Dipping a toe in the Single Speed Kool-Aid

A couple of years ago my commuting bike, an On-One Pompetamine, died. It had an 11spd Shimano Alfine internally geared hub which had never been entirely sound (I believe that the 8spd is much more reliable) and one day on the way home from work I ended up with just two gears. Or three. Or two. I ended up buying a new bike and I put the Pompy into storage with the idea of converting it to singlespeed to get more use out of it.

Well, it sat there untouched for two years apart from a raid to get the front wheel with its dynamo hub and associated front light to put on to the new commuter.

Finally I decided to sort it out. A bit of interweb shopping for a suitable rear wheel turned up nothing. The bike has disk brakes and getting a disk compatible road rear wheel on its own isn't easy, at least one that's cheap. A final look around and I came across a wheel set on On-One's site at a reduced price of £70. In fact the pair of wheels were considerably cheaper than any single rear wheel I could find. Welcome to the crazy world of modern product pricing. At 2.3Kg for the pair they aren't exactly light but at the price I'm not really complaining. There was also a singlespeed conversion kit available for a tenner so that got added to the order.

With wheels sorted I just needed some tyres for them. The local bike shop had some 28c tyres which should be comfy enough. £23 each. I've plenty of inner tubes lying around the place as well as a pair of 160mm rotors.

So what was I starting with? This:

Different wheels because I swapped the original front with a dynamo hub for that off the Croix de Fer

Closeup of the Alfine hub.

Current weight is 12.3Kg without pedals (weighing method du jour apparently), the Pompino/Pompetamine frame is, shall we say, sturdy and it's quite likely that a modern steel frame like a Cotic Roadrat would be quite a bit lighter - actually more than likely as my Cotic Solaris 29er mountain bike weighs 11.5Kg.

First job was to strip the kit off that I wasn't going to need: old wheels, cabling for the Alfine. I could have replaced the Alfine Crankset but it still works OK so I'll keep it for now even though the associated chain guard isn't particularly "on message". Similarly for the brake/gear levers.

• Build the wheels up: fit inner tubes and tyres; fit brake rotors. 
• Loosely fit the singlespeed cog on the rear freehub and play about to get the right chainline. Tighten everything up.
• Fit chain.
• Fit front wheel. Align brake calipers.

That's it! Took about an hour, most of which was building up the wheels as tightening rotor bolts is just fiddly and getting new road tyres on to rims can be frustrating. The wheels didn't come with rim tape and the only rim tape in the LBS was for tubeless and expensive so I ended up using Gorilla Tape. The next longest job was getting the chainline right though it turned out I'd actually fitted it correctly to avoid losing the parts, reset it at a "guess" then had to change it back. The new weight (with pedals) is 10.8Kg. Total cost of parts was £133 but if I'd already had compatible wheels, i.e. the rear wheel was a standard freehub design, then nearly all that could have been avoided and the cost would have been the mighty sum of £10 for the singlespeed kit and £7 for a new chain.

Actually there was another job: the bike had stood for so long that the rear brake cable had seized so a quick trip down to the nearest bike shop procured some cable and outer for £9 and a bit of fiddling and fettling and that was all good. All that was another hour! Here's the result.

I just hope that my chosen gearing of 39:16 is about right, it's roughly 65 gear inches. I ended up with this due to keeping the crankset, I'm aware that many recommendations for singlespeed are along the lines of 44:16 or even 48:16 but there's some steep hills around here and the idea is to be able to ride things!

First ride out was up the dale which is fairly flat (for round here) having just 850m of ascent in 55Km. The climbs, such as they are, cover just about all gradients so a reasonable test. My max speed when pedalling was 44kmh which with a bit of reverse maths apparently comes out at a cadence of around 140rpm! I hadn't tightened up the rear QR enough so on the way back the wheel slipped in the drop outs and the chain dropped. I tightened it up and it held for the rest of the ride but I should get either a steel QR or bolt through to prevent this happening though another possibility is something like a Surly Tuggnut. The spacers on the conversion kit weren't quite enough to keep everything tight so that needed looking at, I'd a 2mm BB spacer that did the job by replacing one of the 1mm spacers.

The second ride was a bit hillier. OK, not entirely accurate as there was the same elevation gain but the profile was completely different with a big hill at the end of it with sustained sections of 12-14%. That was hard work and I only just made it past the steep bit at the end of the longest ramp.

