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The English Cycles Metro-Trekker was produced for a short period in 1985 whilst the Muddy Fox courier sales took off in a big way the following year. So I was wrong when I presumed, earlier in this thread, that the Metro-Trekker was Jeremy's 'response to the phenomenal sales of the Muddy Fox...

Yes, Cleland Geometry from Geoff combined with engineering from Dan Chambers.

No Geoff Apps designed bicycle are currently being made. The last one I know of was the Mk2 Cleland Landseer in 2019. This was commissioned by Geoff Apps from Dan Chambers to explore the possibility of a production version of the Cleland Landseer design. However, it is likely that enthusiasts...

Yes, I took over the annual December Wendover mountain bike rides from Geoff Apps when he moved out of the area in 1988, and continue to do so. I also started occasional summer rides after a few riders complained about the weather and trail conditions in December. Paradoxically fewer people...

The Range-Rider in the link posted earlier has been fitted with 700c wheels when it was designed for 650b, resulting in an increased chance of wheel/toe overlap. I'm 6ft 2" with size 11 feet and have never had any issues with my toes hitting the front wheel or mudguard on a Cleland or Highpath...

Geoff Apps, short reach with hardly any of the rider's weight on the handlebars can be replicated by using handlebars that move the hand position closer to the saddle even if this results them being behind the steering axis. Also, by using a smallish, (short reach) frame fitted with a long...

One leftfield modification I have used for long rides when my back is playing up, is to reverse the stem. This can reduce the lean angle of the rider and so improve rider posture. Doing this doesn't have the negative effect on handling you might expect and if you find the aesthetics challenging...

Einstein said, "Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another". (First law of thermodynamics) Therefore it is impossible for a mechanism to give out more energy out than you put in. The best the engineers can do is reduce the energy losses inherent in...

As you say, a far steeper slope can be ridden when bike has lots of momentum going into the slope. In fact if the slope curves upwards, and the rider is going fast enough an almost vertical slope can be ridden momentarily. Or even beyond vertical as is the case with motorcyclists riding the...

Because the 1984 Wendover Bash was the UK's first multi-discipline MTB event, Channel 4 TV sent a camera crew to cover it. However, there was no internet or catch-up streaming back then, and so to record a program you had to find it in the TV Times, Ceefax or Oracle listings and set your BetaMax...

The 1984 Wendover Bash took place at a time when no one really knew that mountain bikes were here to stay. Some, including the directors at Raleigh believed it would be 'a short lived fad' and so initially decided not to manufacture MTBs. And many early riders were concerned about being...

Today we have many MTB events each year and it may be difficult to imagine a time before they existed. In 1977, British Journalist Richard Grant, later of Richards bicycle book fame, happened across some hippies riding bicycles down mountains in California. He so enjoyed his experience of...

I photographed the decals using a long lens to minimise distortion and a tripod to eliminate camera shake. Each word was photographed separately with the camera positioned as square on as I could make it. Though this method eliminates a great deal of the distortion caused by the tube it does not...

Today I found some broken sections of the same type of Bluemels chromoplastic mudguards shown above, and set about to find out which of the solvents I have would be best to to repair them. Methylene Chloride melted the surface but evaporated too quickly. To use this you would need to keep...

Over the past forty years I have carried my my MTB up many hills that are too steep to ride up. And whilst carrying a bike up a hill takes more effort than walking up empty handed, it doesn't limit steepness of slope I can climb as long as my feet don't slip due to the additional weight. With...

A bicycle travelling along a smooth flat road at low speed is an incredibly efficient machine. As resistance increases with speed, rolling resistance or incline this efficiency drops sharply until eventually it can become more efficient to get off and walk. Why is walking up a steep hill easier...

The smallest elliptical inner EggRing I use is 23T with a major to minor axis ratio of 1:0.6

Yes 1.339kg with integral bottom bracket cartridge and left crank. Whilst a 23 tooth EggRing weighs very little.

My own experience of comparing extremely elliptical EggRings to round rings with the same number of teeth is the EggRings won't get you up a hill any quicker, but you will get further up a steep hill before you become exhausted. The theory is that you need to accelerate faster to get past the...

They were originally created at a university or technical college in Millan, are UCI approved and have been subject to numerous scientific trials. In certain conditions they have been shown to make a difference though this is not necessarily in terms of improved performance. In theory, they...