bike > Bike: Skills Weeks > Basque Skills Adventure

 

Great Rock and Basque MTB Team Up to Offer Mountain Bike Skills Training in Spain.

The 2011 Skills Week was a big success, you can click here to read the report. We are now taking bookings for our 2012 skills week with Great Rock’s Ed Oxley.

Overview
This winter I visited the UK for a holiday and squeezed in a trip to Ed Oxley at Great Rock, to have a go at one of his mountain bike skills training weekends. To say I was impressed is a bit of an understatement and I got a real buzz from the weekend, both in terms of improving my own bike skills and from watching the progression of the other 11 people on his course. You can read my thoughts on the course in the “News and Views” section. I thought about the course all the way home, in the pub that night, over breakfast the next morning and it occupied my thoughts for much of that day. By the following evening I had made my mind up and called Ed to ask him if he would be interested in a trip to the Basque Country to run a mountain bike skills holiday. Fortunately Ed is a man of excellent taste and has a love of the Basque region of Spain from a visit years before, so he jumped at the chance.

This trip will include everything that you would expect from our normal mountain bike weeks, with skills training from Ed incorporated into most days. We will make sure that we also have plenty of time to enjoy the fantastic riding we have here, and to help you enjoy this to the full we ride for 6 days instead of our usual 5, with uplifts each day, meaning around 700-1000m height gain for free. We will also do full uplift on at least two days to let us practice our downhill skills whilst resting our legs.

When
We will offer this holiday on the following dates in 2012:

• 14th – 21st July (Now Sold Out)
• 21st – 28th July

What
Mountain bike skills training by Ed will be incorporated into most days. We have six days of mountain biking so it would be overwhelming to try to do skills training all the time! The skills aspect on this trip will be less intensive than say on a UK trail centre based one day course. In 2010 we found a happy balance of riding the great local trails and putting in skills sessions as and when appropriate. Often we would ride a trail without stopping, then come back to it on a different day to practice skills on various features or sections of the trail. Ed starts with a demonstration and an explanation of  a technique. Next everyone has the chance to practice riding the section as many times as they they like, just pushing their bike back up to have another go. It’s really good to go and ride the whole trail again afterwards, without stopping, to see the difference. Often people just ride a big loop without ever stopping to try things more than once. With a few pointers from Ed and the chance to practice, it is amazing how your riding can progress. In the meantime Doug will be making sure that we ride the best trails in the area whilst tailoring the trails to the skills that Ed wants to practice.

Accommodation
We will stay in our fantastic urban accommodation, called literally “great view”. As soon as you arrive you will understand where the name comes from, with the garden offering breathtaking views over the town of Hondarribia and down the coast to Biarritz. You can have breakfast in the garden, or sun room, looking out as the sun climbs above the mountains we will be riding that day, or you can cool off with a quick dip in the swimming pool while you enjoy the same view. There is a garage where you can store and work on your bikes in the evening. We are also only a few minutes walk from the center of Hondarribia where there are some of the best bars and restaurants in the world according to the New York Times! Alternatively, if want to relax in the house for the night then there are kitchen and dining room facilities and we will do a food run to the supermarket at the start of the holiday.

Cost
This trip will cost €900. That includes accommodation, breakfast, guiding, skills training, uplift, video analysis and transfers. It doesn’t include flights, lunchs, dinners or drinks. For more details please have a look on the Great Rock Website or get in touch with Ed at ed@great-rock.co.uk.