Another vote for Brechfa red and black linked together.

All depends on your definitions of riding really. Someone mentioned a bike was fine for local XC but not much good for more trail-orientated stuff!? Whats the bl88dy difference? :D There isn’t much you couldn’t do on a racey 29er HT, but you probably wouldn’t want to be ripping down world cup DH courses regularly or dropping 6ft to flat on it.

Got Nukeproof Electrons on my 29er HT and DMR Vaults on my 6″ full suss. The Electrons grip better are cheaper, thinner and lighter. They don’t look quite as nice though (ooh la di da suit you sir) and probably aren’t as tough but I’ve had no probs with them so far.

That isn’t too bad buddy, not great admittedly, but I’m crap with colours. I stopped trying to be clever with colour co-ordination in my motorbiking days of horrible anodised rearsets and matching fairing bolts etc.

Its all about black bits now, boring boring boring but safe, black bits.

Glad I wasn’t the only one to struggle up there! Was already knackered by the time I’d got to it but I still don’t think I’d have cleaned it with brand new legs.

A somewhat trivial point after all the heavy-hitting physics going on, someone earlier on mentioned the motorbike industry had given up on belt drive. Harley Davidson however didn’t and have it taped.

Plenty already in FoD, evening rides you tend to see them more, not surprisingly. Mainly off-piste areas but every now and then you see them wandering around near the trail centre.

The bit at the end of Schindlers List when the real-life survivors visit Schindlers grave caused me to ‘get something in my eye’

Have always ridden flats for both XC and DH. I just love riding whenever I can and I don’t feel that clipping in will improve my enjoyment at all.

The way I see it is if I want to go faster uphill I need to improve my strength/fitness and if I want to ride scarier and bigger jumpier stuff I need to grow bigger balls.

So wanted to do this but had prior commitments. What tracks did they use out of interest?

Did HONC a few weeks ago with Ground Control 2.3 F&R on a 26″ HT. Very impressed, rolled surprisingly well on the road sections and gripped everything else off-road, rocks, roots, mud, hardpack, loam, wet and dry. Great all rounder. I’m building up a 29er later this week to replace the above old 26 hardtail and I’ve already ordered a pair of Ground Controls for it.

Pamplemousse

I think we need to hear from Janzen to finally close this loop. Something along the lines of he needed the money to pay his Nan back after she lent him cash for his Uni fees and the only way he could deliver the cash to her was on his Yeti ARC X coz his other bikes weren’t ideal for cash deliveries, so he couldn’t post it until he’d paid his Nan back and she was on holiday in Jersey until middle of last week

Actually Joe we’ve all suddenly lost interest and no-one gives a stuff any more :wink:

Nah a Parcelforce Mercedes Sprinter would eat an S3 for breakfast, and the driver wouldn’t even need his seatbelt on

I’ll bet it was something nice though

Thanks andyfla for the wise words, and that worked for you, but not us. For many reasons leaving him to scream his head off doesn’t work for us, one of them being that it wakes his 2.5 year old Sister. One non-sleeping child we can just about deal with.

I’ve got ones of those buddy. The only way we can get a half decent sleep is if he sleeps next to his Mum. All the recommended techniques failed, doctors say he’s fine, no reflux etc coming to the conclusion that’s just the way he is right now. Polar opposite to his older sister who slept great from early on. I can only offer you empathy!

KS Dropzone has about 20mm layback, one of the reasons I bought it. 1year old now and still performing perfectly, very happy with it, especially as it was only £115

This thread puts me in mind of one of my favourite establishments in GTA5 :D

That said, I do hope you get either your money back or your bike, there’s some unscrupulous ****heads around :(

OP well done for not chasing after him! Obviously you’re aware that in a straight line drag race your R1 would destroy the S3, but on a twisty back road you can’t compete on cornering grip and usable stopping power. In my younger motorbike days I would have gone after him, then as the years went by I learnt my limits and a little self-control! Wish I still had my R1 though :(

I like the way she has rested it carefully on the sag o-ring so as not to risk any damage to the damper body :D Is this fluke or does she have some mechanical sympathy?

