Mountain Biking

Begbie said:
Yeah that's hugely true, my local spot is hard to ride unless your prepared to ride some decent trails so seeing this isn't very common and it's a lot quieter. I very rarely visit a trail centre, where as you say - see this more often.

I wish I could construct a sentence well enough to be able to write for any media! :p

More importantly, I'll have a 170mm ebike within the next three years :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, if the barrier for entry is high then the quality of rider will be better. I (used to) do a lot of climbing and its funny. You go from climbing in the South where grade X makes you Billy Big ******** and then head up North to the Peak District and realise that every child over the age of 5 climbs harder than you and so does their nan.

Some of the elevation in Scotland looks like it lends itself perfectly to eBikes as well. I'm going to have a look to see if I can find some videos of those trails you linked to.

This is the sort of stuff that makes me wish I lived in Canada

 
fez said:
Yeah, if the barrier for entry is high then the quality of rider will be better. I (used to) do a lot of climbing and its funny. You go from climbing in the South where grade X makes you Billy Big ******** and then head up North to the Peak District and realise that every child over the age of 5 climbs harder than you and so does their nan.

Some of the elevation in Scotland looks like it lends itself perfectly to eBikes as well. I'm going to have a look to see if I can find some videos of those trails you linked to.

This is the sort of stuff that makes me wish I lived in Canada

Click to expand...

I mean apart from the North shore, our trails are pretty damn amazing;

https://youtu.be/rSayo-04M0k

Though I do have a massive soft spot for these trails.
 
Begbie said:
I've heard that the trails in coniston are awesome, not had the chance to go though.
Click to expand...
Not to far away from Grizedale is the shop wheelbase, you could use that as a start point for a few routes around stavely and kentmere although you'd need to be ok with a map. i'm not so the only time i did it i went with others.
 
illuz said:
Anyone done Grizedale before? Hitting there this weekend.
Click to expand...
Yes but no.

I've probably done less than 1km of the actual trail centre trails, the bridleways that cross through the forest are far better, if you're into fast, rocky, slippery when wet, slightly out of control fun. :D

Look up the three witches, aka grandad, dad and dentist.
 
Last edited:
For me the longer travel bikes are for only needing one that can do all rather than ideally two bikes a short travel XC and a long travel enduro bike. I just did a clear out of bikes and trying to stick with a hardtail and a Ibis Ripmo (147/160 travel) for the trail centres an Ibis Ripley with 120mm travel is the better bike but it gets out of it's depth when you start to do uplift days or Glencoe/Nevis range etc. I find the Ripmo can do everything at 90% ish compared to more suited bikes running a different set of wheels with narrower & faster rolling tyres for the easier trails makes a big difference.
 
First ride out after busting my thumb today, went out with a mate new to MTB and took it easy down the local trails. Feel so, so happy to be back out on a bike again, though I'm still a few weeks off having proper strength/dexterity back in my grip for any serious riding.
 
illuz said:
Anyone done Grizedale before? Hitting there this weekend.
Click to expand...

live 15 minutes drive away. don't bnother withthe trail center stuff, its rubbish including the black section. there is some good bridleway stuff there but the best bits are the enduro tracks. a few that descend the coniston side down towards the lake are good and steep. bogle crag area has also got some good unofficial stuff. have a look on trail forks and strava.
 
Well I'm glad we skipped it.

A few of the young lads at Stanleys pump track, Blackpool, said go to Leeds Urban Bike Park. Watched some vids and decided to go there instead.

******* AWESOME. Get there if you haven't, it's epic. Nice and compact, no big slogs anywhere. They've got an awesome ~3 mile red trail through the woods with great berms, nice and fast. Some gaps, some jumps, tabletops etc. There's a section with 4 different drop ins including a good 6ft+ drop.

There's 3 or so Pump tracks, one for kids / bmxs, a jump/pump line for bigger bikes with decent table tops, there's a big jump line, some good 20-30ft table tops and 2 gaps (rollable) and then there's a BIG jump line, talking 30-35ft but all rollable, they're just huge table tops. Have a youtube and get down. It's free, free parking, cafe on site. We're gonna start sessioning there as it's just sublime and all close together so you can just loop round and do stuff again, very good fun if you want to learn to jump as you just spend all day sending tabletops deep basically :D
 

The day before my mates accident. Took some time off the editing with it all, but I can say he's doing well and got the go ahead to start putting up vids etc again.
 
illuz said:
Well I'm glad we skipped it.

A few of the young lads at Stanleys pump track, Blackpool, said go to Leeds Urban Bike Park. Watched some vids and decided to go there instead.

******* AWESOME. Get there if you haven't, it's epic. Nice and compact, no big slogs anywhere. They've got an awesome ~3 mile red trail through the woods with great berms, nice and fast. Some gaps, some jumps, tabletops etc. There's a section with 4 different drop ins including a good 6ft+ drop.

There's 3 or so Pump tracks, one for kids / bmxs, a jump/pump line for bigger bikes with decent table tops, there's a big jump line, some good 20-30ft table tops and 2 gaps (rollable) and then there's a BIG jump line, talking 30-35ft but all rollable, they're just huge table tops. Have a youtube and get down. It's free, free parking, cafe on site. We're gonna start sessioning there as it's just sublime and all close together so you can just loop round and do stuff again, very good fun if you want to learn to jump as you just spend all day sending tabletops deep basically :D
Click to expand...

Just down the road from me. It holds up really well in winter and bad weather, so a good option if everywhere else is washed out. None of us are big jumpers, so mainly loop the red trail, not keen on the 6ft drop though. Which is after the big drop he does. There's a video out there of a local lad smashing his bike in half doing the really big drop (which isn't officially part of any loop).

Worth watching Elliott Heap giving it some around there to get an idea of it all.

 
Last edited:
> There's a video out there of a local lad smashing his bike in half doing the really big drop (which isn't officially part of any loop).

Some lads mentioned that when we were there, said his back wheel just folded LOL.

The place is awesome, highly recommend it to everyone. We must have done about 200 jumps that day.
 
illuz said:
> There's a video out there of a local lad smashing his bike in half doing the really big drop (which isn't officially part of any loop).

Some lads mentioned that when we were there, said his back wheel just folded LOL.

The place is awesome, highly recommend it to everyone. We must have done about 200 jumps that day.
Click to expand...

Allegedly he'd just bought it too and had only started riding. I believe a lot of folk chipped in to help get a new bike.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1315152932170341&ref=sharing
 
I was at Rogate all day yesterday and had a great time, didn't ride the black trails naturally lol but as it was the first time at any downhill park, spent most of the time repeating paths like Bottle Rocket, Bikini Bottom etc. What a great place and as it was a Wednesday, was mostly empty apart from a handful of other riders both young and old. Most were on hardtails which was a surprise, a couple on eBikes cruising back up all smug whilst we pushed our bikes back up and got exhausted by 3PM just from that faff :D

I felt as though I was gaining more speed and a feel for where my weight should be as I approach and land the little jumps or drops. Really fun. Came off the bike twice as did one of my mates as we washed out on the sand (loads of sand...) but otherwise unscathed. Was very impressed with how my bike performed though, had to let tyres down to a bit above 20psi to gain better traction.

Excuse the low angle of the video, I realised the phone mount was aimed too low from riding position but appeared fine when stationary, oops! Video auto compiled with the GoPro Quik app.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom