Boredom and Facebook marketplace are dangerous bed fellows. One minute your idly scrolling through the seemingly endless adverts for tools that look like they’ve been stolen out of the back of some poor sod’s work van interspersed with pictures of furniture from the house that taste forgot , and then you see it – the advert for something that just makes you pause. The price seems very reasonable. its not to far away and you most definitely want it. You might not need it, but oh yes you want it, and you want it quite badly. Almost furtively you type a quick ‘is this still available?’ message to the seller half hoping the reply is ‘no’ or that they don’t reply at all and then you won’t have to worry about justifying the cost to any interested parties who have partial control over the family finances. When of course they get straight back to you asking when you want to pick it up you tell yourself that its just the stars in the universe aligning and this only confirms you were ‘meant’ to have it. Before long you’re driving home with your guilty purchase hidden in the back of the car wondering how long it will take your significant other to notice.

All this of course is a very long lead in to admitting I’ve acquired another bike which I really don’t need or even have any space for. Its not new, isn’t remotely cutting edge and will do most things worse from a performance point of view then my current bikes, but once I’d seen the advert I was a lost cause – I kinda knew I was going to buy it straight away. This is what came home with me in the boot of the car last week before being smuggled into the garage after I told my wife I was just popping out to pick up a ‘bit of bike stuff’ I’d spent ‘a few quid’ on second hand.

Yes, its not even a full bike! (that made it easier to sneak into the garage). This is a Cotic Soul hardtail frame crafted from the ubiquitous Reynolds 853 steel tubing and sized for the now deeply unfashionable 26′ wheel made in 2006. So why did I find this particular advert so hard to pass up? This is by no stretch of the imagination a modern bike, its takes 26′ wheels, has a straight 1 & 1/8 inch non tapered head tube has an old style Q/R rear end and is designed around 100mm – 140mm travel forks, it makes my back ache just looking at it and thinking about fast rocky descents!

Now I’m planning on delving more deeply into why I keep coming back to small steel framed hardtail mountain bikes in a separate post in the near future as its quite a complex question about which I’ve had to do a fair bit of self reflection and think (for me) uncharacteristically deeply about. For the moment lets just say the reasons are very similar to why I have a 45 year old classic Mini in my garage (see pic below), its probably 50% nostalgia and 50% just loving how they ride and drive. (and yes the Mini doesn’t have an engine at the moment and is in many pieces, but that’s a whole different story….)

Anyway lets get back to what I was going to do with this latest acquisition to the fleet. Needless to say as ever funds were a little (non-existent) tight so this build had to be very much a budget project. Luckily I did have the seeds of a plan in place before I’d committed to buy the frame. It just so happened that I knew of the perfect doner bike – languishing long unused at the back of a pile of other bikes in my friend Ian’s front room was a little Giant hardtail that he’d originally built up for his daughter. The bike hadn’t been ridden for a very long time and seeing as said daughter had decamped to Australia for at least the imminent future it was just going to continue collecting dust and I knew that he was looking to thin out the pile of two wheeled bikes of yesteryear for a nominal sum. In this case the nominal sum was the set of boost spec cranks I’d bought in error for my full suspension Cotic rocket that were still sitting on my work bench, and the promise of funding some hop based refreshment in the near future.

By the next evening this little sacrificial lamb was being prepared to be dismembered on the altar of the church of ‘steel is real’

In remarkably quick time over the next couple of days a beautiful retro steel hardtail mountain bike emerged from a fusion of bits from my spares box, the remains of the giant and a couple of Amazon Prime purchases (I had some Amazon vouchers to burn after a recent birthday). So, for the record the fork, handle bars, grips, shifter, rear mech, crankset and wheels are from the Giant. the saddle, seatpost, bottom bracket, rear cassette, brakes and pedals are from my spares box, and the tyres, tubes and chain are the only new parts. Total cost? including the cost of the frame this bike is rolling for £145 which I think is a bit of a bargain.

The next question was of course what is this bike exactly for? I know from previous bitter experience that pointing may aging collection of aches and pains down anything gnarly on this bike was going to result in a fast trip straight to the face down position on the chiropractors bench, anything rough and rocky was going to remain firmly the task of my fully suspended 27.5′ wheeled Cotic Rocket. Fast flowing blue graded single track was where this bike was going to shine so for its shakedown ride I took it to Delamere Forest where I’d heard that there were some really nice sections of singletrack had been put in linking some of the network of forest fire roads that criss-cross the woodland. I hadn’t ridden at Delamere for many years so I was eager to see these new tracks, and it seemed like a safe low consequence option if my cobbled together dream machine had a mechanical woopsie a few miles into its maiden voyage.

I wasn’t disappointed by the forest or the bike. yes I’d have liked a little more bike only singletrack and a little less shared path with a lot of dog walkers, but the sections of bike specific track were as advertised fast , flowing and fun without breaking either myself or the bike. As for the Bike, well it was just as I hoped, nimble, light and ‘chuckable’ as only a short travel 26′ bike can feel (imho). Apart from a quick pitstop to tighten the saddle clamp which had worked loose and to adjust the position of the brake levers and shifter the bike was faultless. The fork is definitely dancing its last waltz after a long and distinguished career, but Ian had warned me that it was on borrowed time but it’ll be fine for now (famous last words).

So to sum up – I really didn’t need this bike, but I’m very glad I’ve got it, and that surely makes it worth it when we’re talking about what value things like a bike bring into your life 🙂