Nope, but I put Savlon on my toothbrush once

Some lovely photos of everyone but me :(

I really enjoyed it, my first HONC, only did the 50K but wished I’d gone for the 100 when I finished as I had plenty left in the tank.

Oh and anyone blaming the event organisers for going the wrong way should look a little closer to home. Every turn is signed, you get a GPX file and a marked map. No excuses, keep your eyes peeled next time! :D

Must be a sad lonely man if he has time to sit down and put together such a pants and pointless video edit

This thread may just have cost me £499. Been looking for a budget XC 29er for a while, apart from the fork the Beone CRD comp looks amazing value, as do the others in the range to be fair. Shame there doesn’t seem to be any information/reviews about them on the web anywhere though

What’s the locals verdict on the route then? All off-road climbs and road descents? I’m going to do it anyway, just wondering what to expect :-)

Email just turned up from HONC admin, including instructions and 50 and 100K gpx files

I’m doing this, probably just the 50K though, never ridden anywhere near 100K in one go before! Haven’t received a GPX of the route yet though either

How about FoD? Organise an all day (or suitably ‘big’) guided ride for the Saturday of back-country stuff and then arse around at the trail centre on the marked trails and DH tracks on Sunday? There’s a couple of places that do guided rides :

http://fodmtbguides.com/

http://www.fodmtb.com/

I did the black and red looped together on Tuesday and really enjoyed it. Few puddles, few trees down, some muddy sections on the black but on the whole it was running really well. Great fun all the way, the black climbs were pretty hard though after having done all of the red climbs already. You might breeze it though as I’m not the fittest rider around that’s for sure. As mentioned above it looks like there used to be a diversion, but I carried on round the original trail and although there was a sizeable tree down, it was fine otherwise. The 2 trails together were something like 25 miles with 4400ft of climbing.

So if theres a big forestry commission sign saying ‘no trail building until August’ by Ellwood/Dowies enclosure, does that mean that trail-building there is normally fine, and sanctioned by the FC? I mean a lot of work goes into those trails, Dowies 3 popped up last year, and there seems to be some more new stuff appearing too. Massive respect to the peeps doing the work. If I had more time (can barely find time to even ride at the moment) I’d come and help build them myself to be fair. Just wondering what the arrangement is with the FC if anything?

Not heard anything, I’ll ask around. Was riding there last weekend, chatting to Dowie (the FoD trail builder as opposed to Iain Dowie pictured above :-)), he didn’t mention anything about it.

Thanks, got the PDF trail maps, was just wondering which way would be more enjoyable, red first or black first. As per chvck says, think I’ll start on the red, give the legs time to warm up for the black climbs :-)

Cheers!

peterfile – the statistics are massively understated. People die there every week. If they don’t die at the ring, ie not until they get to hospital, or in the ambulance on the way to hospital, it doesn’t count, for example.

Having been on a multitude of stag do’s and witnessed some of the idiotic things that go on, and also ridden the Nordschleife on my motorbike and witnessed some horrific crashes first hand, I would say that mixing the two is the daftest idea I’ve ever heard of :D

Maybe you aren’t the ‘weekend away/dress as smurfs in Warsaw/have a fight in a strip club etc’ type of characters though in which case you’ll probably be alright. Have a healthy dose of respect and a huge dose of common sense before you put your ticket in the gate and you’ll be okay. Its an incredible experience, second to none in my opinion.

Although I’d never go round it on a motorbike again! Having a Skyline GTR go past me sideways, about 2 foot from my left handlebar at 100mph was sobering. As was calling the ambulance to a fellow biker who had smashed head first into the Armco right in front of me and was missing most of his face.

Great link Tori, thankfully they don’t have large or I’d be seriously tempted myself

Yeah he was bl88dy lucky it has to be said. Jonathan, I suggested that he contact Trek and see about some sort of cheap replacement, even though he bought it second-hand and has no receipt, there’s nothing to lose. Whether he will or not remains to be seen.

I didn’t get that either, the front wheel was running perfectly afterwards. Funniest bit was watching him try and ride it back to the van