CANYON NEURON AL 7.0:

Ultimate Alloy All-Rounder + Giant Trance 29.2, Specialized Roubaix Sport

SSome people call it a long-travel XC bike; others say it’s a shorteither travel trail bike. way, it’s dangerous.

thirstly, because once you’ve ridden one, you won’t want to go back to whatever is in your garage. And secondly, because it’s fast. It’s so capable over technical terrain that you’ll cruise down scary sections with no fear, wondering whether someone came along in a grader the day before to smooth everything out.

As long as you don’t fall off, the fun you can have on this kind of bike is off the charts. The big

wheels roll over obstacles with ease, giving you all the speed of a cross-country bike, and the slacker head angle and extraplush suspension help to boost your confidence on the downhills.

It’s the perfect bike for South Africa, where we have such a variety of off-road riding, from dirt roads to rocky jeep tracks, world-class singletrack and everything in between. It’ll be your best friend on your local trails, and will just as easily manage a marathon stage race, if that’s your thing.

So if you’re looking for a good-value, do-anything dualsus mountain bike that will turn heads at the coffee shop, this stunner from Canyon fits the bill.

Take note, though: the Neuron C▶ and AL are markedly different. The C▶ was redesigned to accommodate a horizontal shock, whereas the alloy version retains the trunnion-mount shock from the previous model. It’s a design that worked the first time round, and it works here too, soaking up trail chatter and bigger hits with ease.

The geometry is bang in the middle between an XC bike and a trail bike. It climbs efficiently and corners precisely, and it rolls over everything thanks to 130mm of ▶ox suspension front and rear. The suspension really is superb: the wider stanchions