2011 Demo Day Report
What do you get when you combine a fleet of demo bikes, some of the best trails you can find in the Surrey hills and more tea and homemade cake than you know what to do with? Yeah you guessed it: The annual Cycleworks demo day held in Holmbury St. Mary! Customers and staff alike braved the morning mist to try out the latest machines on offer from Specialized, Whyte and Orange, as well as the newcomers to the Cycleworks repertoire: Yeti and Niner.
The Cycleworks Demo Day has been a regular event for some years now, and we find that nothing tells you whether a bike is right for you like riding it through a variety of trails that test every aspect in order to help you decide. We have demo bikes in all our major models and on special occasions our fleet more than doubles so that we can cater for any bike related craving you might have, ranging from a timeless Orange, even to a fully carbon rigid Niner!
Our test route consisted of a trail-packed loop which enabled customers to test two, three or even four bikes back to back giving a unique opportunity to see how different bikes react to the trails at hand. Starting with a gentle climb we soon got into some swooping corners and then a climb back up to the very popular ‘yoghurt pots’ before venturing back up some more and finishing with a combination of ‘telegraph’ and ‘secret squirrel’. We are lucky that such good riding is on so many of our doorsteps and this meant that whether you were riding a flat-out XC bike like the Epic or a trail-eating Yeti 575, there were sections to find every limit.
All this riding got us hungry and I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of everyone who was in attendance to thank Pauline and Anita for providing mountains of homemade sandwiches and cake and making sure there was never a cup without tea or coffee in it!
Despite the mist and then the rain everyone was in good spirits and seemed keen to get the bikes muddy; from there the day progressed. Our persistence paid off and we were eventually rewarded with some welcome sunshine. All in all a very successful day filled with riding bikes, talking about bikes, riding them some more and it goes on from there… What more could you ask for!
Thank you to all those who came along on Sunday, I hope you enjoyed the day as much as we all did and remember this is the first of our demo days this year, so be sure to keep an eye out for future events, whether you are looking forward to repeating the experience or are kicking yourself for missing this one.
The full range of pictures accompanying the video can be found on our flickr.
Thanks again go to Adam from Orange, Morgan from ATB and Stu from Evolution for travelling further than all of us to make sure there were plenty of bikes to go around. Also to Tom Grundy for all his work capturing the day on film, feel free to have a look at more of his work at www.tomgrundy.co.uk
Photos and Video: Tom Grundy
Words: Aaron Budd
