Rough Riderz founder member, Phil Hall, has relaunched the bike building project and started work on the next generation of gravity bikes! Various deals have already been arranged with some high profile, industry leading suppliers... to compliment the exciting and aggressive new bike design. This means a new look, a new direction and a new era for the UK's gravity biking scene. More news and details on these latest developments will be coming very soon across all our social media platforms...
The Rough Riderz club returned to the Alps for the third time, to enjoy the huge range and choice of downhill mountain biking trails. The trip resulted in another amazing week of riding, with some regular club members joined by two very good friends from the Metal Bikers crew, based in sunny Tenerife!...
Project News Update: Rough Riderz regret to announce that we have had to make the difficult decision to sever all links with Project Enduro team, based at Gower College, part of Swansea University. This was originally a concept initiated by the club, via our 'Project Gravity X' campaign. However, after having secured hundreds of thousands of pounds in Welsh Government funding, this bike building enterprise appears to have completely lost sight of the main objectives and goals set out b...
The Rough Riderz have just returned from another adrenaline filled week of downhill mountain biking, involving four wheel, three wheel and two wheel mountain bikes. The week was a huge success and the first time that the club has been able to use the ski lifts to get to the top of the mountain. Some members of our Committee have had to jump through hoops to be able to do this, having been denied access to the lifts on our previous trip last year. These bikes are not the first four wheel...
The Rough Riderz club were lucky enough to be invited to attend the 24hr de Finale racing event in Northern Italy at the start of the summer, kindly arranged by Enza Marino, Riccardo Negro and The Ultimate Bikeshop. After an epic drive of nearly 1100 miles, across England, France and Italy, we reached Finale about 20 hours later! We met up with Riky and Enza that evening, to discuss the MTB event and the best trails to ride on four wheels. The race event is held about 8km from the city,...
In the summer of 2013 some of our club members took a their first road trip to this mountain biking Mecca in the French Alps. Just as popular in the winter months for skiing, the area is also the perfect environment for downhill MTB during the summer. After a long drive from the UK, we finally arrived in the resort and checked into the accessible accommodation we had booked at Residence L'Aiglon in the centre of town. Unfortunately, once we got to the chairlifts, the operators told us w...
In the summer of 2012 I set off on a month long trip to Tenerife, this time taking my van with me and driving to the rock, with my hand bike and my gravity bike on board. This was quite a major road trip, which involved catching the overnight ferry from Plymouth to Santander. Once in mainland Spain I had a full day of driving until the sun began to set. I slept in the van, and continued my epic travels the next morning, arriving at Cadiz that afternoon. I then boarded another ferry for the...
Rough Riderz members Phil Hall, Dave Bower and Scott Parry visited the Canary Islands in November 2009 to ride some more of the great natural trails across Tenerife. This trip included another visit to Bikepark Tenerife, where we received another warm welcome from the staff and some of the regular visitors. Unfortunately, the trip started badly before we had even arrived as my old flatmate and friend "Johnny Boy" had an accident on one of the trails in the week prior to our visit, resultin...
The 'Castle to Castle' challenge was successfully completed on July 3rd 2009 by Rob Bailey, Paul Martin and Steve Smye. The main purpose of this 320 mile bike ride was to raise money for a gravity bike for our club. In conjunction with the sponsored bike ride, we also held numerous other events including a Raffle Prize Competition, an Easter Egg Hunt, a football memorabilia auction, a sponsored walk, demo days at mountain biking events and car boot sales! We also received a lot of anony...
Rough Riderz founder member Phil Hall visited the Canaries in April of 2008 to check the accessibility of different trails for gravity bikes. The various trails and locations I visited are all suitable for both 2 and 4 wheeled riders to enjoy, and my trip also included a visit to Bikepark Tenerife, to help advise on layout and track design to create a 'fully accessible' MTB facility. After spending the first couple of days settling in, enjoying the local tapas and wine bars, and catching up ...