I was/am one of that couple 🙂 (we still do it – 18 years now for me!) And Steph will be both thrilled and embarrassed at your compliment! She is still in the mag, just they use a lot smaller pics now – on the actual route pullout itself.
We’re also working on some more guidebooks so she will make an appearance there 🙂
There are a lot of myths about the route guide – perhaps some confusion too, as there’s always been a couple of mags doing them, and they are easily mistaken for each other.
So to try and answer some of them.
Sorry, but none of our routes are done from the screen of a mac/pc. We are paid to ride our bikes and go exploring, why the hell would we then sit in front of a computer? We spend around 9 months of the year chasing decent weather around the country riding and photographing routes – usually 2-4 day trips. We then feed them into the magazine every month to try and get a geographical spread.
There is no right and wrong way. There is often a way that most people think is better, but often they work well in both directions. Sometimes sticking to one direction, means never riding a great descent, because it’s always a climb.
If we miss out the best stuff, it’s either because we have covered it recently already, it won’t fit into the route length/difficulty we’re trying to achieve, or the best bit isn’t legit. I doubt very much that there are many ‘best bits’ in areas we have covered, that we don’t know about.
It has to be remembered that with our current access laws in England and Wales, there is actually a very finite number of good trails and good permutations of good trails.
So, if we repeat routes identically, it will be because we want to feature the area (and some of the great trails in the area), and there really isn’t a logical alternative. We try to avoid doing this within 3 years and even then, I’m pretty careful about what and where (Note: We actually only do 3 of the 4 routes in the magazine – the 4th is usually related to a feature on other pages, so this could be different.
Usually, we try to fit the really good trails into a few different loops so that they don’t get repeated identically. Sadly, this can lead to the previous problem of us then being accused of missing the best trails!
I’m sure that there are many others I’ve missed – sorry.
But if folks do have questions, feel free to contact me (email in profile), always happy to try and answer them, we take a lot professional pride in our work.
And also a big thanks to all those that sang our praises above – much appreciated!
