For the last few years, the WRT has shared a date with the Dyfi Enduro. On occasion, when the WRT circus rolls west, it also shares a few trails. This year, the Welsh Ride Thing went in search of the seaside and ice cream. If you chose the most obvious route towards sea-level, then chances […]
Perfect circles don’t exist within nature, the universe has seen fit to make things a little less uniform and a bit more random. I’ve no idea why perfect circles have no place within the natural world but I’m sure there must be a reason … although, it’s probably a different reason to the one Absolute […]
Someone said to me, that they believed there’d been a soft luggage revolution in recent years – I disagreed. Soft luggage was first strapped to bikes decades before racks and panniers ever were, so it’s nothing new … I argued that ‘evolution’ rather than ‘revolution’ might be a better description of what’s taken place within […]
Every item of equipment you choose to buy, is tainted by compromise. A balancing act, a trade-off between one attribute and another. You might decide to buy something that’s a little heavier than you’d like because it packs smaller. A slightly less robust item may have been selected because it was considerably cheaper than the […]
Gravel, adventure, gnarmac or cyclocross. It doesn’t much matter which moniker you care to hang off it because when the gravel gets lumpier, the adventure becomes more adventurous or things get a little gnarlier than you expected … your re-branded cyclocross bike is going to get out of its depth. In some instances, it might be […]
When the intrepid bikepacker thinks about getting wet, it’s usually in the form of rain from above. However, while you’re unlikely to get quite as wet from below … you can still get unpleasantly damp. Using a bivvy bag obviously negates the issue of wet ground but it’s not without its draw-backs. Firstly, there’s the […]
If you read part 3 of this saga, you may recall that I was just starting out on the quest to discover whether a fat bike really does make a good ‘all rounder’. Many of those riders already trundling round the countryside atop a fat bike appeared to think so but my initial ride left […]
Cheerful hey? Contrary to popular belief it wasn’t Bill Shakespeare who coined the phrase above reminding us that we should make the most of our time. My in-depth research tells me that the phrase is actually a bastardisation of two different quotes from the Old Testament but I suppose whoever and wherever doesn’t really matter […]
As analogies go, comparing Ordnance Survey Explorer 213 against a black lace thong, half cup bra or red satin suspender belt might be stretching things a little, however, I honestly believe certain similarities exist between lingerie and maps that are hard to dismiss.Those of you who already love maps, probably don’t need me to tell […]
I was a little surprised when the mountainbike world seemingly fell head over heals in love with 650b. It appeared to be a whirlwind romance, an overnight infatuation and one I couldn’t understand. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I did my best … I looked at the figures and scratched my head, I begged and borrowed […]