MBR Demo Day, Forest of Dean

[RampantBadger]

On Saturday I spent a seriously good day at the MBR Demo Day. The setup was absolutely superb, loads of manufacturers turned up and they all had plenty of lovely shiny bikes to ride. You got each bike for an hour and there was a nice red rooty loamy decent out of the event village to give you a bit of a challenge. I managed to get an uplift pass on the day so I could hit the red decent and one of the many downhill trails at the pedalabikeaway centre in the hours demo.

 

On my first loop I managed to take a wrong turn and got lost so I turned round and pedalled back to try and find where I went wrong. While I was riding back up the hill I saw another rider coming down so I flagged them down to ask if they new the way, it was only Tracey Mosley! (for those who don't know the name, Tracey is a Downhill world champion and 3 time Enduro world series champion) She said she thought she knew the way and I was welcome to join her, happy days it's not every day you get to ride with a multiple world champion is it! Bugger me she is fast too, she was just cruising but I had to pull everything out of the bag to keep up.  She was incredibly friendly and happy to just chat about bikes.

 

Now for the bikes, my first ride was on a Whyte G160S. It's a great looking bike and fit really nicely too, the suspension action was nice. But as competent as it was there was no sparkle to it, it did everything you wanted but just didn't feel special. Maybe I needed more time to gel on it?

 

Next up was the Intense Primer Factory, all £8,700 of it! What a machine, if the Whyte was lacking sparkle then this certainly made up for it. It's a relatively short travel 29er and was dripping in bling, SRAM eagle, Fox 34's, carbon wheels etc. It accelerated like a maniac and had razor sharp handling, it rode like something with much more travel but without the lag from the suspension. It weighs 4/5 of bugger all so climbing was incredibly efficient too. I still managed to crash it though, got the front wheel jammed in some roots and went straight over the bars. Even with that it was definitely my bike of the day!

 

Next was something completely different, the Canyon Sender. I'd not ridden a downhill bike for over 10 years so I wasn't sure what to expect. As I pedalled out of the centre I thought I'd made a huge mistake, it was heavy, slow handling and didn't seem to want to go anywhere when you stood on the pedals. As the trail started to get steeper it all started to make sense. The weight made it stable in the corners, the slow steering made higher speeds more manageable and the gearing started came into its own. On the proper downhill trails it was an absolute weapon, I've never been down Sheepskull (my favourite descent at FoD) so fast, jumping off things I'd never consider on my other bikes. It was a lot of fun but I just don't do enough of that sort of riding to justify one.

 

Now for the most surprising bike of the day, the Cannondale Moterra 130. I've never ridden an e-bike before and this is no normal e-bike! It's an enduro weapon with great suspension, plus size wheels wearing 2.8 wide Maxxis Minion DHF tyres and brilliant brakes. The assistance makes itself felt immediately on the flat helping to get you get up to speed quickly but the big surprise was how it handled downhill. The motor and battery are mounted as low as possible keeping the centre of gravity low and it was very manageable in the corners, dare I say it but lots of fun! The minions grip tenaciously too meaning you can really throw it around. I decided to pedal up instead of using the uplift and it was utterly hilarious, the push up track at FoD is steep, ridable but properly steep and seems to go on for ever. Not on this bad boy, stick it in turbo and it flys up like you would not believe! I was giggling like an idiot all the way up. I get the point of e-bikes now, in an hour on the bike I was just as tired on the dale but I did 2 laps quicker than with the uplift. It's a proper mountain bike on the descents but helps you go further and ride more. I'm not going to go out and buy one right now but when I get older it's definitely on the map...

 

The final bike I rode was a Kona Process 153. This thing is hilarious, it just wants to play! When you ride it you find yourself sliding in the corners, jumping off anything you can see and generally acting like a hooligan! It's brilliant fun, if you like to ride trail centres and do uplift days it would be the perfect bike.

 

In all it was a bloody brilliant day, I broke my e-bike duck, crashed, jumped, slid, giggled, rode with Tracey Mosley and generally had fun in gorgeous sunshine. Happy Rich!!!

[surfingobo]

I was also there, what a brilliant day.  The bike of the day for me was the whyte T130 C Works, what an absolute machine and I instantly clicked with it.  The fatcaad was the biggest laugh of the day, 5 inches of tyre should not jump so well yet I could barely keep it on the ground I was going so fast over the flowy pumpy bits of the blue.  The guy riding behind me said he had no idea what his demo bike had ridden like because he was having so much fun watching me on it.  Agree with everything you said about the ebikes, my comment to the trek dealer at the end was "I couldn't have one because I'd never ride any of my other bikes".  The nukeproof mega 290 was intriguing as I liked it nearly as much T130 but I felt like I was really having to manhandle it round the berms, not sure if because it was a 29er or because it was the last run of a very long day. 

 

My first time riding the FoD and think I need to make another trip there soon. 

Edited 11 April, 2017 by surfingobo
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[RampantBadger]

9 hours ago, surfingobo said:

My first time riding the FoD and think I need to make another trip there soon. 

It is brilliant isn't it, I absolutely love it here. There are so many trails outside of the main cycle centre too, you could spend days riding and not do them all...

[surfingobo]

It was good, I mostly cycle the Quantocks which is awesome but all natural unless you venture into the 'Downhill' area so it was nice to ride some well thought out, flowing trails!