Don’t confuse simple with easy. While it’s true that bikepacking and in particular racing, can strip away the largely superficial aspects of life and provide a simpler existence … it often, isn’t an easy one. Changeable weather conditions, long days and big miles and lack of sleep aren’t the usual ingredients most people would include, […]
I generally consider myself a glass half full type person but I’m also a realist, so I happily accept that sometimes things won’t turn out exactly as you’d hoped. Luckily, life tends to balance itself out and on occasion your glass isn’t just half full but overflowing. It seems you can do no wrong, every […]
Although ‘Bear Bones’ is only five years old, it was actually conceived over three years earlier. I realise that’s quite a long gestation period but these things can’t be rushed. As a pre-bikepacking bikepacker, a random post on Singletrackworld caught my eye. Its title contained the words ‘great divide’ and loosely woven through the thread […]
‘They’ say that, it’s the taking part rather than the winning which counts. I say, that’s an untruth spoken by and for those of us who’ve never won anything beyond a coconut. However, there are other ways of winning. Sometimes it’s not about crossing the line first, it’s about crossing the line, knowing that you […]
As bikepacking becomes ever more popular, it seems that there’s ever more people trying to tempt the unwary to venture away from the trail centre or off the sofa and into the hills. The words and images used, make it a tempting prospect but you must exercise caution, as these words and pictures are often […]
A little while ago, I introduced you to the Love Mud Rumpus 650b+ wheel set from Alpkit. At the time of writing, I was awaiting the arrival of some suitable tyres and after a slight delay, Gwyn the post finally arrived with a box containing some appropriately sized rubber. I’d spent some time last year […]
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 […]