So I've promised this for a while now & some people have been pressing me for it. I think in a broader sense, people prefer a "straight from the horse's mouth" way of someone reviewing a bike? So when you read this, please take into consideration that it's not sanitised for publication or written with any bias. It's just my opinion on the bike & components that I paid for with my own money.

So it's been roughly 5 months since a bought this & it's had a few changes along the way, some due to personal preference & some due to necessity. To be clear, I'm not someone who covets things much or needs to have the latest stuff, but I do look after my gear, I use it a lot and I like it to be as "sorted" as it can be within my means, so anything I changed was to make the bike better (for me)

If you've read my past write ups on the first few months I had the bike, then you'll already know that I love it, but as with all works of genius, it's not without its faults.

Last year, a shining light in both the sport of Mountain Biking & many peoples lives; Jaymie Mart, sadly passed away. It came as a great shock to those she had touched in her 31 years of a life that was lived to the absolute fullest.

Jaymie never worked at Dales, but was a friend to some of its employees & gave nutritional advice to some of Dales' Mountain Bike race team members, resulting in those individuals approaching the business to see if they might be intested in helping the Jayfest cause. As a result, Dales Cycles offered to put up the finance for the Jayfest website & its ongoing upkeep. Adam (Jaymie's brother & Co-Director of The Jaymie Mart Foundation) accepted the offer & now we're delighted to be able to keep Jaymie's light burning through the foundation & wish them all the best with the first Jayfest festival in June!

Jayfest press release

Today it was announced that there will be a brand new, innovative and exciting mountain

Well...it had not rained for almost a full month in central Scotland by the time we got to Wed the 10th of April, so imagine my disdain & resulting language as my wipers (for the first time in ages) wiped away the oily film on a windscreen that had only seen dry weather for long enough that I couldn't actually recall.

Anyway, a bit of "wet" on a dry trail does it no harm, so I dried my eyes and pushed on to Cathkin Braes. When I got there, Dave Ward from Giant was already pitching up and our very own Stephen, Jim & John were well on the way to unloading our big van. We marked out the plots for the EZ-UP's and had a joke about the aforementioned weather when ironically the heavens opened in an crazy mix of unwanted rain, hail & sleet.

It's easy to mix comments with metaphors about the Scottish weather as we get such a lot of it, but this is the last you'll hear of it in any detail during this blog entry, as after 2-3 minutes, the clouds cleared & the

Edit: 19/4/2013 You can no longer buy these tickets online, however our Glasgow store has a very small amount of tickets left. You can call for availability on 0141 332 2705 & collect in store, in person.

David Walsh, the journalist who spent 13 years pursuing the truth about Lance Armstrong, will speak in Glasgow later this month about his role in unmasking the global sporting icon as a serial drugs cheat.

Walsh will speak at Glasgow Science Centre on the evening of Tuesday 23rd April before taking part in a Q&A session and signing copies of his book, Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong. The award-winning Sunday Times journalist is being brought to Glasgow by Dales Cycles, the city's oldest bike shop.

Tickets for the event, the latest date to be announced on Walsh's sell-out UK tour, are available from Dales Cycles' city centre store at Dobbie's Loan having gone on sale from 9am today (Friday 5th April).

Walsh will