nickj

Crates or pallets are good to learn on as you can make small gaps or blocks. You can gradually make bigger gaps and bigger heights (until you're as good as Damon Watson in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwDv4qHM96s). Industrial estates are usually good places to look and most are ok about it so long as you put the crates back.

Nice shots. Am I missing something obvious or has this guy appeared from nowhere? I can't work out how he's got himself up there. http://www.flickr.com/photos/44349160@N07/4078953038/

I would recommend DMR V8s. I've used them on my mountain bike for years. They take a lot of abuse and in my experience offer more grip than cages. You still get shin digs, but they tend to focus all the force into a smaller area, so you end up with lots of small holes in your shins rather than scrapes. I have a pair of the Wellgo copies on my trials bike at the moment and the pins are standing up well to getting scraped across walls, though as someone said earlier it's probably wise to loctite the pins in. http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=563

I thought Danny Mac would probably feature in this thread! I sometimes listen to the song from that video before riding, but for some reason I still don't seem to be able to manage flairs from trees. For me, it was seeing Ashton and Hawes in mbuk. I was fairly into mountain bikes as a teenager and tried a bit of everything (all on the same bike, just put the saddle right down; trials bike). Eventually I built up a Monty Urban frame to give trials a proper go and did that for a year or so. I forgot about trials when I went to Uni in Wales as there were too many mountains to ride and it was generally quite wet. I got back into trials nearly a year go after my brother started riding again.

It's nothing special, but here is an unnecessarily arty picture of my Monty 219. http://www.flickr.com/photos/by_nick/4124611011

Hi, I'm nick and I live in plymouth. I've been riding trials properly for about a year now. I used to ride trials before I went to university in wales, but I got distracted by the mountains. I now ride a monty 219. Julien: Nice profile picture, I have a picture of me doing something very similar in my old halls.