Let's offroad / mountain bike / mtb / ride dirt

What's everyone's take on Dyfi? Got back to England a few weeks ago, built up a new MTB and went straight there for a shakedown ride. Should've bedded in the brakes first but fuck it's just as good as I'd hoped!

…on the alpine drive vibe: going to be headed that way with two “under three” types.

Any good overnight stop points between here and Geneva way?

Say, no more than 9h travel…?

I have stayed here before and will be staying again in on Friday night:

Hôtel Mercure Annemasse Porte de Genève

It’s nice, cheap and handy.

Straps- I wear a full face so rarely that I don’t know what to do with these, should they go behind, under or over the cheek pads?

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I'd say next to skin, or the helmet could be loose.

Goggles- mine pong a bit, can I run them through the washing machine in a pillow case? They’re POC Ora

To answer that, running them through the washing machine at 30 degrees in a pillow case works very well

I presume you took the lenses out first?

Yes

Straps under the cheek pads

Cheers

Hi Luke,

I've stopped a few times on a similar journey to Morzine in the past. Usual places to stop are Rheims, Troyes or Dijon.

As @Dammit mentioned the Hotel Mercure is a chain hotel and usually nice and clean with a good breakfast. More specifically, places I have stayed are:

• Novotel Reims - bog standard hotel, very central and good for shops and restaurants
  
• Hotel Ibis, Dijon - bog standard hotel, very central and good for shops and restaurants
  
• St Quentin Farm Montecouvez - a beautiful farm, great breakfast, friendly owners but way off the beaten track. Fine for 1 night
  
• Logis des Sources, Troyes - 30 seconds off the autoroute, standard hotel but again in the middle of nowhere on a bastard hot day in the windless centre of France. So of course we went out on the road bikes for an 80km spin and experienced melting tarmac sticking to our tyres. At least the rooms had great air conditioning
  

I have stayed closer to half way before, but picked the Mercure because it puts you almost all the way there, leaving the last bit of narrow mountain roads to the next day, in daylight when you are fresh.

Frankly we could push on to Morzine, but would be getting in pretty late and it wouldn’t make any difference really in terms of riding the following day.

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Apparently it’s going to piss down all next week in Morzine. Boo.

Found some time to start putting this together last night. Still need to get a rear brake adapter, fit cranks once the BB tool arrives, then dismantle the Smashpot to extend it to 180. Thank fuck for external cable routing, is all I can say!
Just sitting on it built as is, the EXT shock is bonkers. So supple and smooth.

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I also managed to drop one of the shock mounting bolts, which immediately pinged itself under the shed. That was fun, trying to reach arm's length under a building through a 2" gap

This already looks super fun

Good excuse to replace it with Ti hardware.

Really appreciate the recommendations, if only the Farm was a little further into France! Time to sit down and get booking now.

NP. I'm sure there are other similar farms out there that are farther south it's just that I haven't discovered them yet!

I just remembered another great place I stayed although its way off the Calais/Geneva/autoroute des anglais standard route south. It was a B&B just outside Le Mans run by an old English couple who felt like your favourite aunt and uncle. No good for this trip but just shows that there are plenty of great places out there.

Really? I have been keeping an eye on the weather and it looked decent to me
Just checked again and possibly wet on Tuesday but other than that a bit of light rain a couple of evening's is all.

Not like when I went there in 2014 and it was the wettest I've ever seen it. We had a day and a half dry and then it rained solidly from Monday lunchtime to Friday afternoon when we left.

Soggy lowlights of that week here

Rain

Fingers crossed

Place your bets- what does my XL, alloy 160/170 enduro bike weigh?

Enough that you now want to purchase a lightweight carbon XC rig

17.4 kg. Of which 2.8 is tyres, so there are areas that I could cut some out- if I wanted to.

I think the chairlifts should just about accommodate that