If things are looking a bit bleak right now - lockdowns, short days, questionable weather - then at least we can all look forward to brighter days ahead, in all senses. If you had to gather your riding buddies and do your one favourite ride, what would it be? We want to know, and we’ve teamed up with komoot to pick our favourite UK routes. Tell us yours, and you could be in with a chance to win a Garmin Edge 1030 Plus worth £519! We have three to give away.

Soon there will be a new cycling facility for riders of all ages and abilities right near the town centre of Bath, Somerset. The new Bath Bike Park, launched by Pedal Progression will feature 5km of singletrack trails, a pumptrack, a family cycling trail and some decent sized jumps.

The Ribble HT 725 Sport is a great 150mm steel hardtail for those on a budget. It's progressive, good looking and built for gravity-fed riding – it ticks most boxes for hardtail lovers, though it's a shame there's no 29er version alongside these 650b frames.

Today is International Women's Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Chris at Downtime Podcast, a mountain bike focused interview-based podcast, dedicated this week's edition to three women prominent in the mountain bike industry and a discussion surrounding equality, experiences, challenges, opportunity and the changing face of women's mountain biking. One of those women was our editor Rach, read on for the link to take a listen to the podcast, it's live now....

The Garmin Edge 530 is an update to the Edge 520 Plus GPS unit. It hosts a whole heap of mountain bike and road-specific features – the big one for us being the integration of Trailforks mapping. It's still missing out on a touchscreen, but we don't really consider this a negative, especially when you consider the cost saving. 

We have just heard that for the 2021 summer there will be a new mountain bike marathon race that is heading to Pippingford Park in East Sussex for July 11^th, 2021 with the Vittoria Mountain Bike Marathon race.

Specialized launch a new 2FO DH shoe, not long after the release of the Roost trail shoe. The new downhill focused clip and flat shoes get the updated third generation Slip Not sole and, they say, a platform for ultimate foot security.

After a week off, and fewer deliveries than normal (!) we are back with five very cool things in on test. We've got another set of Spinergy wheels, an evolution of the 'string' spoke wheels, new shoes from Specialized and a wide range 1x9 speed drivetrain from MicroSHIFT, plus more. Dig in....

Launched as an upgrade kit for existing Eagle drivetrains, the new SRAM GX AXS looks like an alluring entry point to electronic gears. Today SRAM launches the all new GX version of the AXS drivetrain bringing electronic shifting to a lower price point.