The Singletrack Team pick their favourite products and bicycles from their year of riding. Benji’s Picks “Time to tally up. And it’s been another good year for keeping on keeping on. Bicycles continue to be rad. Riding them is even radder. According to my files,…
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Recreation Must Pay – But It’s Everyone Who Will Suffer
Hannah thinks that public funding of outdoor recreation is at a crisis point. In the race to balance budgets, we’re at risk of a long legacy of cost. Last week I went to an online public meeting about the future of the visitor centres at…
Crossword: The Forum IYKYK Edition
If the words ‘the great hack’, ‘Tractor Trumps, Glos Rules’, or ‘Big Hitters’ mean nothing to you, then you should probably move along and go and ride an actual bike. Is this a plumbing forum? Is anyone here not in IT? IANAL, or Louise. Test…
Good Vibes Only: Drafting A Squirrel
Today I drafted a squirrel. Pedalling along, the canal beside me steaming tendrils into the frozen air, my lead out squirrel sat on the frosted fence ahead. Spotting me, it turned tail and ran along the wooden rail, fluffy tail extended in a squirrely version…
Quick Crossword: The Electric Edition
Get your synapses firing, this should be of the quick and easy variety. Lightning fast maybe? Feel the power of your intellect. Maybe boost yourself with a cup of coffee if you’re feeling slow. How did you do? Limped home in eco mode with one…
Bike Check: Andi’s Production Privée Shan G.T.
Andi is a self-confessed Production Privée fanboy, so when he dropped by the office with this latest bike we asked him to explain the attraction. I used to read Dirt Magazine… and I remember reading a review of the Production Privée, the original one, and…
Red Bull Rampage: What’s The Motivation?
“Seriously, people do that for fun? They’re not being punished for some heinous crime?”This was my Aunt’s incredulous response to seeing footage from Red Bull Rampage, and while those of us who ride bikes might be slightly less surprised by what we see, many are…
Thin Pickings For Cycling In UK Autumn Budget Announcement
I had high hopes for yesterday’s Budget announcement. Today, I’m feeling deflated and defeated – was I just too optimistic? The Budget announcement has been tentatively welcomed by Cycling UK and Sustrans, as the £100m for cycling and walking infrastructure goes some way to undoing…
Each Peach Pear Plum: Using e-cargo bikes to survive picnics with kids
Hannah enlists her friend Celia on a mission to re-enact a favourite book from her childhood. Luckily, Celia is indefatigable.
How to Thrive, not just Survive, this winter
Benji adopts the slithery path to zen in the darker months Acceptance. Acceptance and change. That, to me, is the key to getting through winter. If done correctly, winter can be just as much fun as the other three seasons. To remind you, the current…
Issue 157: MTB Culture – Rain Stops Play
Chipps looks at the increasing influence the changing climate and other pressures are having on off-road events. As the climate changes, it is bringing more unpredictable weather with it. We’re seeing everything from unusually dry Februarys to snow in May and floods in August, which…
Georgia Astle: Finding Fun In The Process At Red Bull Rampage
Born and raised in Whistler, Georgia Astle didn’t actually like mountain biking as a kid, preferring instead to run alongside her mum, who’d ride regularly with group of friends. Always active, from a family of surfers and kite surfers, Georgia only signed up for mountain…
Issue 157: Busman’s Holiday
Tracy Moseley’s idea of a holiday does not involve a sun lounger, but it is all-inclusive – and all-in. A trip of a lifetime to the BC Bike Race lives up to her dreams.
