Cardinham Woods in Bodmin, Cornwall, have some brand new trails, which have opened in time for summer. They’re looking good to us!

Cornwall’s newest trail center ridin by the westcoastmountainbiking.com crew

 The idea to go and ride some bikes on Skye began life as nothing more than an excuse to go and trawl some distilleries. Like a crew of half-rate vikings, we’d batter down the doors of various bastions of fire water and sip, sample and guzzle our way through some of Scotland’s finest malts before attempting to ride some of it’s rarest trails.

That shifted though when I started researching the riding on Skye. GoWhere’s Andy McKenna was a massive help and it soon became clear that Scotland should be the real star of the feature. The hunt was on for ‘epic’.

I drove to Andy’s house in Innerleithen where we also met up with Neil Donoghue who was a last minute addition to the trip. For those of you who’ve never driven to Skye, it’s a LONG way to go from pretty much anywhere but the drive was pretty scenic and the usual van banter was in good flow.

You can read all about the journey and the riding in the magazine of course but here are some things I learnt whilst on the trip…

1. Reversing on to a ferry is tricky

A long wheelbase VW Transporter filled with bikes, kit and three gobby blokes all willing you to get it as wrong as wrong gets is a difficult machine to back down a stupidly steep ramp on to a very small ferry. Getting it on there in a oner was one of the great achievements of my life so far.

2.  Whiskey is actually quite nice

My early experiences of whiskey pretty much consisted of Jim MacDonald in Corrie and drinking Jack Danials and Coke to try and look half-civilised at weddings. When presented with a 10 year-old malt then after a full days riding I was worried I’d pull a ‘Dear God that’s horrible’ face and mortally offend the nice wee woman from Talisker. As it turned out, I got all the flavours she was on about and learnt to embrace the warming whiskey burn. Buoyed by the experience, I even bought a bottle. Which I’ve yet to revisit.

3. Skye is beautiful

Like, genuinely, genuinely stunning. Everywhere around you seems to be hewn from a scene from Lord of the Rings. Similar (I’m guessing) to Megan Fox or a Jaguar E-Type Coupe, it’s incredibly difficult to describe such a perfect shape or form in words. Even if you’re sold on what I’ve managed to whittle down from a sea of adjectives in the article, go and visit Skye. I genuinely don’t think that Britain gets any more beautiful.

The Alps are home to some of the best places to ride in the world. There’s such a wide variety of riding, and we love the chilled-out vibe that seems to descend on the whole area.

Between us, the MBUK team have clocked up years of Alpine riding and travelling.

So we’ve put our heads together to bring you this handy guide. It covers 20 of the best Alpine mountain bike resorts in France, Austria, Italy and Switzerland, from the World Cup level downhill of Schladming, to Les Arcs’ all-levels singletrack, to the gravity-orientated craziness of Alpi Bike Park .

We fill you in on the riding at each resort, how to find a guide, where to stay and the best places to eat or even have a wild night out.

The best thing about the Alps is that there’s something for every level of rider to enjoy or challenge themselves on – so wherever you feel your ability is at, you’ll be able to get a great deal out of a trip to the Alps.

MBUK 288 will be in the shops on Friday 8 March. Or why not subscribe so you never miss an issue? We have both digital and print subscription options!

The Ultimate Alpine Ride Guide will also be available to purchase separately on Apple’s Newsstand for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch shortly after the issue goes on sale.

Doddy headed to Snowdonia recently, to get a sneak preview ride on the downhill trails at Antur Stiniog, a new mountain bike centre in Blaenau Ffestiniog with Neil Donogue, Alex Rafferty and Cal Jelley in tow.

They’re still a work in progress, but our test-riders were impressed. You can see the boys riding the trails in the video below.

Doddy said: “The D-Line trail is a super fast flowing trail with rollers, jumps, drops and rock features as well as some of the best berms we’ve ridden.

“The black-rated runs are steeper, rockier and more technical. They carve down the steeper face of the hill with a striking view of the Glodfa quarry, the town of Blaenau and incredible scenery beyond.”

