Here’s the second in our never ending (we hope) series of movie diaries.

On a rare trip back to the UK, I took and short road trip with two good friends and Kingdom crew members James McKnight and Alex Stock.

Originally billed as 3 peaks, 3 countries, 3 pubs. We failed in all but the 3 countries part after deciding Wales was by far the best place to ride in the UK anyway.

The mission was to test the Vendetta and the Foia against each other and give them a final thrashing before the chilly Baltic times arrive again.

Starting from the top of Wales we worked out way down, stoping off at as many riding spots as we could and ending up in Cardigan Bay visiting our friends at Howies and having a coffee with Ruben.  You can find out what the nice people at Howies get up to here…

Cardigan bay was totally unreal, seals basking by the shore and amazing crystal clear skies all in October, it could easily have been the Mediterranean. Hope you like the movie as much as we like being there.

More on The Vendetta and The Foia here

The first movie from ‘The House of Kingdom’, which also marks the first in a series of Reasons to ride.

The thinking….we wanted to make a movie to go with a mini review of The Supreme.

Hating all forms of marketing was our problem. So how could we show one of our bikes without showing the bike. We decided to try and capture the feelings and emotions that you have when your riding your bike instead. Without getting to deep and zen like our emotional experience was seeing the changing seasons – Summer to Autumn from the saddle.

So here’s the movie and a mini ride review below.

The Supreme – 60 second review

We’ve had The Supreme for a while now but we just haven’t managed to get round to a write up, so we thought we’d better say a few words about the ride.

It’s long and light - The position with a 70mm stem is classic XC, puts you positioned centered in the bike and able to deliver effective pedal strokes.

Skinny Latte – The bike weighs a featherweight 22lbs and with some careful product selection could easily be down to nearly 20lbs.

Finish – The welding is superb as we’ve become used to on all our frames with the raw finish adding that industrial touch.

The most noticable feature is the integrated seatpost or ISP and the BB30.

We designed this frame with an integrated seatpost to save weight and it’s marginally effective in that respect. I think used with a lighter (Ritchey) saddle mount could save even more weight, but the real benefit of the ISP is being directly attached to the bottom bracket, and in this instance a super stiff press fit BB30.

This was the really the most noticable ride feature of the bike; the feeling of being attached to the frame directly through the seatpost into the BB. This translated directly into a powerful transmission, as soon as you upped the pedal strokes the bike accelerated like putting your foot on the gas.

But ISp had it limitations, on steep downhills the saddle felt too high and we suffered from ‘up the bum’ syndrome which slowed us down considerably. Having said that this is a XC rig and not necessarily designed for steep DH tracks!

The wishbone rear triangle is both skinny and light delivers the perfect stiffness to weight ratio for an xc bike and it also looks a clean as well especially at the seat tube join.

Having been riding more trail oriented bikes all Summer (Foia and Legion) The Supremes handling felt twitchy at first, but once we got used to the longer 70mm stem it settled down and we began to love the feel of an XC bike again.

The stretched riding position and light weight made easy work of climbs but as we mentioned earlier the ISP made life a bit painful on steep downhills and something we struggled with especially after our recent conversion to Adjustable Seatposts.

The bike was running a 2×10 SRAM transmission, which was nothing short of incredible. The front shifting being a cycling miracle, front chainring shifts under full redal stroke, amazing!

We had a pair of Hope race X2 stoppers on The Supreme and I have to say after reading a fair bit of average press about them I was impressed. A lot better thanI had expected and weight to stopping power was a perfect trade off.

The Supreme will be on test in Stockholm and in the UK over the next months and we’ll upload ridder reviews here to you can get a more rounded picture of thsi bike and how it rides.

Thanks for your 60 seconds.

Location: Hafjell Bike Park, Norway

Objective: Take the first Frankenride frame and object of long travel lust ‘The Foia’ out for a damn good thrashing.

The Bike: The Foia was designed by Jim as a long travel hardtail capable of taking on the big stuff you’ll find in the mountains around Lagos, Portugal. The name Foia is actually taken from the mountain range around Lagos.

