Looking for a holiday, ideally XC based

Ghostt

It's that time of year again where the holiday brochures come out and my brother suggested we look for a mountain biking holiday. I've had my eye on Whistler for a while but just can't afford it at the moment.

So, does anybody know of a company/good place to go, preferably in Europe fairly cheaply and ideally not too extreme terrain, as the plan is to take our bikes (both hardtails) to save on hire costs (although if anyone knows of a decent resort with cheap hire then please say!)

Thanks in advance

Northwind

A Quick Release down in the Pyrenees are fantastic... Sounds like it should be more or less your bag, it's sometimes quite techy/challenging XC, more towards what the marketeers would call all mountain at times. I'd go back like a shot.

Bikevillage would be another but I've never been there, they've got a superb rep...

welshkev

tenerife -

www.lavatrax.com

you have some great riding, sun, sightseeing, clubbing and if you go make sure you go to the water park siam park

Ghostt

Cheers for both of those, exactly what I'm looking for. The Quick Release looks perfect, good mix of terrain including some challenging stuff. Price is also spot on. Ability to hire a Cotic Soul for £90 for the week is a real plus, as it saves the hassle of buying bike bags and then trusting the easymonkeys with my bike...

Should have made it a bit clearer really, I enjoy riding 'All Mountain' type trails and long descents (hence why I was looking at Whistler) but as I can't afford a decent AM bike at the moment, I'd rather not spend a week rattling my teeth out doing uplifts on the xc hardtail!* Did look at Morzine, but the real killer was bike hire prices (£375 for a full-sus for a week) so it's out of the question atm.

*Dislaimer: at risk of opening a can of worms, I know there is no hard and fast rule saying 'oooh! you couldn't ride that on that type of bike', just my preference really!

hoots

I can thoroughly recommend 'Mountain Biking Spain'. We went back in March last year and really enjoyed it. I'm quite an experienced rider and have been riding for donkeys years, but my wife is fairly new to mountain biking (or any biking!) and is still pretty nervous on descents. There's such a variety of trails in area, that there's enough to keep riders of all abilities happy. The mid-ride tapas bar stops are just the best, and there's some good budget accom options if you're short of pennies (also some very nice luxury options if you're feeling flush). Vic & Einat who own the business and lead the rides are really chilled out and are super-helpful with the self-catering accom. We took our own bikes, but they've got a newish fleet of decent hire bikes (On-One hardtails FWIR). We took 120mm and 140mm travel full-sus bikes and they were more than enough. TBH, a long travel steel hardtail would be pretty much perfect for most of the riding - be a lot less draggy on the climbs!

here's the linky http://www.mountainbikingspain.com/

Northwind

Ghostt wrote:

Cheers for both of those, exactly what I'm looking for. The Quick Release looks perfect, good mix of terrain including some challenging stuff. Price is also spot on. Ability to hire a Cotic Soul for £90 for the week is a real plus, as it saves the hassle of buying bike bags and then trusting the easymonkeys with my bike...

Their hire fleet's in good shape too fwiw. I took my own Hemlock out and tbh 5 of the 6 rides suited it better than my Soul, but there was never a day I wouldn't have been comfortable riding a Soul.

Only slight downer was that they didn't have split groups- some companies with a group our size would split in 2 and have different challenge levels, they didn't have that option when I was there... But the difficulty was well judged I thought. It was pretty physically challenging on some days but everyone got up everything. I would maybe have been happier with some uplifts!

The food is awesome as well, Russ the downhilling chef is a god.