The downhill trails will be opening in July. A full visitor centre will be opening later, and there’ll also be an uplift and cross-country trails.

Read the full feature in MBUK 278, on sale 1 June!

Having made good progress throughout the mainland it seemed that in no time at all we were heading down the A75 towards Cairnryan and our Stenaline crossing to Ireland.  The crossing was a breeze and I think the 3:30 AM start to take my girlfriend back to Newcastle airport helped the time fly by.

The weather had gone from wet and wild to cloudy and mild, however the nights were still predicted to be cold and we need to move fast through the Emerald Isle and make it in time for our return leg on the Stenaline Fast Ferry.  Our first stop was a small but fun trail on a private estate at Blessingbourn, the owners of the estate were kind enough to let us bivvy out in the woods next to the pump track. The trail here is short and sweet, a lot of thought has gone into making the most out of the landscape and the overall feel of the estate is unlike no other.

With yet another trail ticked off of the list we headed west to Galway and our second stop, Rosscahill. A small area of pine plantation sits next to a loch, there are a multitude of natural trails around this forest all of which are technically challenging and a huge amount of fun to ride. After a quick spin here we loaded the car once more and headed south stopping off in Tipperary for a swift Guinness before camping out near our final Irish trail centre Ballyhoura.

We rode 3 loops of fine fun flowing singletrack then headed back towards Belfast. With one trail left to do before I enjoy a nights sleep in my own bed, I woke to blue skies, sunshine  and a hearty breakfast. The regular Sheds locals were in attendance to ride out with Frazer and myself and we enjoyed a leisurely ride around Mabie Forest. After a lap of the red route and a bite to eat back at the Shed it was time to hit the jump Park. I left the forest in the evening sun and savoured the flavour of a job well done as I headed back home.

Here’re a few numbers from the trip;

52 Trails

678km

27 days total

64 hours riding over 24 days

3 Rest/travel days

6760km of driving

112 Mulebar’s

You can read the full feature of Clive’s UK adventure complete with Frazer’s awesome shots in an MBUK near you soon.

Clive Forth is a man of many hats – skills coach, author, trail builder, former pro rider. Most of all though he’s a man with every square centimetre brimmed with a passion for mountain biking. Over the last 30 days he’s been travelling the length of Britain with his trusty companion and photographer extraordinaire, Frazer Waller, to capture, collect and collate  their efforts to ride 50 of Britain’s trail centres.

We best let the pocket-dynamo himself take it from here…

“So for a couple of years now I’ve had a few ideas floating around in my head (there is a lot of empty space up top) of epic road trips that I could take on.  I have been fortunate enough to share in many adventures with long-time friend and team mate from the Extreme Endurance days Rob Lee, however this was always in a supportive role and not a riding one. I was long overdue my own endurance undertaking and chance to suffer.

I’ve seen Rob ride many 24hour solo race events and complete epics like the South Downs Double and 7stanes in 24 hours, it was that particular trip that planted the seed for my own mission.  The timing could not have been better for putting this together, by the end of this year I’d have been riding and racing for 25 years and it was 20 years ago this April that I lost my mother to cancer.  Selfish as it may seem I wanted an epic journey that I would not forget and maybe no one else would comprehend taking on as a record or challenge.  No clock running, no support crew to feed and drive me, just my good friend Frazer with his camera along for the ride capturing as much as he can in a rolling road trip over a month.

There have been many new trails and centers that have popped up in the British Isles and this was the only way I could pull myself away from the natural riding I love and commit to riding them, and so it came top be, 50GBT.”

So there you have it – two men, two bikes, a lot of camping and one big adventure. Oh, and did we mention that it all NEEDS to go according to plan as Clive is also booked to play a DJ set at the end of it in fashionable London town?! Stay tuned to this here blog for updates on how the lads are getting on. There’ll also be a feature in the mag soon following life on the road. Until then – good luck, lads!

