Mountain Biking in Kyrgyzstan
Monday, 5th March 2012
The growth of mountain biking in America, Europe and many other places has been incredible in the last 20 years. The scope to explore the great outdoors on two wheels is growing in popularity at an amazing rate.
But what about mountain biking in the more remote and obscure corners of the world? Well, in Kyrgyzstan it’s one of those secrets you can’t help but tell your friends about when you get home.
Kyrgyzstan has all the raw ingredients to be a great place to explore by mountain bike. The mountain landscape is so big here that having a two-wheeled friend at your disposal is invaluable to travel effectively here.
And there are so many trails. These trails use the contours of the landscape to sweep in and out of the mountains. Whether the trail accompanies the line a river takes into the valley, or snakes its way up a hillside, there are a 101 possibilities.
And then there’s nobody here. You feel a bit spoilt really. You’ve found yourself in this hunk of a mountain range, with trails, ridges, rivers and trees moving out in all directions. As you might imagine, mountain biking is a pretty new thing in Kyrgyzstan. In our ‘A Kyrgyz Mountain Adventure’ itinerary, we’ve really made the most of our two-wheeled friend to get to see some incredible places. This is not technical riding, but using the bike to help us travel under our own steam to explore the great wide open of this incredible land.
Mountain Bike Wales: 2012 Challenge with Monobo Adventures
Saturday, 4th February 2012
Guess what - our epic two-wheeled adventure across Wales is being promoted by Mountain Bikes Wales.
Our adventure-packed 'Mountain Biking Coast to Coast' itinerary from Cardiff to Llandudno features as one of Mountain Bike Wales' 2012 challenges on their blog here.
The end of the circular route
Wednesday, 14th December 2011
You know when you’ve been working on something for a long long time and you’ve got that little bit of nervousness and a whole load of excitement going on about sharing it with everybody else. That’s where we are right now.
So what’s this excitement all about? Well, bear with us on this….
We’ve been travelling to Wales from where we live in the Midlands for the last ten years to go biking in the hills. Whenever we’ve had a weekend free, the bikes are slung in the back of the car and we head west. There’s always a new route or valley to be explored and it’s also great going back to the personal favourites every now and then.
Most of the time, we’re doing circular routes. We park the car and head out in one direction with a route in our heads to return to the car coming back from the opposite direction. There’s a pretty sound logic in all of this. Or is there? The problem was that when we got to the furthest point away from the car, we had that little burning desire to explore a bit further. That furthest point was usually the best bit as we found ourselves in the most remote part of the route. So that got us thinking.
Why can’t we create a route that just keeps on going. When we found ourselves on that furthest point on our circular route, lets carry on to the next valley, and the next and the next. And so the Welsh Mountain Biking Coast to Coast itinerary was born. (This is what we’re so excited about).
Travelling from the banks of the Bristol Channel in Cardiff to the Irish Sea at Llandudno’s Victoria Pier, we’ve created a mouth-watering biking route with over 200 miles of breathtaking tracks and trails that celebrates everything that is great about the Welsh landscape.
We’ve had some fun putting it together. Maybe we’ve had a bit too much fun. Choosing between a forest trail here or some singletrack there obviously meant we had to ride both to select which was the best for the itinerary. It was such a shame when we couldn’t make our minds up as we would just have to go back and ride them again. Suffice to say that we had a great time doing the route and we think you will too.