A Spectator’s Guide To Red Bull Rampage
Maybe you’re interested in heading out to watch Red Bull Rampage first hand. After my experience last week, I figured a few hints and tips on what to take with you might be useful. First up, if you think there’s a lot of hanging around…
Cool Head And A Spicy Line: Tom Isted’s Red Bull Rampage Debut
Tom Isted has me nervous. Despite his reassurance that he’s going to keep things chilled and just try and get down in one piece, his YouTube videos speak to a ‘wreckers or chequers’ approach to riding. That might not be too consequential at his local…
The Grinder 157: Granite Quiver, Madison DTE jacket, Feedback Sports Pro HD Repair Stand and more
Tried and tested by the Singletrack Crew, gear to help you survive a day in the hills – or the workshop. Granite Design Quiver Tool Roll This is marketed as a next generation saddlebag, but I’ve not used as such because… well, as a mountain…
Issue 157 – Better With Friends
Is mountain biking something best done as a group, or is there a certain singularity of experience to be had in the solo ride? Chipps and Hannah try to see things from all perspectives… Hannah: Unusually for me, perhaps, I don’t have strong feelings about…
Rampage Diary 4: Location Location Location
Red Bull Rampage owes everything to its location. If it were anywhere else in the world it would a different event. The Rampage sites, just outside Virgin, Utah, are a couple of hours’ drive from Las Vegas, and about half an hour from St George,…
Issue 157 – Norway Hans Rey
What would you say are the greatest innovations in mountain biking? Most would agree the invention of full suspension, then there is the dropper seat post; in more recent times we have purpose-built trails and bike parks; and, even more recently, ebikes. Hans Rey has…
First Ever Women’s Red Bull Rampage: The Results
Shovels down. It’s competition day. The dig teams are heading towards holiday mode, all the heavy work done. The riders, too, are horsing around in the car park. Maybe they’re distracting themselves from what’s ahead? The lines were set, coming together in a series of…
Red Bull Rampage Diary 3: Go Big, But Come Home
Today was the last day of practice for the women, tomorrow is showtime. But when you watch Red Bull Rampage on the TV, with all the Loud Hype Stoke production values, you’re seeing a teeny tiny tip of the iceberg. You’ve missed the days of…
Issue 157 Last Word – Catastrophe!157
After a dozen years of incident-free mountain biking, luck ran out for my wife in October and she found her foot pointing sideways after an innocuous slide-out into a gravel car park. Thanks to the wonders of the French health service, her foot was swiftly…
Red Bull Rampage Diary 2: A Changing Soundtrack
Yesterday’s percussive accompaniment of the slapping of shovels picked up a different rhythm today at Red Bull Rampage, for the second day of practice. As I walked up the lower section of the women’s hill, dig teams were still accompanied by their bluetooth tunes of…
Rampage Diary Day 1: First Hits, And A Sense of Scale
Our Rampage coverage is supported by.. Win an ABUS full face helmet. Details below Today was a day of firsts at Red Bull Rampage 2024. After five dig days for the women, and four for the men, today was the first day bikes were allowed…
Forestry England’s Cycling Strategy: A sign of things (not) to come?
Forestry England published its first Cycling Strategy a few weeks ago. Big organisations need this sort of thing so that everyone knows what they should – or shouldn’t – be spending their money on, and what their goals are. On first reading, I got pretty…
Interview: Joe Breedon – chasing the fractions of seconds
While at the Saddleback House Show, I had a chat with Joe Breedon, who was there with his bike and team mate Lou Ferguson. I stopped him for a chat about some of the more eye catching additions to his race bike. Your bike has…
Route Assembly – making UK manufacturing more than a Pipedream?
A few weeks ago there was the announcement that Pipedream Cycles had been bought by Route Assembly. Who or what is Route Assembly and what do they plan to do with Pipedream Cycles? I caught up with new owner Ian Byrne for some more information…
Interview: Kade Edwards in Anytime BTS – ‘I’m not going to get any better in the next 10 minutes’
I went down to Dyfi Bike Park for a day of riding followed by a UK Premiere of ‘Anytime’, the latest film from Anthill and Red Bull, that celebrates freeride. As you’d expect, it’s a feast for the eyes, with stunning scenery and a load…
Our go-to winter riding apparel
We were asked to list one item of clothing that we always pick out of the pile for a wintery mountain bike ride. Here’s what we picked. Following on from our Make winter riding actually fun article from last year, we thought we’d slightly revisit…
Bike Check: James Love’s Cotic Cascade
Mr Love, formerly of this parish, dropped by via the back roads of Calderdale. ‘You look like Jeremy Corbyn with that stem!’ cried our Benji. Cue much excited jabber about geometry, back road meandering, and the merits of planning your bike rides around top notch…
Interview: Lou Ferguson on ‘being alive and being happy’
Lou Ferguson was at the Saddleback House Show with her bike, freshly cleaned from Loudenville. We had a good long chat about her season so far, what next year might look like, plus some of the details on her bike. She’s very bright and chatty…
Retrobike Check: Isla Rowntree’s 1993 Race Bike
At the Retrobike Show and Shine at the Malverns Classic, this yellow and red bespoke racing machine was on display. It’s one of Isla Rowntree’s own personal bikes, built to meet her precise ideas about what makes a good race bike, and a bike that…
Interview: The Word According To Landosteezy
If you’re on any kind of social media, you’ve probably seen Leo ‘Landosteezy’ Smith bringing his BMX style to the world of MTB. Now riding for Calibre, you might also have clocked him exploring the north of England by gravel bike. It’s all bikes, and…
Spotted: Wonder Woman and the KeeWee Cromozone
I’d barely arrived at the Malverns Classic when we were rolling through the camping field and spotted the kind of freak bike collection that no self-respecting bike nerd can walk past. Plus a 100% rusted car. It was too much to resist after the drive…
Issue 156 Editorial – A curated taste
Chipps gets to put together a menu of rides. Does he start bold? Or subtle and build to a crescendo? I had some riders in the village this week. Not friends or friends of friends as is often the way, but four Brits who’d looked on a map to find somewhere they’d…
Retrobike Barn Find Bonanza!
