We have got most of our 2012 demo bikes through now (just waiting on a Giant Anthem and a Giant Trance).
So if your looking for a new full suspension trail bike we will have the bike for you!
Take a bike away for the weekend for just £50.00 (refundable if a bike is purchased) professionally set up for your weight and height.
Bikes in stock to choose from are as follows:

Trek EX 8 – we have 2 of these in a 17.5″ frame and also a 19.5″ frame
Cracking bike to ride xc with a 120mm of travel.
http://www.trekbikes.com/uk/en/bikes/mountain/singletrack_trail/fuel_ex/

Trek ex 8

Lapierre Zesty 314 – Medium (46cm), 140mm of travel. Excellent xc bike which fly’s on the descents. Take this bike out and you wont be disappointed.
http://www.lapierre-bikes.co.uk/mtb/all-mountain/zesty

Lapierre 314 medium

Trek Remedy 8 – 17.5″ frame, Fancy a bike to ride our local lee and cragg quarry this is the bike for you. 150mm of travel.
http://www.trekbikes.com/uk/en/bikes/mountain/technical_trail/remedy/

Remedy 8 17.5

Trek garyfisher Superfly 100 – 17.5″ frame. Take a spin on our 100mm travel 29er and you’ll love it, xc riding, super smooth, fast, long distance machine.

http://www.trekbikes.com/uk/en/collections/gary_fisher/mountain/cross_country/superfly_100/

Garyfisher superfly 100 17.5"

Back again to defend our title?

I didn’t feel like we’d done half as much training as we should have, both Shaun and i had been ill for a couple of weeks in December and back on the bike with 2 weeks to go before  the event we both felt slow. We hammered it for those 2 weeks and hoped we’d be fine on the day.

In the caravan Friday night it was grim, the wind was howling and the rain came down yet come 1 hour before the start it brightened up and cleared up. Shaun did the starting lap and after the run he was 3rd person on the bike, he flew round his lap and came in 1st with 2 other riders. I set off and took the lead, i didn’t feel to great but held onto 1st overall as i came in off my lap.

Chris heading out on 1st lap

Shaun final descent

Everyone goes through bad patch’s in 24 hour races, mine just came on lap 3 which had me pretty worried. I was lapping 2 mins slower than Shaun and not feeling great.  I had a major ill moment like i never had before in a race and was sick for a good 5 mins while riding, I thought i was going to lose our 1st place but somehow managed to  come through still leading. After being sick i felt brand new and my lap times showed,  we kept gaining time on 2nd and come half way through the race lapped them.  We just settled down into a rhythm and plodded on from there still gaining time.

1st proper night lap

The weather held off and it turned out to be a very mild strathpuffer race, no snow, ice, sleet or rain. The course was running quick and there really wasn’t much in the way of mud.

Come dawn we were 3 laps up and had the race in the bag, we were pretty worn out and really tired. We called it a day knowing we couldn’t be beaten and had a shower and watched the final 2 hours of the race as a spectator.  Phil a friend of ours won the overall solo and also Jason took 1st place for solo singlspeed. The podium had a very north Manchester feel to it!

Paired podium

A big thank you to Mike and Liz who came up to look after us both while racing, cleaning bikes, cooking food, making drinks, keeping me awake ect. Couldn’t of done it without you.

Just arrived in store is the 2012 Lapierre Zesty 714, full carbon frame with internal cables, and  an xt groupset  £3599.99. This model has had a few upgrades (Easton wheels, XTR shifters and mech)

Zesty 714

Here is an update on the progress of our bike build. We’ve have had a few delays with suppliers, which has dragged this build out a bit longer that we would like, good job its winter! but we are just about there now. We have gone for something a bit different to the usual Crossmax SX wheels and gone for Easton Haven wheels, which look amazing and are good weight for a strong set of trail wheels -  Fox Kashima 36 Talas 180 RC2 forks, Reverb seatpost and a few other parts have trickled in over the last week or so.

so we currently have full XTR, Easton Haven bars, stem and wheels, Fox 36 180 Talas forks, Reverb post, Fizik Saddle, Panaracer UST Cedric tires, Chris King headset… frame now in, but we are not telling you what it is until its built!