Just as we’re committed to bringing you all the latest mountain biking news and freshest products, we’re also striving hard to make our decidedly glossy mag even more portable than ever. Apple’s new Newsstand app allows users to download their favourite mags straight to their iPhones and iPads.

We’ve done our best to ensure that the digital edition is as intuitive and easy to use as possible complete with absolutely every last ounce of mountain biking wisdom that you’ll find in the paper copy.

Don’t believe us? Think we’re pulling your pecker? Then get on to Newsstand now and track us down – we’ve even put a free issue on there for you to download and try out gratis. FOC. For nothing. Free! Better than that, we’ve now got a massive range of back issues also available to download from as far back as Novermber 2010.

Obviously, MBUK is still the greatest adornment that you can make to your coffee table but imagine being able to thumb the pages of Britain’s best cycling magazine when you’re waiting patiently outside the Topshop changing rooms, on the bus or even sitting in the motor waiting for everyone else to turn up for the Sunday blast?!

If you don’t ‘do’ Apple then you can also check us out on Zinio for Android too.

To kick things off, I’m not going to try and take full credit for this blog. We got a letter from Trevor Franklin from Cardiff the other day and it was the realisation of something that I  always sort of thought may just have been me. Right, here goes… Why don’t more people ride trials?!

Back when mountain biking was but a fledging Bambi of a sport perilously skating around the frozen pond of eighties/early nineties Britain, trials was a valued part of the diet. Races featured uphill, downhill and trials sections all melding together to recognise the best bike rider present on the day. Now though, trials has become somewhat of a dark art.

Embracing the immediacy and ability to self-publish offered by the internet it’s become virtually an underground movement with a substantial online community.

What I find odd about it is though, as a trail rider, surely I should be riding a trials bike now and again too? Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to hurdle whole stacks of pallets at once or side-hop over parked cars BUT surely a discipline which focuses on honing balance, control and general bike handling shouldn’t be as far off the average mountain bikers radar as it is?

Look at Chris Akrigg – as polished and fearless a mountain bikers as this country has ever produced and he’s trials through and through. Recently though, his online edits have seen him take on bigger and bigger obstacles and flat-out descents aboard a trail bike.

I was up in Lee Quarry a couple of weeks ago with the British Olympic Development Squad and again, the point was hammered home. They weren’t tackling anything Akrigg sized but what they were doing was tackling little sections, hopping up on to rocks and just getting used to controlling their bike at low speeds. Indeed, head coach Phil Dixon rated it as an essential part of the athletes development – flat pedals, messing around on bikes.

Belting around the BMX track or otherwise thumping about on ‘hardcore’ hardtails has long been seen as a great way of improving your bike skills and as a beneficial alternative to trail/DH riding. Is it not then time that we started to re-embrace trials as an important part of how we set about going faster on our trail bikes?

The end of last week was my second trip away this year (the first was our little blat up to the Lakes) and it required yet another healthy sit in the Vito Sport. After an engine-off hour in Bath’s stand-still traffic though I was on my way and just over six hours later, I’d made Innerleithen.

I don’t mind van miles – there’s something reassuring about blasting through the greyness on the way up north and landing out the other side surrounded by rolling countryside and hills. Is Wordsworthian a proper term? If not, then it is now.

Tebay services was the only stop on the way for an obligatory steak and ale pie and Mars bar cake. Why can’t all services be like Tebay?

It was dark as I hit the final stretch of windy B-road blasting along the undulating combination of hairpin bends and humpback bridges alongside St. Mary’s Water all the way to Inners.

I stayed at Glentrail House, a massive bunkhouse run by Richard and Deidre Latimer. The Tweed Valley Tourist Consortium’s Mountain Bike Hospitality Scheme is designed to help local businesses cater for the needs of the increasingly large volume of two-wheeled tourist traffic and Glentrail is a shining example. Massive bike storage/fully kitted out workshop, huge shower and room for 15 muddy bikers all across the road from the Traquair Arms pub.