In total I've spent £142 and about 2 1/2 hours on the conversion. It's not a bike that will do everything road related, it's just too hilly round here for that, but as a winter hack/training bike it'll be fine. If my experience with 1x systems on my hardtail is a guide then in about a year I'll probably get a higher gear fitted.

Red Kite Central

Many centuries ago the Red Kite was a common sight in both town and country, an opportunistic scavenger rather than predator due to its light build though it can take small prey. Despite this it was classed as vermin with a price on its head and numbers fell. With sporting estates on the rise in the 18th and 19th centuries they were the subject of further persecution and by the end of the 19th century the bird was extinct in England and Scotland. Wales has probably always been the main centre of their distribution: the Welsh for Kite is "barcud" and it's a common part of the names of natural features in the same way that there are over fifty Raven Crags in the Lake District.

By the 1930s there only an estimated 20 birds left in mid Wales. In a rather bizarre twist landowners and gamekeepers realising that the bird was about to become extinct began to protect it. By the 1970s numbers had slowly risen and a genetic survey of all the known birds suggested that they were all descended from a single breeding female, a very lucky escape. In an effort to increase bloodline, numbers and spread birds were introduced from the continent so that today there are several populations around the country though mid Wales is still the heartland of its distribution.

The kite is a pretty large bird, there aren't many UK birds that are larger, a grown adult has about the same wingspan of a heron, about 1.8m, so they are quite impressive to view close up. Rhaeadr is home to the Red Kite Centre where food is put out daily for them, let's just say that if you visit and don't see a kite then you really aren't looking as they are as common as crows in the skies.

All this is by way of introducing a long weekend mountain biking in mid Wales! Despite having lived in North Wales for nine years, I'd only ever passed through on my way to Cardiff. I'd not done anything in the area: no biking, no climbing not even any walking though I've a very vague memory of visiting the Elan Valley dams as a kid on a family holiday.

Friday didn't start out too well, we had torrential rain for most of the way down and this didn't really give up until mid-afternoon. Taking advantage of this we nipped out on one of the shorter rides in the Wales MTB guidebook, the Claerwen Valley loop. For the supposed grade (easy) this was pretty tough and there were several sections where we needed to walk and hike a bike. Hopefully this wasn't a sign of things to come.

Riding towards the Claerwen dam. A few "wet" sections ahead.

Pulling up through the bracken on the first climb out of Rhaeadr.

Saturday morning dawned with yet more rain though it was forecast to clear up during the day. By about 1100 we couldn't put it off any longer so headed down in to the town of Rhaeadr to do a loop on the hills between there and the Elan Valley. By the time we'd got a mile out of town it was boiling so off with the waterproofs and in to the first climb of the day. Again this was graded blue but required a bit of walking over rock steps. After a river crossing (interesting) and a road climb there was more uphill, made interesting by the local habit of removing sign posts.

Once on the top of the hill there was a really pleasant track heading over towards the Elan reservoirs before a cut back towards an ascent graded black in the book and described as "ten minutes of pushing". Oh Dear. Three minutes of riding and about 30 seconds of pushing later and it's done. Hmm, I haven't got that much better in the space of three kilometres. The next descent was a cracker, good track interspersed with rocky steps, unfortunately over all too quickly.

Beginning the descent down Y Gurn.

What followed was twenty minutes of hike-a-bike, yep - another blue graded ascent. After a (ahem) slight detour we found the main descent of the day down to the Elan Valley. Graded black it wasn't that bad apart from a couple of short sections maybe twenty metres in total.

Descending to the Elan Valley.

A short section on the road then we followed the Elan Valley trail to gain the upper reservoir from where a long red graded climb led back on to the moor tops. Nowhere difficult, it was just a matter of keeping the pedals turning. An easy, lovely descent, a bit of road then a long ridge led back to Rhaeadr.

One of the classic pieces of single track is the Doethie Valley. One problem: it really is the middle of nowhere. Even from close by it takes over an hour to drive to the start of the ride at Llyn Brianne. There's a lot of fire road to start but then things start with a vengeance with the climb up from Soar y Mynedd. Several signs indicating that the "road"(it's an unclassified country road) is closed along with locked gates aren't encouraging.

Descending to Soar y Mynydd

There was no way I was good enough to climb the track on the bike so it's push time. Eventually the angle eases and it's back on the bike and the descent on the other side shows why it's shut with 2 metre deep gullies running for hundreds of metres. Then it's a left turn and the track down the Afon Doethie begins.

