Bamboo mountain bikes
If you’ve chatted in the last year, bamboo mountain bikes may well have come up in the conversation. The story goes something like this…
I always rode steel hard-tails until late ’07 when I got my hands on an Orange 5. After just one proper ride I thought, “That’s it, no more hard-tails for me”. Comfy, super-fast downhill & so far seemingly indestructible
At some point in the dim & distant I was flicking through sites suggested by Stumbleupon & it sent me a site by someone who’d built a MTB frame out of bamboo. I like that sort of thing; it seemed sensible in a strange sort of way & despite at the time knowing little about the whole thing it stuck in my mind
A while later, Rachel of Bamboo Bikes UK contacted me on twitter and offered me a whole day’s test ride of one of the models that she was importing at the time. Obviously this was not to be missed! To be truthful I was expecting the bike to ride like, well, any other bike, but with super-cool looks!
Within 100m though I realised there was way more to it. The material felt very different but very right. No one needed to step in & explain why the ‘different’ was better – usually you choose efficiency OR comfort but bamboo gives a stiff, fast, efficient yet amazingly comfortable ride
So why didn’t I instantly buy one? Well the imported ones were pretty good, but there were just 1 or 2 small niggles like mud clearance and price was a lot more than I had to hand at the time! I wrote a review at the time on the blog as I was mightily impressed, but there was no way I could afford one
So, that could have been that, but a few months on I had an email from Rachel asking if I wanted to be involved in a new project to start building a high tech, better performing range of bamboo bikes here in the UK. The first model, a MTB is also lower priced. It didn’t take too long to say yes & that’s where it all started for me
We’ve been in production since the NEC show with a mountain bike developed in conjunction with mountain bikers at Oxford Brookes University. It’s been BSEN tested & passed with flying colours. It’s also been Transalp tested by 2 of the developers (the Transalp is a gruelling 600k, 8 day race with 20,000m of vertical climb…) And, er, also by me – I’ve had it in the air a fair bit with no complaint! The current model is an XC bike though, so obviously no dirt jumping…
Anyway, to the offer! So far almost everyone that’s ridden one of the MTB’s has loved the ride, and I really do mean almost everyone. At the launch at the NEC show we had a few doubters, but they were people who declined a test ride. A good few hundred test rode the bike off-road &there were literally 99% positive comments
But it’s still early days & we’re keen to get as many of them out on the trails as possible. Riding mates are bound to demand a go & we reckon that’s about all it takes to convince people that they’ve just found their next bike. So, if you order a bike direct from Bamboo Bikes UK & mention Chasing Trails you’ll get £100 off a hand built Bamboo Bikes MTB frame. Normal price is £999, so you’ll pay just £899. Various build options are also available. Offer is short term so hurry, when it disappears from here it’s gone! Give them a call or email for info