Thursday was spent with Chris Ball and his BASE Mountain Biking boys. If you’re a school-leaver hoping to make it amongst the pro race ranks then you need to look out for the full feature in MBUK 263…

After a day watching the boys blasting the Inners DH track and a bit of play time for myself aboard the Morewood it was time to catch up with Nick from The Bike Lodge and Andy from GoWhere for a Chinese buffet and a few bottles of Stella.

Friday morning and snapper Andy McCandlish and I hit the local bakery before meeting up with Hotlines’ Pete ‘Jesus’ Scullion, Chris Hutchens and Bike Lodge Nic for a tour of some of the area’s lesser-known gems. Again, you’ll have to wait for the full feature but I’ll just say that I’ve never experienced such a diverse range of riding in one relatively small area.

Limbs aching it was gone seven by the time we finished up and I was in no shape for another six hours in the van so I rang my mate Angry Gav in Edinburgh and headed through for a few beers and too much Embarrassing Bodies.

If you haven’t already booked a weekend’s riding in the Tweed Valley I’d get on one of the above links now and get her sorted. You won’t regret it… Features to follow.

Have a think about your favourite ride, now have think about your favourite corner on your favourite ride. Chances are on the inside of that corner is a tree. Trees make up more than fifty per cent of the reasons for corners. See, trees are popular in the countryside cropping up, or should I say copsing up all over the place? you can’t just plot a straight line and gas it – not in the woods. These leafy bark covered beauties define the terrain we ride. That is, until they’re not there anymore.

As the economy continues to falter more and more people are trying to cut their bills. Right near the top of the pile of red ones is heating bill. As those prices rise more and more people are switching off the gas and ‘leccy and switching to ‘cheaper’ alternatives with the most romantic being the burning of wood. The rising demand for wood (logs to you sir) is rising exponentially. Demand is beginning to stretch supply, and once more price for the raw material is on the up. This is causing logging companies to drive around the countryside looking for densely wooded bits of land, contact the land owner and sell them the concept of making a few fast bucks from their untapped ‘green’ gold mine. With times hard even for the landed gentry, many are taking up the offer. Don’t believe us? It’s happening all over in the West Country, probably the same where you live.

Keep your eyes on your trees: you may not see them for much longer

The responsible thing to do

Replanting, the ying to the woodcutters’ yang, is the natural answer to ensure that we don’t permanently denude the UK and it has – in times of prosperity – worked well. It seems as though as purse strings are tightened, so the lure of the quick buck grows stronger and is causing many landowners to make plans for replanting without actually actioning it.

No new green shoots, no saplings, nada
Some are asking what happens next winter? The mercury drops in the face of Christmas 2011 the demand for logs picks up after the summer slump, but there are none. The woods that were thinned out for cash in 2010 are still bare and even replanted it’ll be forty years or more before any further cash  can be cropped. What then?

The grey area
Thing is, righty or wrongly, legally or not, many of us use these bits of wooded land to ride on, either as venues themselves or as sneaky link ups between other stretches of singletrack. When the trees go, so does the character of the land. Of course we’re all for a bit of considered thinning out, but proper husbandry, not wanton stripping of assets just for some short term financial easing.

You could say, what right have we got to complain especially if you technically shouldn’t be riding on the land in the first place. Fair enough, though technically trespassing with every turn of the cranks, many of us love and care for the places we ride, as much, or more, than the people who actually own them. We have no say – we simply have to sit it out. Let the chainsaws and caterpillar tracked logging vehicles tear up the trails.

Maybe it’ll all work out for the best, with clearer woodland, more light and clarity in the remaining terrain. Perhaps when the woods fall quiet again after the workmen have left and the sawdust has mulched it’ll all have been a ‘good thing’. I know I’m waiting with crossed fingers about my trails which are being ‘cleansed’ as we speak.

Come next spring it could be a bright new dawn, ripe with opportunity for new singletrack – or it could just be the fist day of my very own Somme.