike – but the dinner table chat does tend to focus on bikes, riding bikes, repairing bikes, and other such bike related topics.. (crashing off bikes).

But I very much doubt Mrs D will be the only “Mrs” in the chalet – so they could always switch conversation topics to something less biking related..

😉

Just in defence of Morzine bike shops… last year our (toricomorzine.com) 2.5 maxxis tyres were 45euros a go – compared to 34gbp on a well known website – pretty comparable I have to say – plus we’re gambling with the weather when we order our tyres… nice dry summer = muchos wet screams left in the shop – lots of rain = disappointed customers if we sell out.

It’s not all bad – try buying tyres in Whistler! then you’ll know expensive (how does 90-100 canadian dollars a tyre grap you?)

I would recommend bringing a mech hanger though – we do carry a lot of brands, but can’t guarantee we’ll have everything.

Rode from Brevent to Samoens yesterday… truly epic big mountain riding. Enjoy!

yeah – kind of figured that – but do any of them do a cushy 140mm 67 degree HA brit friendly bike…? or is it all straight back 100mm flying machines?

The 'Last Herb AM' is on my list now – fastest trail bike on the planet apparently – according to those cunning linguists at Dirt mag.

One of them, a hardtail, a DH bike, oh and a road bike, and a hack bike, and a pub bike.

the only bike's you (ahem, I mean 'I') need 😉

We're open until the 5th September – then it's time to close down the shop and chalet. There'll be riding going on – end of season Tour de Mt Blanc is on the cards – then bits and bobs until we go to Canada for a few weeks.

Should be back around late October – so still time for some riding before the snow kicks in… who are you by the way – when did you stay with us?

Emiline Ragot (spelling) served me dinner in our challet the other week.

We pull out all the stops hey 🙂 I very much doubt you'd get Peaty doing the same – bit of a disparity between Female World Champ and Male world champ. Emmiline is also much prettier than Peaty 😉

We used to run a trip – but couldn't make the price low enough to get enough people coming along – it's expensive to run those sorts of things unless you're a bigger operator and able to keep your staff in the country for multiple trips etc.. economies of scale and all that.

I do know that KE do a similar trip to our one – costs around 1k or a bit less for 10 days.

Or if there's a few of you, get in touch – I'm sure we could point you in the right direction or get you all the info you need to do a self guide style trip – it's not as daunting as you may think!

The riding is ace by the way 🙂

as everyone's said – it's very simple – you just need to be sure of the oil height / volume when you put it back together. Think it should be 115mm from the top of the threads…

Crossed a bit of snow around the Col du Cou yesterday (around 1900m high). We did have fresh snow at that height at the weekend as well.

I wouldn't go on much that's north / east facing any higher than 2000m around Cham / Morzine just yet… i.e. off the back of Le Tour in Cham down to Trient may be a little snowy right now.

Further south may be different.

My Lyric 170 springs don't have them. Pikes do though. horses for courses. If your current spring has one, then just swap it over? If not, don't. simples…

what Druidh says.

PITA I say.

Whats wrong with a star nut?

Correction – Pleney, Chavannes & Nanchets lifts are open from tomorrow until September.

The Pleney has been open non stop since last Saturday – and great fun it's been too – especially on my our new Mondraker Summum hire bikes 🙂

extra slipery on monday & tuesday, then dry and dusty since 🙂

Think that the Pre la Joux bike park is open weekends until the 25th June, then full time.

And as tworide says – the Champery cable car is open full time from tomorrow until Sept (or October!?).

You can't go very far without seeing a Scott in these parts – usually with a scott covered rider on board.. I liked the look of the Voltage a local bike shop owner was riding there.

GW – I think you're mixing up "need" with "want" – two very different things… long travel hardtails are great fun – but they're certainly not the best method of getting from A to B with maximum comfort and efficiency 🙂

oh, and you forgot Ragley in your list 😉

Trouble with a hardtail is that most punters who aren't used to the alps will find it much much harder on their bodies – it just is. On the Singletrack reader week last year we had a couple of hardtails on offer to ride, for free I might add, and how many people rode them? Just me and Benji. Everyone else was enjoying the full suss offerings too much.

We also ran a Chameleon as a hire bike a few years back – again, just myself and one guest rode it all summer long – and he ended up buying it at the end. If you're the sort of person who wants to ride a hard tail in the alps, then you're most likely to have brought it with you.

Nothing against hardtails – I ride one here in Morzine and around the alps frequently, I love it. Zero point in them as hire bikes though.

My personal full sus is a Nomad, 170mm lyrics, coil shock, 2.5 tyres, single chain ring. In my opinion it's just about the best bike for riding around the alps – long singletrack descents, short climbs, chairlifts etc. Then if I'm feeling the need for some punishment I get the ragley out.

Stevomcd – if it's any help – we've been running hire bikes and are now opening a shop so have some experience…

Basically, so long as you have the spares to sort things when they go wrong (and you use them) any bike will be fine. We ran Hecklers and Bullits for a few seasons – nice and simple bikes. This year we'll have Mondrakers – more complex, but crucially, we'll have the spares we need.

The most common things we've needed to fix aren't the frames anyway – it's the parts – rear mechs / hangers / the odd wheel / the odd brake – so it's good to have spares for all eventualities – then fix the broken bits asap. Also replaced a hell of a lot of shock eyelet bushings – with the right tool this is almost a pleasure, and takes 2 minutes. All the maintenance is, of course, entirely weather dependent – so fingers crossed for another dry summer like last year!

And we've never used a bike for more than one season… the maintenance is usually minimal until mid july – then gets more and more. I assume you'll be getting these at a trade rate, so reselling for near on what you buy the bike for is a no brainer at the end of the season – they get a bargain, you don't loose out either.

I'd get whatever the slackest bike is out of that lot – but that's just my preference!

My 10 cents!

hey druidh – where did you hire the camper from? planning our trip in September… that looks too cool not to hire!

I can second Sospel if you're not fussed about lifts… went there last October, really really nice.

Or Morzine if you want some lifts (not all are open then), but also the choice to climb for some big mountain rewards!

You can try us – flowmtb – our B+B option means you don't have set dinner times!

Guy

not sure the beers are quite 9 quid.. 5-6 euros for a pint perhaps.. or just adopt the local style and get a demi.

Your bike sounds just fine – bigger tyres perhaps – knee and arm pads are optional as is the full face – I don't bother with any of the above if I'm just riding along with lift assistance. but do bother if I'm hitting any dh courses etc.