MTB or Hybrid racking my brains

Sirlewy

Hello, I'm new here so I apologize if this is the wrong section - I had a good look.

I have had awful old bikes in the past and new I have £400 to spend on a new second hand one.

The dilemma I have is that I predominately want to use a bike for speeding round the south downs, but I am also going to tour from Brighton to the Netherlands next year.

I'm thinking of getting a secondhand rock hopper with disk breaks and front suspension, would this be suitable for the tour? Or would a hybrid be better for the downs and touring ?

I torn.

Any advice hugely appreciated.

larkim

I had a similar (but less ambitious!) dilemma, in that I have a 13 year old that I wanted to be able to follow around Llandegla, as well as rack up miles on the road getting fit. I went for a Decathlon 29er (5.3 Big RR) on the basis that it was easy to find suitable road tyres for the 700c wheels, and I knew the frame / other components would be up to the task off road.

I nearly went for something like the Spesh CrossTrail, but it just looked a little flimsy and I could just see me getting all ambitious (or out of control!) behind my lad and ending up breaking the frame because the bike wasn't really up to it.

In the end, I think I rationalised on the lowest common denomintator - what was the "toughest" conditions I'd be throwing at the bike; that defined what I ultimately required, and provided I could put in some compromises to make it fit my other purposes too it would end up being a reasonable choice.

Of course, ideal world would be two bikes...

Matt

benpinnick

^this. The big RR 5.3 is great value, and the 29" wheels will convert to road use with some skinny slick tyres easily.

larkim

Just to add, I've got 622x32c tyres for it, which seemed pretty skinny to me. Not ridden them yet (childishly putting them away until Christmas) but tried them on the rims and they didn't look completely out of place.

Matt