Rosebikes Launch 2015: A Brief Encounter with Granite, Roots and – er – Jimbo.

The Tyrolean Alps are justifiably famous for a number of things, besides altitude. Ridiculously picturesque wooden houses. Oompah music. Lederhosen. Very nice lager. And lovely, lovely trails.

Rose bikes, the German-based retailer of value bike bits goodness, also produce a range of bikes – with occasionally slightly unusual names – and have done so for a while, but as I wrote in this story, they’ve introduced new models or redesigned old ones, and they carted a bunch of journalists out to the Kirchberg, in the Austrian Alps to give some of them a thorough badgering. Or (as the trip was only a couple of days) perhaps a mild foxing. Something more thorough than a light rabbiting, at any rate.

In the midst of the seething throng of European journalists (there weren’t quite enough bikes to go around), I managed to get enough time on three bikes to get a vague idea of character: the Granite Chief, the Root Miller and the Uncle Jimbo. There are some caveats to this endeavour, however. I’m fairly tall at 195cm (about 6ft4in in Old Money): too tall for the largest of the bikes available.  But with a bit of fettling, brake swapping, and seatpost waggling, I was able to make myself comfortable enough on the Large bikes. As a consequence I can’t really comment properly on reach and fit. And although there was some small amount of climbing on the trails themselves, time constraints – and if I’m brutally honest the fun quotient – meant that I was confined to trails with cable car access: so trails with vastly more down than up. Which is fine, as in my experience the place that a too-small bike (and I’ve ridden a few) really makes itself obvious is on the climbs. But I can talk to you about angles, and suspension, and handling, and Alps, and roots, and fun. These are only initial observations – I didn’t get enough time by half to generate a proper opinion, and of course all the trails were new to me too, but I could at least get an inkling of what the bikes were like.

Premier users read on for 4 extra pages of thoughts on Rose bikes…

Certainly, if you’re in the market for a new full-suspension bike, across a range of travel, Rose bikes are well worth investigating.

Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

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