Contents 4|

7: Editorial Chipps realises there is a generation of riders who may never have read an OS map or wandered off the beaten track.

8: UK Travel: The Last Good Day of the Year. Iain Haworth sets out on a road trip to make the most of available daylight.

18: International Travel: All in a Day’s Work Wade Simmons tries to convince us that riding your bike for fun is actually work. And fails.

26: Editors’ Choice The Singletrack teams’ favourite bits of 2008.

35: Bike Test - How Much Travel Do I Need? 120mm, 140mm or 160mm? We take a look at the Gary Fisher Roscoe, Kona One20, Lapierre Spicy.

44: Press Camp Traveling the world seeing what’s new is one of the perks of the job, we give you the inside scoop on the debauchery.

54: International Travel: Helvetica on Wheels One van, two kids, many countries. Life on the road in Europe.

60: Grinder If a product’s in Grinder it’s had a hard life, we tell you what made it and what didn’t.

70: Mini Grouptest - Tubeless Benji forsakes the way of the tube and lets us know his findings.

72: Column: Blame The Dog Mike Ferrentino sails the good ship Controversy into port and reveals some uncomfortable home truths.

74: Gallery Top Tip: Stick our gallery photos over your window and pretend you’re somewhere else!

81: Grouptest - Softshells What’s a softshell and which one should you buy? We get hot and sweaty in softshell jackets on your behalf.

88: Column - Philip Diprose Mr Diprose tells us about his unusual commute whilst not crashing into corpses and ending up one himself.

90: International Travel: Alfred The Great? The most scenic mountain bike race in the world according to the organisers of this New Zealand event. And who are we to argue?

96: Competition - Win Booze! Win a bottle of whisky and a Singletrack hipflask to drink it from.

98: Long Term Test Bikes After a year’s worth of riding how have the Singletrack team got on with their long term bikes?

104: Fitness - Illness Matt Hart tells you why satsumas are not your friends.

114: Column - Nature Boy Some lesser magazine proclaims ‘Just Get Out and Ride’, but as Natureboy points out, just getting people out is hard enough.

116: Route - The Whale and the Toblerone The Yorkshire Dales offer up another classic route to break yourself on.

127: The Singletrack Awards The only awards in the industry voted for by the public, so who did you vote for, and who won what?