This story has a beginning that will be familiar to anyone who grew up riding bikes in the mid to late 90s. In 1995 I was 13 and my mates and I discovered mountain biking. This was the era of
Dirt (the Pete Tomkins film – before Dirt magazine was around), Peaty, Warner, JMC. MBUK magazines with free stickers, VHS tapes that we wore out from repeated watching and terrible, terrible bikes. In those days a full suspension bike was a far distant dream but we were pretty content with our entry level Gary Fishers. Fully rigid with cantilever rim brakes. Upgrades happened slowly as we scraped together enough cash from washing pots in the local pub. The ferocious power of v-brakes. Probably a set of purple bar ends. Eventually I got my hands on a long lusted after suspension fork. A Marzocchi DH3. 3 whole inches of DH spec travel (at leastuntil the seals blew. Which they did, pretty much every ride).
We would all head up to the local woods to find sketchy drops and jumps to scare ourselves on and break our precious
machines. Rob Warner was a local and we would occasionally see him, awestruck to catch sight of our hero in real life in the woods (usually tearing around on a moto). As we got older going up to the woods became a handy excuse to hang around and smoke illicit fags. At the
same time our bikes grew up and got tougher as we moved on to more modern hardtails. An Azonic DS1 with bright orange Z1 Bombers was my weapon of choice.
Then I heard about a mystical place called Les Gets. The mountains called and I had to go. In the summer of 2001 I was 19 and left the UK in knackered old hatchback with just enough money to survive for a week. After trawling the shops and bars of Les Gets I found a rental
shop who needed a mechanic. Now back then I was a terrible mechanic but I had plenty of experience bodging my bike back together in the woods using sticks and string. They agreed
to take me on (mostly so they had someone to speak to all the Brits who had started showing up in town). For the next 2 months my diet consisted of coffee, bread, cheese, beer and Marlboro reds. I lived in a tent up the hill, rode to work and did laps in my lunch break. Maybe
my memory is rose-tinted but that was a good couple of months.
By the end of the season my DS1 was cracked, I had crashed more times than I could count, damaged my shoulder in what would turn out to be a recurring injury for the next 20 years and
yet I knew. I knew that there is nothing that could be as much fun as riding bikes in the woods, in the mountains.
These days bikes are an awful lot better. There is no denying that. But back then we didn’t need ten different categories of mountain bike. And that was a good thing. You had a mountain bike, rode it in the woods and it was fun.
The bike that we have just released is a mountain bike. We call it the Trail Bike but it isn’t really a trail bike.
It is a bike to ride in the woods. It is fun. It is also pretty and efficient and predictable and durable and really really nice to ride.
It makes me wonder what the bikes of the next few years will look like. As the AI robots take
over will we all be forced to ride mega power e-bikes with computer tracking and pre-programmed routes? It sounds daft but all we hear is that the only bikes that sell now are e-bikes. It can’t be long until we won’t even need to think about where to ride. Your bike will
select a route made up of the top rated trails (according to other AI powered bikes) and deliver you straight to the trailhead. Ideally you won’t have to bother pedalling or even steering for this
bit. Direct to trail. Then choose your level of difficulty. ABS, turn assist and radar tracking will control your trajectory. Jumps will be analysed and speed precisely calibrated to ensure you get the perfect landing each time and feel like a hero for every second of your ride. Once at
the bottom you can relax and be whisked up to the next top rated and fully sanitised trail. Engage hero mode again whilst automatically capturing and uploading your perfect runs to social media.
In the words of Frank Turner, I still believe. I still believe in bikes made of metal, powered by your own motor, for the simple joy of jumps, skids and crashes in the woods. I still believe in bikes that don’t need charging or software updates. I still believe in the satisfaction of getting
up to a summit under your own steam. I might have given up the fags but I still firmly believe in getting lost in the woods. I believe in seeing a line on a map (paper preferably) and seeing where it leads. It might be the holy grail of loam or it might be an overgrown abandoned 4×4
track. I believe in spotting a single rogue tyre track disappearing off the side of a hill and following it. Not knowing where it ends but riding it anyway. Riding bikes in the woods is for fun. Not for likes and comments or KOMs. We ride bikes in the woods to get away from all that shit. So lets keep our bikes simple.
We really don’t need more complicated bikes but maybe a bike that is made for performance and fun (and skids and crashes) is what we do need.
A bike built right here, by hand, one at a time, in a cabin in the woods.
