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A few mates had entered the Cheshire Cat sportive at the weekend so I thought it was a good excuse to get some fast miles in on the roadbike and incorporate the middle bit of my route with half of their sportive route (the interesting hilly part of it) and some cheeky banter….

Even though I had planned to start very early and ride to the start in Crewe, I opted to ignore the alarm clock for an hour then ride to Crewe thus missing Budge, Nick and the others at the start. I thought that the challenge of catching them up after an hour head start would be fun and I’d be faster after more sleep anyway

After checking they weren’t hanging around at the start and feeling like a proper freeloader, I rode out of Crewe following the sportive direction signs.

The thing about the Cheshire Cat and in fact Cheshire in general, is that it sounds like it should be flat. Mostly, it is. But the hilly half of the route is peppered with short but very steep climbs that need a lot of out-of-the-saddle pedal mashing and a low gear to get to the top of. I’d been thinking about this aspect of the route as I was riding a bike with a ‘standard’ double chainset for the first time so my lowest gear was a fair bit taller than the lowest gear on my old compact chainset-equipped road bike. As it turned out, a fair amount of grimacing and kung-fu noises saw me to the top of each climb just fine and as an added bonus, the very large top gear had me descending at 45mph and still pedalling.

Eventually I caught the guys up and we rode the next couple of hills and flat bits together before we got to Holmes Chapel and I left the sportive route and headed back north. Holmes Chapel is near the start of the predominantly flat half of the route so it wasn’t going to be too interesting from now on so off I went, still riding into the headwind that greeted me several hours ago when I left the house. Despite having a good few more hours and almost 60-odd miles in mind left to ride, the headwind was starting to wear very thin indeed. So I changed my plan a little, opting to ride a revised and shorter but quite pretty route towards Tatton Park and then through Dunham Massey.

Reality kicked in eventually (the headwind now right into my face and getting stronger) as I rode closer to Manchester, eventually dodging the traffic on the A56 through Old Trafford, the City Centre and up to Prestwich, 120-ish miles later.

We’ll be in Taiwan for a week from today. Still on email, but response time may be a little slower. Remember – we don’t sell direct to you, so please use your local Ragley dealer to answer any questions you may have if you’re in a rush. Thanks.

News from the Far East. Hotlines just told me that AltBikes (a 29’er specific shop in Hatagaya, Saitama, Japan) – stocks Carnegie bars. BikeBiz Tokyo have a complete order of frames as well as P&A is currently in processing. And we will soon have a dealer in the Phillipines. Cool eh? Contact details coming soon

Just updated warranty pages – http://www.ragleybikes.com/warranty/ – to cover things about repainting frames.

Apologies for slow responses to email but… It’s been a while coming. I have been waiting for a big one to happen, and sure enough, Tuesday it arrived…

We were on a test day with the Nukeproof DH bike and some fast lads at the Moelfre track. Thats not us in the vid, but thats the track we were riding. Some of the CRC Intense team were there too, and perhaps, in retrospect trying to keep up with Matt Simmons and Pagey was a mistake, especially on a borrowed bike (I wasn’t riding our sample).

I’m still not entirely sure how, but I think I hit a kicker at about 1:55 on that vid, and took off into space . Cord found me about 10-15mins later, barely concious with a very broken bike. Big dints in my helmet and a pain in my shoulder.

Ed from Greatrock valiantly whisked me to Wrexham Hospital, who checked me over, confirmed the damage – broken collarbone -, and in the process had to cut up my Dianesse suit. And my Icebreaker Merino. And my Aldi long sleeve.

I have a collarbone plating operation booked on Friday, and a 13hr flight to Taiwan on Sunday. ~Hmmmmm.

Ow.

Anyone know where you can get new green Travis forks from?

We’ve got a course sorted. I’ve been making lines in my head all week after a couple of rides around various bits last weekend and up until this afternoon it had started to really peck at me. A couple of bits are needed for various silly reasons - reasons I’m not going into here as I’d be giving too much away before the men in suits have said ‘yay’, but the problem last week was stuff like…’if we include this bit we’ll have 2 way traffic there so we’ll need to go up that bit to avoid a crash but that might be too horrible and if it rains that other bit will be hell on earth…etc’. It’s now all crystal clear though. All of the ace bits are in, chicken runs are there if we need them and we can even accomodate the rain if we’re unlucky with the weather.

I can also reveal that there are a few really tough uphill bits again but this time the altitude is being lost a lot more quickly than usual. Some of the course has been used before but most of it will be new. Some of it isn’t even built yet (yes, I said NOT BUILT YET).

It’ll rock, like it always seems to do.

You’ll see it soon anyway, if not on one of our now-customary preview/coffee rides you’ll see it on the day, that’s if you can get your entry in quick enough. 

Cycling history and DIY Culture hits North Manchester again on the 17th July. Racing will last for 8 hours, you can do it on your own or in a team with your mates. the party will kick off just after last man rides back to his tent.

After meeting up with Mark Lynskey the other day, we can reveal that our new frame, the TD-1, will be completed in a couple of weeks, and shipping to us, by air, for the first lucky customers. Which means we really ought to tell you what it is, so we can sell some.

