WILL P’S SARACEN ARIEL 80 PRO £3,499.99
There was no better way to spend a birthday weekend for our workshop manager
This month has seen my birthday – and a week of annual leave for noodling about on bikes, by way of celebration. The day itself was spent at BikePark Wales in soggy conditions. Thankfully, the trails are built so well that they almost run better in the wet, meaning that, while filthy, we were all grinning like idiots from the off.
Being pitched as a ‘park bike’, the Ariel 80 was in its element. While I didn’t hit any features I haven’t done before, getting familiar trails dialled-in and finding new lines to challenge yourself with is all part of the pull of uplift-assisted trails. One minor hiccup occurred when something caught my bike and nearly sent me over the bars. It’s the ‘nearly’ bit I’m focusing on...
The only change I’ve made this month has been adding a Branchy Protection rear mech guard I was handed for testing. Based on the scratch I found on it at the end of the day, I strongly suspect it may have saved my derailleur from damage – and me from an awkward front-door dismount. You can read more of my thoughts on it on p101.
I also rode some of my local steep trails with a different group of friends, enjoying seeing their responses to the riding now on my doorstep. Later in the week, I took the Ariel 80 out with a small group of locals who all turned up on e-bikes. This meant I made plenty of use of the climb switch on the rear shock, and was interested by the difference it made. It couldn’t make up for the extra Watts the others had, but I certainly had a fantastic workout. An e-bike is definitely on my shopping list, but for now, the Saracen is fantastic company on the South Wales trails.
I’m writing this with the kind of tiredness we get in our muscles when we’ve used them in an unfamiliar way. That’s because I’ve discovered some trails on the hillside directly behind my house, which seem to have been forgotten and fallen into disrepair. They’ve clearly not had a huge amount of traffic, and my first visit saw me dragging trees out of the way and clearing windfall debris – all things I’m not used to doing. But it’ll be great to get them up and running.