A recap video of our riding in the Peak District over the last 4 years. More info on the bridleways ridden in the video can found on the Tracks page.

Now Monkeyspoon.com is 11 years old and it’s main riders are around 30, the unthinkable has happened: we’ve started riding uphill, and what’s more on one of the most popular mountain biking descents in the Peak District!

With James running Bike Garage and Shane Peak ebikes, we had the chance to play with the latest full suspension electric mountain bikes from Trek and Haibike. And what better place to try them out than our old proving ground, Hope Cross (aka The Beast).

After filming the video, we carried on up to descend Potato Alley, climbed up the other side and over to Gores, so had a chance to try them on a variety of terrains and gradients.

A couple of notes on the technology. It only puts in power when you peddle, so it’s not like a motorbike. The assistance reduces and stops as you go above 15mph and you realise you’re not superhuman after all. All that high technology adds a fair bit of weight to the bike (and that’s unlikely to change any time soon), so on the flat when you’re going faster than 15mph (or if your battery were to run out) you have a lot of bike to pedal.

James’ Thoughts – Riding the Trek Powerfly FS 8 LT

“So I like ebikes,  but probably not for the reasons you might at first think. Often they are dismissed as a way of cheating, getting an advantage of your fellow rider. If that’s your game then yes you could quite easily use them to set the fastest KOM’s (King of the Mountain) on strava or equivalent. But for most people their real intended use is to allow you to ride further, take in more interesting routes, challenge yourself. Rather than being limited, because you know there is that hill. Effectively to give you the same freedom that as a cyclist we all enjoy.

With that said your probably wondering what that has to do with the challenge at hand. Climbing the beast, well our logic was if you can climb this route (spoiler alert: you can) then think of all the possibilities.  I was riding the Powerfly FS 8 LT, which in case your wondering FS is Full Suspension and LT stands for Long Travel. 150mm front and rear so you can enjoy the downs as much as the climbs. This model and other LT models also feature plus size wheels. The tyre width of 2.8 inch provided a really big benefit on this rocky climb, with Bontrager staying away from fitting a super knobby tyre and have gone for the chupacabra. Which provides good grip without compromising the rolling resistance on less technical trails. Where this bike really excels for me is when you get it going downhill, it feels super planted and very confidence inspiring to ride.”

Jeff’s Thoughts – Riding the Trek Powerfly FS 7
“It was very impressive technology, the assistance of the motor was useful when tired (or lazy). Getting to the point where I’d normally give up and push (which is often), and being able to wack it up to full power and peddle with easy was great. But on technical climbing, like on Hope Cross, it was quite different for normal climbing. The assistance gives the feeling that gravity or the steepness has greatly reduced, until you lose rear wheel grip, can’t get power into the pedals, or your front wheel won’t go up a rock, then you quickly stop. The easy of pedalling and speed from the assistance gives a false sense of momentum. For those concerned that eBikes make mountain biking too easy or might take the skill out of technical climbs, they didn’t in our test. I performed about half as well on this climb as the other two (I gave up three quarters of the way the first straight), so about the same ratio to how well they do when we’re on normal bikes. Climbing Hope Cross remains a hard challenge.”

Shane riding the Haibike SDURO AllMtn Plus

As some may know, the founder and CEO of Monkeyspoon.com; James Irwin now runs Bike Garage, a small bike shop located in Bamford, in the Peak District. Since he started out over 5 years ago we’ve been working towards a video and here it is:

I started out making a best of 2011 video and then extended it to include the last 3 years. Apart from it being previously seen footage to new music, quite a bit of the 2011 stuff is new and there are some older unseen short bits and a few alternate shots that weren’t in the original videos. For more of these videos see the Video pages for the last 3 years.

The bridleways we’re riding are all named, see more info on them on the track pages and you can also view their locations (and much more) on the OS tracks map.

Last Sunday evening Irwin and I (Jeff) rode Hope Cross DH (aka The Beast) and did some filming with my Sony a55. I’m still getting the hang of doing video on a ‘DSLR’ and need to get a better (smoother) tripod. The light sensitivity is pretty good, especially with the f1.8 50mm lense, probably better than my own eyes to a point. This proved useful as Irwin managed to get a puncher, then my spare tube turned out to be a dud and we had to use the one out my back wheel, which lost us a fair bit of time and light.

When later asked about the ride Irwin said: “Cheese and marmalade sandwiches are quite nice.”

There are also pictures of me and Matt riding there a few weeks ago in the Image Gallery:
11-04-23 HopeX JK+MA, 14 Pictures by Jeff and Matt