Here’s the story…..The plan was to take a small crew of ‘Kingdomites’ away for a weekend of riding and ragging.

After a fair bit of internet gazing and google mapping, we choose Hafjell Bike Park, about 3 hours North of Oslo as the venue. It’s right by the olympic town of Lillehammer and none of us had been there before so it was pure virgin territory. The bike park itself has a great selection of trails, lift accessed trails for the gravity slaves plus a great selection of cross country trails for the more lycra oriented fiend.

After a long drive through most of Scandinavia we arrived in Hafjell, we opted to test The Foia on the lift accessed trails the first day. The thought of some all mountain lung busting uphills was not on the menu and after all The Foia’s purpose to go down, right!

Lift pass purchased, brakes bled, we started on some well maintained v.fast and v.fun blue runs called Parkløypa and Buldreløypa, these runs did not fail to deliver some massive grins. Then we progressed onto some technical reds trails, finishing the day snaking down a few blacks into town. But what about the bike? Now this is going to sound like marketing BS, but trust me it isn’t…

All 3 of us rode The Foia that day and none of us wanted to swap back to a full susser. Not because The Foia was faster, more comfortable or a better ride than a full sus, but because there was something really fun about it. None of us could quite put our fingers on it, but it was just felt right.

It didn’t feel like a hardtail at all, but more like a short travel 4x bike, with the 140mm coil Pikes up front and the springiness of the titanium it just felt fun and right for these trails.

Burying itself deep into the never ending berms and tracking solidily through rockier sections, it had very little backend kick back that you expect from a hardtail on this type of terrain. Having said that I’m sure the ride was probably helped by our choice of burly rims and dual ply tyres.

Getting loose on the flowy blue…Parkløypa.

Danny tracks The Foia fast into the corners
of the technical red run…Gressløypa.

The Foia handles the big landings on the rollercoaster black run, funnily enough called The Roller Coaster

Day two. By now we had recovered our pedal lust, and set out early morning before the body armour had arrived and the lifts opened on a climb to the top. We rode a mixture of fire road and singletrack ascents which took us back to the top.

Our not so secret weapon The Pikes came into effect here. We dialed down the U-turn and dropped the forks to 115mm to help the climbing, especially as we were using a delightfully short 50mm Hope DH stem.

Now we don’t lie, we won’t lie. It was a bit of a slog with the flat pedals, short stem and 740mm bars but once we’d slipped into a rythmn and pushed through to the top it was OK. Now it’s worth noting here that we haven’t ridden this bike uphill yet with a more resonable climbing set up, longer stem, lighter wheels and tyres etc etc.

The Foia wasn’t designed to climb, but it will get you up to the top without killing you. Not like a lightweight XC bike would but easily as good as any other 27lb all mountain hardtail we’ve ridden.

Either way we’re more than happy to ride The Foia up and down all day, at least as long as the downs are as good as in Hafjell.

Forks set to stun. Danny slogs it out back up the red trail this time

Technical sections had to be given the appropriate attention that a hardtail deserve although The Foia’s slack head angles give you confidence to attack them harder. Normally, after 2 full day shifts of riding we’d now start to think about alternative leisure activites that can be found in say, a pint glass, but we’re in Norway and it’s still daylight!

So at 9pm on a beautifully warm and light July evening what else is there to do but go for another ride. This time to the local water feature for an improvised trial session on the rocks. We strongly recommend NOT riding in places that you shouldn’t nor try and do trials when you are as bad at it as we are.

After a brief go at a translation, this Norweigian sign means, ‘riding allowed’.

We do it so you don’t have to, trails leave it to the experts. On the way back to our ‘hytter’, we spotted some action in Hafjell, this time music and a few talented rippers getting on with it late into the evening on the dirt jumps. Scene.

Ok here’s the round up…

The Foia does exactly what it says on the tin, very well, The hard hitting hardtail, that also climbs pretty well.It could be just our excitment riding great trails or that Jim cracked the magic numbers and has built a great bike, either way it’s fun to ride The Foia in Hafjell.