It’s the collector’s dream: you enquire about a single bike, end up discovering a whole collection of bikes – and the person that owns them wants rid. That’s what happened to Oliver when he got talking to a seller on eBay. I took a moment…
Rachel Atherton: From World Champ to Family Cycling Champion
It was Rachel Atherton’s first year at the Malverns Classic, and like many festival-goers she was there with her family. While she wasn’t juggling child demands with racing, she was working on the Atherton Bikes stand, posing for selfies, signing helmets, and offering up advice…
Issue 156 – No place for science
Put down your calculators and pick up your pitchforks, because Benji has ideas about where you can stick your science… Despite what this article is called, I am not anti-science. I do not wear a tinfoil beanie. I have all of the vaccinations. I like…
Project Mjolnir: The Most Interesting Bike Of The Year?
At the Malverns Classic Festival there were a bunch of riders with Bowhead adaptive trikes taking part in the racing, which was great to see. But then this rolled by and I realised it was something really different. And then I got chatting to the…
Issue 156 – Arran’ a good time
Amanda, Rhys and James are reunited for further confirmation that ‘enduro-packing’ is a great idea. WORDS AMANDA PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES VINCENT I am spreadeagled on a rock slab. James is holding my right arm and taking half of my weight and Rhys’ fist is hooked around…
Issue 156 – Beyond Benidorm
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY CHIPPS One blazing sun, two very different worlds on Spain’s Costa Blanca. As I look around at the hotel breakfast buffet, there are two distinctly different groups here. One group looking more serious than they should for people on holiday, mostly older…
Issue 156 – Earning your descents
In our next head to head debate, Chipps is a big fan of earning your descents – he thinks they’re all the better for having put in the effort to get there. Hannah is just in it for the kicks and thinks that ‘earning’ it…
The Grinder 156: Formula Cura X brake, OneUp Alu bar, MSR tent, Specialized Method shoe and more
Bits for your body, bike, and the happiness of those who share your shed. Formula Cura X Brakes First things first, these brakes aren’t as powerful as the SRAM Maven or the Hope Tech4 V4 (the latter still takes the Best Brake crown in my…
Issue 156 – Pete’s Peaks
Pete brings us a selection of climbs (and descents) worth bagging, even if they’re not on a fashionable to-do list of must-do mountains. Words Pete Scullion, photography Pete Scullion and as credited Since the late 1980s, Munro bagging has become a popular pastime, well over…
Bikemon Go! Your August Ride Inspiring Download
Back in issue 153 in February, Hannah proposed an alternative approach to measuring rides. As part of that, we gave you a set of ride ‘achievements’ to collect in the month ahead. Here’s your next seasonally appropriate set of ride goals. Enjoy!
Before the Party’s Over
Mountain biking is getting old. It might be time to sit down and talk to our elders. Words Hannah, Illustration James Vincent Remember when you were a kid and every birthday counted? Cake, presents, and a party to mark the occasion. If someone asked how…
Issue 156 – Inconvenient Injuries
Very silly injury… Went OTB at about four miles an hour. Not a scratch, got back on the bike, rode ten feet, did the same thing. I was on an overgrown trail that you couldn’t see. I’d ridden it loads… then it rained and got…
Issue 156 – Bhutan: On Royal Trails
Since Bhutan is keen on measuring happiness, it should be no surprise that there is great mountain biking to be found there. The small kingdom of Bhutan, nestled in the Himalayas between India and China, is shrouded in myths. It’s said that entry visas are…
502 Club Roll Of Honour
Special Notice of Appreciation We wouldn’t be here without any of you and you’re all special, but the folks listed here are particularly special. Thank you to everyone who joined the 502 Club and helped us fund our new server. ADELAIDE ANDREWS – ADRIAN ADAMS…
Issue 156 Last Word: Know Your Frenemy
Hannah Discovers the impact of mountain bike injuries on your trails and explores how a favorite trail can turn into a nemesis and the challenges it brings.
Nerd Alert! Rare Structure SCW1 Prototype Bike for Sale
This caught our eye in the Singletrack Classifieds. I mean, why wouldn’t it? With echoes of the old Whyte PRST1 but a stack of new tech, it’s a bike nerd’s treat. We figured before it finds its way to a new owner, we ought to…