Starting down the Afon Doethie amongst the bracken

Due to us riding this later in the year the bracken was in full growth and in many points it was more akin to skiing in deep powder although a strange green snow and you just had to trust that the track was still there beneath your wheels. Some people (strange people) moan that there's boggy bits and horror of horrors, gates that mean the ride isn't that good but this is a track that happens to be rideable by bike rather than designed with bikes in mind.

At one point we lose the track completely, there's no indication in the bracken as to it's whereabouts and we eventually stumble back on line. About halfway down the valley, Cath takes a potentially nasty tumble, managing to fall at one of the few points where the enclosing bracken wouldn't cushion your fall. Proceeding at an easier pace the riding still requires attention as there's an ever present drop to the stream to the right.

There's a lot of this!

There's a short rocky section which we walk as a fall here would have interesting consequences but it's the only really difficult part of the ride. Slowly the ride becomes gentler then we are in to fields and then a farmyard. All that's left is a long steady pull back up to the reservoir. 

One of the best singletracks in the UK? I'm not sure about that but I'd like to ride it earlier in the year when the bracken isn't so high.

For our last day we headed east for a ride on our way home. To the north of New Radnor is a small group of steep sided hills - the Radnor Forest. Now mainly clear of woodland they are splendidly isolated and there's great views from the tops.

The route started with one of the steepest roads I've ever ridden, it must have been 25% for nearly a kilometre, it was a struggle to keep moving whilst keeping the front wheel on the deck. Even when the tarmac ended the grass track was still steep. You've guessed - the guidebook gave it blue!

Great views from the summit plateau.

After another steep climb that I was sure I was going to have to walk but managed not to there was a bit of forestry fire road then it was out on to the plateau. The guidebook's boggy section was nearly dry thanks to the previous dry weather then it's a great descent before another steep ascent. This was all rideable and led back on to the plateau towards the curiously named Three Riggles. 

Contouring round the Three Riggles

This was another singletrack contouring round a steep valley but considerably easier than the Afon Doethie. All that was left was the final descent which was a blast down an old cart track with the fence bounding a firing range on our left.

Starting the final descent.

So, all in all a nice little break. Some good riding and some great riding. There's a few rides  still to do and I'd like to do the Afon Doethie again without the bracken.

Oops!

I seem to have dropped my mileage somewhat over the last month. This is partly due to the weather but also because my weekend rides have been mountain biking which tend to be shorter in distance if not time. I have been commuting to work though which is 13 miles each way, quite easy to build up some base mileage.

However last week added another reason. I was riding home from work along the canal when an unlatched gate swung in to my path. I was only a bike length or so away from the gate and had no chance to stop and hit it end on. The bike impaled itself on the gate whilst I took an early bath. I remember thinking either just before or as I was entering the water "It's not very deep!". The bottom of the canal had a few rocks so I got a few bruises but since I hadn't made contact with the tow path surface I'd no gravel rash.

When I got out of the canal my bike was still entangled in the gate. The handlebars were crumpled on the left side and the rear brake lever was at a funny angle. A quick test and the rear wheel didn't move so I loosened the back brake off and tried again, still no movement. More loosening and still the bike wouldn't roll, looking round somehow I'd missed the rather buckled front wheel! There was no way it was rideable.

It was only when ringing Cath that I noticed blood dripping (I wonder if iPhones have a blood sensor as well as a moisture sensor?), I'd managed to bash my chin on the rocks in the canal. It's the nature of things like this that a lot of the niggles take time to appear, especially when you are older, and some of the sprains are still making themselves felt several days later.

The initial pain points are getting better (chin excepted) and the bike is at the doctor's - fortunately I've a spare front wheel for this bike but I'll need to rebuild the one that took the impact, hopefully the frame hasn't been damaged and it's just the handlebars that need replacing.

Was speed a factor? In this instance, no, I checked my GPS trace on Strava (useful for something other than willy waving for once) and at the point of impact I was doing 20Kmh (12mph) which is hardly speeding. I'd just slowed down to pass a pedestrian, who incidentally completely ignored me, not even asking if I was OK.

Hopefully my bike will be back in the next day or two and I'll get back commuting. Got a Munro compleation weekend coming up - not me I hasten to add, I've got 230 to go.