Bike Blog
It’s the last day of August, summer is hanging on. 125km round trip from the coast up to the masts at the top of Rivington. Good test of the Spark and some epic riding. New to me trails and some brilliant scenery. 4,200km in so far this year…
Sometime at the beginning of June I passed my annual riding target of 2,500km. As June comes to an end I’m on track to be nearing 3,000km. Last year in the same time period I’d ridden 140km and to further emphasise the difference, earlier this month in a ride out to Delamere Forest for coffee and a bacon barm, I did close to that distance in a single ride. I am lighter, fitter, and enjoying riding again.
The best bit is that I keep finding new trails like the gravel track in the photo above. In my earliest days getting out exploring on the bike, riding new bits, having those revelatory moments – ‘ah, this comes out here’ and ‘so I can use this to link up this and that’ – were always the highlights.
Right now that sense of adventure biking, complete with top tube mounted frame bag comes in the form of a Scott Addict Gravel bike. What a machine. Looking forward to the next 100km+ adventure at the weekend.
It’s Tuesday evening, after a final day for the foreseeable future spent in Oxford, I’ve taken the executive decision to break up the journey home with a tactical riding opportunity (T.R.O.). 45 minutes later, I’m just over half way around the red route at Cannock Chase and I’m contemplating the similarities of Thetford Forest and the Midlands.
No flint. Where have all these rounded stones and pebbles come from? Same abundance of ferns. Thankfully few nettles and brambles (compared to my local pinewoods). Most starkly, there is vertical variation. Ups and downs beyond bomb holes and gently undulating Breckland. Lots of trees and threaded trails. Very quiet with a sense of in the wild
It feels more built, with hunks of stone slab and rockgarden sections, even boardwalk but somewhere into the final third of the red, it just seems to come alive, great down hill trail sections, fast flowing Singletrack sections. The latter makes me think of Thetford, in particular the rollercoaster.
Bang on 9pm I roll up to the pay and display machine, wince at the extortionate parking fee for less than two hours, load up and carry on my journey home to north west coast. Plenty of time to reflect and review. That was a great ride. I should go back sometime. Maybe this hardtail business has run it’s course – wouldn’t it have been more fun on a cross country trail bike?
The year started with a simple goal: Ride more. The plan worked and 15kg weight loss later, achieved through hitting the gym and riding a variety of Peloton, ICG & Matrix stationary trainers whilst away on business and getting back out on the bike.
With the riding happening again I set some targets, new gravel bike after 10kg weight loss and a mission to ride to mum’s house in North Wales on the edge of Snowdonia. A custom spec’d Scott Addict Gravel Bike, with full SRAM Force AXS and Zipp 303 Firecrests and a Wahoo Roam arrived courtesy of J’s Cycles. There’s a full Syncros frame back set to go with it too.
Mileage has been clocking up with several 100km+ rides in the bag for the year already and a whole lot of bigger ones planned. Let’s keep rolling…
Dawn light. Just about freezing. Iced puddles, frozen sand and clear skies. Local trails and a commitment to ride more in 2025.
Another grey day at Llandegla. I did a great ride with Neil whilst the boys had some coaching with Lardy. Sometimes when you’re blasting around the trails you don’t really get a chance to take in the views and scenery. It’s pretty spectacular, even when the weather’s not the best.
I looked in my photos for a picture of the last time I was out here on the fattie. I had to do far too much scrolling. So it was time to set that right and the weather agreed.
Took the boys around Gwydir Bach. Bouncy Canyons for the boys and testing out the Yeti. There’s no doubt that the former Marin Trail is a proper mountain bike trail in every sense of the term. Big climbs, big descents, brilliant singletrack and truly awesome scenery make this a trail to remember.
Most, but not all, of the climbs are on forest roads and tracks giving you time to take in the views of the mountains of Snowdonia, and all of the descents are on the sweetest Singletrack some of which is very tight, technical and rocky to wonderfully open and flowing. I took the boys on the shorter Gwydir Bach trail, which is an 8.7km loop.
Out on the cross bike for a blast. It’s the end of August. I’m wearing a long sleeve Roubaix fleece lined top and a windproof gilet. Summer feels like a long time ago…
When I was around 16 one of my riding buddies was at University and came home with an original Yeti ARC. It was tricked to the max. Manitou IIIs, Gravity Research high leverage cantilever brakes, Cook Bros Racing cranks, Ringle Stem and Seatpost and the classic turquoise and yellow paint scheme. It was so light that on one particular ride it actually did get blown away by the wind at the cafe stop!
So after having had the Santa Cruz Chameleon for a couple of years I decided that it was time to swap it out for a new ride. So the big orange lizard was stripped down and most of the parts transferred over to the new frame. Forks had a service at TF Tuned and I imported some swanky decals from VC Graphix in Yeti’s home state of Colorado.
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