An unashamedly specific design, the TD-1 is a “rigid only” 29er. Meaning you can’t run suspension forks on it.

Well, I suppose you could, but it would handle awfully. It’s designed around a 440mm fork – which is a common size for 26in wheeled bikes – but a 29in wheel fits in there just fine. Typically 29in bikes run 470-490mm forks, and so by running the shorter fork, we can lower the handlebars by 30-50mm. Which means a more racey position. What’s that? You don’t like a low racey position? You want a suspension fork? Well hey, I guess this isn’t the frame for you.

But, if you’re fed up with bars-in-the-air, bouncy forks, and just want something pure and rigid and fast, then here’s something for you. Race proven too – our races Dave and Jase got 2nd and 3rd at the ludicrously tough Strathpuffer race earlier in the year, riding their pre-production prototypes.

And as we mentioned Mark Lynskey up at the top, and though we do have plans for a steel version (and it will be a high end steel version, as this is a race bike, not a plodder), and might even throw some 7046 at an alloy version, it’s obvious that this first model (as we seem to often do around here) is a titanium model made by Lynskey Performance in the USA. It features their sliding dropouts, a horizontally ovalised top tube, a curved seat tube (better tyre clearance in short stay mode, and better front mech positioning too. We even got two bottle cages on the small frame, and so though mtb-forum-grumps reckon the “Seat tube mounted bottle looks like it will rub the frame.“, we don’t think it will.

Over on mtbr, we’ve been having a “bit of a chat” about it too. Though after doing the conversion to US dollars (as most posters there are American), someone from the UK got a bit upset about us selling it “cheaper in the states than it is here”. The sum is simple:-

UK Price = around £1200
Without VAT – divide by 117.5 and multiply by 100 = £1021
Into Dollars  multiply by 1.49 = $1526

Actually, it’s just occurred to me that depending on when Hotlines paid for them, we might have to hike the price up a bit, as we pay for them in dollars, so if the pound falls, then it’ll cost us more. But I think we’re not too far off there… And the example of “how stuff costs 17.5% less” for folks outside the EU is still true.

Right – all that before 7:15am in the morning, and I’m just drinking Taiwan Oolong Tea – no coffee. So excuse any missthakes. Cheers!

Oh yes, that’s a point – sizing…

3 sizes – 16, 18, 20. 18in has a 24in top tube, 4in head tube, 72 head, 73.deg seat. 16in is half an inch shorter, 20in half an inch longer (and has a half inch longer head tube). Usual sizing rules apply (5′10″ to 6′1″, you want an 18in – bigger or smaller than this, and you want to go up or down a size). BB drop is 2.5in, and chainstays sit around 17.3in fully forward with a half inch backward movement possible for bigger tyres/chain tensioning purposes.

Yesterday’s ‘daft-ish’ ride started up in Newcastleton, just north of the England/Scotland border and just north of Kielder. There are two big races this year in that part of the world – the UK 24 Hour Championship and the Kielder 100. We thought both of them would need some reconnaissance so decided on a route that included plenty of good bits of both.

After collecting Dave we drove north on the near-deserted Sunday morning motorway and were soon in the Scottish borders. Starting at the car park of the Newcastleton ’7 Stanes’ trailhead, we planned to ride a lap and a bit of the red route and then join the cross-border trail to take us to Kielder – a lap of the big route over there, back again then repeat the whole thing again, giving us a 8 or so hours in the saddle and around 80 miles on the clock. That was the plan, the reality was a bit different.

The Newcastleton red is a typical Scottish trail centre – in other words, massively enjoyable, very physical if you want to ride it fast and smooth, lots of berms and rocky bits and plenty of trees, ditches and streams to crash/fall into if your concentration wanders for a second. Ace for a lap or three, however 24 hours of this will definately be a big challenge needing more than just aerobic fitness and a stubborn head…

Once on the cross-border trail things calmed down a bit and we were able to take in the view and increase the average speed. Running parallel with the border for a few miles we eventually crossed a small wooden bridge marked at either end by ‘Welcome to England’ and ‘Welcome to Scotland’ signs. Up until now, we’d encountered some small patches of ice but nothing much, however as soon as we crossed over into England we were soon off our bikes and pushing through deep snow. No worries, it’ll just be this bit here and it’ll all be rideable around the corner.

Short sections of rideable trail were broken up by seemingly massive unrideable sections covered in knee-deep snow. The next 3 or so hours were spent slogging our way around deserted snow-bound forests on foot or plummetting down steep ice-covered man-made trails that invariavly ended with more knee-deep snow.

This was not going to plan. Not only that, but it had started to snow again, hard. In almost white-out conditions we both nervously rode along the long timber sections of trails until even they became unrideable, lost under a foot-deep blanket of snow.

Much later, legs sore from the unexpected snow-hiking in carbon-soled cycling shoes and very much behind schedule, we arrived back in Scotland and opted to rejoin the Newcastleton red trail as quickly as possible, ride back to the car park and then ride another lap of it. This ended our day in the way it had begun, a total contrast to the middle bit. We’d lost so much time earlier that our plan to turn around and repeat the entire ride was out of the question but at least we’d managed to ride a fair distance and learn a lot about the upcoming races up here. No disaster – in fact I’m really looking forward to UK24 now.