We all liked Jim’s Foia, a lot. So much so you can buy one on this site……

I’ll leave you with the bike quote of the year so far, from young Danny Sørensen ‘I love this bike, it’s the kind of bike I want to have when I get old’, by old we think he means 24 or something.

We’ll send Frankenride number 1, on to Jim (it’s rightful owner and creator), he’ll be sending it on The Foia along with some trail reviews later in the year and anyone is welcome to test ride The Foia with Jim in Portugal, just email jim@themountainbikeadventure.com and Jim’ll fix it for you.

Also not forgetting Hafjell. It’s without doubt a great place to ride, and if you pick the right time of year and get lucky with the weather you can ride 24 hours a day!….more about Hafjell here.

One of The KBP collective Adam, a man well known in the South London area as a part-time bearded gypsy was out at Teddington Lock dirt jumps, trying to imagine what it would be like to session his Vendetta on the jumps, when an unsavoury incident occured. Taking Without Official Consent or plain old theft!

Some feral rippers ‘borrowed’ his bike from under his nose and gave it a ‘proper seeing to’ on the jumps.

Adam was obviously distressed by the incident but a spokesmen for his Vendetta said ‘it wasn’t a problem as the bike was more than happy to be ridden properly for once.’

Here’s some pictures of the incident, if you recognise any of the rippers in the photos please give Teddington Police a call as Adam wants his bike back.

Here’s what the rippers had to say about the Vendetta

Ripper 1. hey kingdom bikes one of your guys was down adam he had one of the proto’s down i gotta say he let a couple of us have ride to give him back feedback and so heres some feedback from my self

riding the jumps on the bike felt like heaven being titanuim its more forgiving riding some more it felt very nimble very quick and just floats through the air and took it for little drops and stuff felt so good smooth as a baby’s bumb thats it for now as i was taking it in turns with a friend thanks kingsley.

pro’s:
light weight
welding finishing is great
stiff
nimble
fast

con’s
non replaceable hanger
tight tire clearence (adam told me this was sort now)
no alu frame available yet
adjustable drop outs

Ripper 2. I thought the frame geometry for the vendetta – v1 was perfect for its intended uses,though when i rode it had 120-30mm of travel? i think it should be ridden with about 100-110mm, thought its a very light frame i thought it had a very solid feel to it and i would definitely buy one if i had the money.
I found as soon as i started riding the frame it felt like i had been all day,i got used to it immediately and due to it being so light pedaling was effortless and got enough speed to hit the jumps in just a few cranks.

If you guys are to make a aluminum/chromoly dirt jump/4x frame id say maybe have horizontal dropouts and like NSbikes have done have chain tensioner’s that also double up as hangers for gears,id be more than happy to test this frame if you make it ; )

Click here and see The Vendetta in our virtual showroom…

Denmark the country that invented porn and a small mermaid. So what better place then to do a bike porno shoot, especially as our shoot coincided with The BMX Supercross World Cup which had bought top riders and a bike buzz to wonderful Copenhagen.

We’ve had a few prototype Vendettas kicking around for a while now, but as we now have the first production run of our sick Vendettas in stock we decided to throw one at young DH ripper and BMXer Danny Sørensen and see what he made of it.

Our resident photo genius Frank took his camera and some electric sunshine into the woods to capture the day, and the kind people at POC lent us some superfine helmets and armour for the shoot.

The track we used is just outside Copenhagen it’s a very short hill that the local riders have been constantly evolving for quite a few years now. It’s a real warren of Jumps, Tabletops, Gaps, Berms and Woodwork.

There’s quite possibly 50 lines down a hill as high as two double deckers, fast as hell and you really need to know the lines to keep a good flow going.

For me it’s a bit too small and tight for the Danish full sussers that get thrown down it, but with all the berms and jumps it’s perfect test track for a lightening fast ripper like Danny and a 4X weapon like the Vendetta.

This was Danny’s set up of choice for the day. A four sprocket cassette and a wider rear rim as some of the gap landings are pretty sadistic, Gamut chainguide and some Crank Bros clip pedals.

