Cy writes....

More of a personal point of view today. With the new batch of Cascades very close now, it got me thinking about why I love my Cascade.

As a lifelong mountain biker, the Cascade caught me a bit by surprise. Back in 2019 and 2020, I was still riding a RocketMAX enduro bike as my main mountain bike, with slack angles, lots of travel and slow, sticky, grippy tyres. Amazing for rowdy terrain, but quite hard work on easier going trails and not much fun at all on road sections. Without realising it, my unbelievably capable mountain bike had narrowed my scope of riding to 2-4 hour sessions on the roughest terrain I could find.

We got the pre-production Cascade prototypes in 2020, just as lockdown happened. Suddenly I needed to find empty trails I could get to quickly, and the ones I found were little slivers of bridleways between villages, linked with quiet lanes. They would be dull and very hard work on my RocketMAX, but on the Cascade they were an absolute delight!

Suddenly I was back to exploring.

"What's down there? Where does that trail go?"

Because my Cascade was zippy enough on roads and climbs for any reversals back out of a "wrong" turn not to be too taxing, but capable enough on most trails that I was enjoying riding them, rather than death-gripping the drops.

It became the perfect foil to my RocketMAX. My "not mountain bike". And with that expansive new mindset and a bike that encouraged a bit of a pedal, I fell in love with big rides again. Steady, long days of looking at the view and riding along the edges of fields. It was bloody lovely!

At the time Baybutt was also riding his Cascade prototype a lot, and he decided he was going to ride the Peak200 route on it. It's 200km around the Peak District in the heart of the UK, and right on our doorstep here in Sheffield. It's also marketed as a 'gravel bike route' and it emphatically is not! Amongst many sections of serious trails on the route, Cutgate Path is a lot on a Cascade, let alone something more derived from a road bike with little tyres.

I didn't feel up to the whole thing, but I got the train out to the other side of the Peak and met them at approximately the halfway point. It's the mellower end of the routes, through the rolling dales of the southern side of the National Park, but still nearly 100km and 4000m of vertical from where I started back to my house. The second biggest ride I had ever attempted.

We had a great time getting to parts of the local area I had never been to before, and villages I had never seen. It was beautiful, but I also got it wrong. It was very hot, and whilst I was drinking plenty of water, I was not topping up my salts. I went pop fairly spectacularly about 70km in as we rolled down the meadows opposite Chatsworth House.

Fortunately our adventure was fairly close to home, so I limped to Baslow, and called in the cavalry and Jen came to collect me. A water bottle full off electrolytes on the way home and I was pretty much fine again, which stoked my enthusiasm to get it done. It hadn't gone as planned, but it hadn't been dangerous or in anyway a disaster. A good learning experience, you might say.

Two weeks' later I got the train again and completed the ride on my own. I was tired, but very happy. Both of these experiences, and many more like them cemented the Cascade in my heart, because they expanded my cycling horizons again, and made me realise how much I love just pedalling for a couple of hours or more and enjoying looking at the view. It's a very simple, under-rated form of cycling, especially in these days of Strava and everything needing to be measured.

My Cascade is the simply joy of turning the pedals, and going almost anywhere. That is a rare and valuable thing, and it's why I love it.

If this sounds appealing, or if it sounds like a bit of you, have a look over a Cascade and expand your cycling horizons maaaaaaaaaaan ;0)