Just got the Trek Lush carbon in stock. Treks top end full suspension carbon MTB for women

The Trek Lush range start from £1800. Call in to see the rest of the range and get sized up.

Every so often we get a cracking bike to build all the best gear no stops, someone’s dream bike.

We’ll be updating our blog as parts arrive for this build and you can watch the bike come to life.

Today a full XTR groupset and easton stem arrived.

If you don’t already know, we are now stocking Giant for the 2012 season along with Trek and Lapierre.

There are some great models in the range with road bikes starting from £549 and Mountain Bikes start from £299. We have carbon road bikes starting from £1249, with a life time warrantied frame, aero seatpost and 20 speed (Defy Composite 3). If your after a full suspension MTB, then we have in the Giant Anthems, which start from £1449. Along with full suspension MTB’s, we have in hardtails, the Revel 0LTD is fantastic value for money at £679, this comes with 30 speed, slx shifters, XT rear mech, Rock Shox forks and hydraulic brakes! We also have in the XTC Carbon hardtails, which start at £1299!

http://www.cooksoncycles.co.uk/road/carbon/giant-defy-composite-3-2012-p-5494

5 years ago i’d of told you it was just a fad and it would pass but  it looks like 29ers are here to stay, with big companies spending more time designing them and pushing them more and more i decided it was time for me to give one a go. I sold the trek top fuel and bought myself a trek garyfisher superfly al to use as my winter bike, a hardtail with 100mm of fork travel, 30 speed and of course 29 inch wheels.
So here i am now with a few 100 miles on the clock and all i can say is i love it. I was expecting it to be sluggish,slow at cornering and have more toe overlap(some of the bad comments you here about 29er’s) but gary fisher seems to have got these bikes right, i have no problems with accelerating and its fine on tight twisty singletrack. The bike seems to glide up the cobbled road of rooley moor  with ounces of comfort compared to a standard 26″ hardtail. I did notice i was using a slightly lower gear than usual but this had no effect on speed due to the wheels. The bike has slightly longer chainstays and it is a tiny bit harder to pull the bike into manual or a bunny hop but i got use to it straight away and now cant tell the difference.  Being 5ft 5 i went for 15.5″ frame and this rides really well for me the cockpit length is perfect, the new shimano dynashift 10 speed is a massive improvement on mega 9(and that was good), shifting gears is alot smoother and more precise especially on the front. When out the saddle on descents i can’t tell that i’m on a 29er at all and its easy to throw about and jump.  I would recommend a 29er now to anyone that enjoys long distance riding off road. I can see i’m going to enjoy this bike more and more as time goes by for long distance xc rides as well as my usual after work jaunts.

todays ride

When No Fuss events decided to come to Wales and run a ten hour race I knew I had to be there. But it turned out it was two weeks after SITS and Ali was away with the car. Then I was offered a lift down. Not one to say no I headed down on the Friday and on the saturday morning lined up at the front with Chris.

Then we off up a fireroad, it felt like everyone was passing me but legs felt okay considering I shouldn’t really have recovered from SITS. One girl came past me who was soloing, but she was flying so I let her go. On the second lap I caught her on the black downhill, but once it started going up again she was off. I tried to catch her and ended up puncturing. Thinking I was close to the finish I ran back – it turned out to be a mile. There a friend helped my fix it and I was on my way. By now there were another two girls ahead of me. In the next couple of laps I got myself back into 2nd and there I expected to stay so I was shocked to catch the girl in first on the black descent again. This time I didn’t chase her uphill but instead of stopping at the pits got straight out there. She was right behind me but I held the gap on the first hill and then pulled out a bit on the descent. The rest of the race was spent holding on to the first.

It was an amazing course and I hope they come back next year. Chris was up in third till he ripped his tyre on his last lap and had to run back to the pits.