Many thanks to POC, and their Danish distributors Outdoor Extreme Sports for the loan of the radest full face helmet out there; a Cortex Flow, goggles and body armour. In fact we fell in love with the helmet so much that we did a little extra review on it, click here ro read.

Like what you see and want to know more about The Vendetta?

A Dirty weekend in Portugal.

To ensure we could handle anything Lagos could throw at us we turned the Legion into a all mountain beast with some battered old Fox 36’s we used for 4x dropped to 120mm, a Straightline 35mm stem, mutant LG1 chainguide and single 32T ring, 2.35 High Rollers and Nuke Proof flats. Total weight 26.7lbs. Tidy boyo.

We contacted The Mountain Bike Adventure who kindly volunteered to guide us on a whistle stop tour of Portugal’s finest trails and a few bars as well. Over 3 days, we sampled everything on the ‘a la carte’ Lagos trail menu and as a bonus we also got to test Legion in a variety of ’Biblical’ weather conditions, everything from hurricanes and hail to flash floods and lightening.

OK we know your online attention span is short, finger trigger itching to click somewhere better, so lets get down to business….

Doors to manual. Day one.Lets start with ‘the heart of darkness’ or cross country. Jim led us out on a 45km coastal XC ride starting right from the heart of Lagos, beautiful sweeping sea views combined with short sharp climbs and fast flowing descents.

Legion handled like a old pro right out the gate.The short chainstays and stiff rear end made acceleration and power transfer super direct. Even the ’short ’n’ heavy’ set up couldn’t restrict the bikes ‘uphill first’ mentality.

Descending was smooth and planted BUT a bit too solid. The 200% stiffer than aluminium properties of titanium soon came out and there was very little flex in the rear and this became noticeable when we got tired and planted the odd lazy landing into a brace of rocks. This bike demands your attention, production models will have thinner butted seat and chainstays.

An all mountain affair. Day two.
Into the storm. The trails became reminiscent of the Lake District or Scotland only muddier and with a headwind strong enough to challenge the most adventurous of kite flying professionals. Not what we expected from the Algarve.

Immediately the high bottom bracket came into it’s own dancing over head sized rockstacles, with the relaxed head angle and short stem combo making the steep techy bits of the trail easy, too easy in fact giving you a bit too much confidence for a hardtail.

By now the mud was starting to be a menace with drifting and general sideways action the order of the day, this is where a hardtail with ample mud clearance is a pleasure.

Picota.
Lastly on day 3, we decided to get our gnar on and take on some downhill trails. This would push the Legions handling to it’s limits and to be fair beyond what we designed the frame for.

There are DH tracks are all over the southern Serra mountain range of Portugal but the most savage is on Picota. This track has a very high ‘mutha hucka‘ rating with huge rock gardens, hideously techinal sections and assorted sized jumps to flat. Locals regularily run their downhill races here.

We took on as many runs as we could in the torrential rain and hypothermia stopped play. On the last run we took on the biggest 6ft drop to flat, encouraged by the bikes handling and the zero visibility downpour which took us on the wrong line and off the drop. Legion landed the drop shaken but not stirred and in good humour.

No bike trip is ever complete without an impromptu, beered up late-night street riding session over the local tourist attractions. Anyone in the know will tell you this is the real test of a mountain bike, handling street obstacles and tourists without exposing your low skill levels, returning you safely back to the bar and onwards to bed.

Legion performed as well as we could have imagined, if not better. There are improvements we’ll make on the production frames, thinner gauge butted chainstays, adjusting the gusset, maybe a bit more slope on the top tube. Fly fucking really as we came away happy with our do-it-all frame concept.

There’s more than enough XC, all mountain and downhill trails all around Lagos to fill a week but it would be next to impossible to find them on your own, so we really recommend using a guides local knowledge if you fancy taking a jaunt to Portugal. Click to check out The Mountain Bike Adventure and learn all about Portugal yourself. We are also advised that the weather is usually warm all year round.