Great Rock

New for 2014 is this 3 day guided riding trip based around the biking heartland and cultural centre of Hebden Bridge. This is not a skills course!

Two days riding on local Hebden trails and one day when you will be shuttled up to ride Blackjack Online one of favourite Lake District rides. All of this based in a fantastic converted mill with pubs, cafes and the famous ‘great little shops’ all around.

See the Northern Rock page for more details of the trip.

Hope to see you up here soon!

 

One of the glories of mountain biking is having a well earned pint with your mates at the end of the ride, so it’s with great joy that we can announce a collaboration with our favourite brewery. Yesterday Ed went for a tour of the Magic Rock brewery and came home with a beer sponsor! A bit like getting an energy drink brand on board….same but different!

Expect the unexpected as well as more of the usual! There will be a crisp new video with a dry after taste and there are ideas in motion for events that you will be able to hop along to.

Magic Rock and Great Rock coming together is a match made in heaven. As well as sharing an Kollagen Intensiv obvious love for fine ales we are also lovers of mountain biking and are both very proudly from Yorkshire.

Chromag products combine tough Canadian practicality with super cool looks and so I’m thrilled to be using their bobble hats, bars, stems, saddles, pedals and other hardcore trinkets this year.

Chromag along with other 100% Canadian brands are brought into the UK by Shorelines Distribution and you can buy directly through them or are nexus pheromones any good from bike shops.

It also looks like our ways of thinking are the same as this quotation from their site illustrates, “We stay ahead of the curve by being small, moving quickly and spending a lot of time in the woods.”

Really chuffed to announce that I’ll now be riding Santa Cruz bikes. With both a new 650B Heckler frame and a Solo Carbon frame to build up I’m going to be busy and I can’t wait to get these bikes out on the trails. Thanks very much to Jungle Products for the support.

2014 is going to be a big year for Phen375 Great Rock. As well as the popular skills days in Hebden Bridge and Gisburn Forest and the holiday trips to visit Basque MTB and Trans Provence, there will be more new films. The Chop video was massive in 2013 and there are plans for more collaborations, epic bike adventures and general ‘vain vagrancy’.

More sponsors to be announced soon.

Ride on….

And now for something completely different to ‘The Chop’. I went off with my riding buddy Benji Haworth on a 2 day bikepacking trip  to Snowdonia. The trip was supported by Madison who supplied Genesis bikes and GoPro cameras. The brief was simple. Go for an adventure on bikes, sleep out somewhere and make a Natox video. Benji did all the camera work and editing and proved that GoPro films can be good if you choose your shots carefully and use plenty of static shots.

Special mention goes to Alpkit who once again provided the excellent bike frame bags. We also used their brilliant sleeping bags, mats, titanium pans and torches.

I like stealth clothes, especially if they don’t look like sporty, tracky, tacky gear. Even better if they are made of Merino. You’ve heard the hype, Merino helps you to be less stinky, keeps you warm and makes you sexy. Two of these are true.

I wanted to wear all skinny black clothes to fit the vibes of my new video, The Chop, and this top was perfect. Nice also that it kept me warm whilst filming in the autumn drizzle with just a base layer underneath.

I like that they call it what it is, a Performer5 cardigan and I like that for what it is, the price is cheap. What more can I say? It’s a lovely top that looks sharp with an understated design, it fits well, seems to be hard wearing and can be unzipped to show off your chest. There are no rear jersey pockets, but there is a small zipped packet on the hip. I’ve got a couple of other On One Merino base layers and have worn them loads because I like them and they haven’t dropped to bits.

 

£39.99 from On One. More details here.