All post is being diverted to our new address- 12 Rosebery Road,Dursley, Gloucestershire, GL11 4PT.

Our new address and phone number will be published as soon as the line goes live...

To help cope with demand we are adding a new "Gravity Weekend" in Chamonix on the 18th AUgust. This isn't a week aimed at downhill riders on 8" travel D bikes, but instead it's a holiday where pedalling is kept to a minimum, and we eke out every last inch of descending possible on a daily basis!

During your 4 night break you will get 3 days of riding including:

• Day 1 - "The Twister" switchbacks on hidden trails down through silent oak forests on leafy singletrack for over an hour, before a bit of lunch and heading up to tackle our newest trail "Twisted Sister" which descends from over  back into Chamonix on very high altitude trails. (1800m of descnding in a day)
• Day 2 - "Cham on Down" - an uplift day around the valley, mixing natural trails like "The Full Montets" with Chamonix's new manmade trails at Flegere and Le Tour - expect your lift pass to catch fire as we descend upto 5000m in one day!
• Day 3- "Border Attack" - descend all morning on our classic "Border Patrol" descent before catching a lift back up to take on "The Blair Switch Project" (pictured) in the afternoon - our two favourite trails in Chamonix. (about 2500m of downhill) The best natural singletrack you will ever see!

These 3 days of riding cover an enormous amount of ground in a short period of time - and at £370 this break represents amazing value as a result! This IS the riding you see in all teh movies and magazine photos!

We have 7 places available - so please be fast to avoid disappointment.

We can now offer a choice of accomodation, allowing you to book this holiday for as little as £395 in a basic 2* hotel, or £495 in our lovely normal upper-end 3* hotel. We have also added a 4* Spa Hotel for another £100 too...so there's a price to suit everyone's pocket!

The week is a great showcase of  the best descending in Andorra and uses a mixture of natural trails and bike park days - here is a rough itinerary:

- Sat - Arrive, luxury transfer from Barcelona Airport

- Sun - Ride from the door at Vallnord Bike Park - we'll show you the highlights of this huge park; it has something for everyone!

- Mon - Ride at Grandvalira Bike Park - possible coaching day with Oscar Saiz, coach to Danny Hart, 2012 World DH Champion

- Tue - Natural Uplift Day - using our vehicles we ride several of the finest natural descents, including "Local's Only", "Techfest" and "Big Cat"

- Wed - Day off at your leisure

- Thu- Vallnord Secret Trails - we'll show you the unmarked trails used by Cedric Gracia for training, and by Commencal for development

- Fri - The "100k" challenge - can you clock up a hundred klicks at Grandvalira Bike Park in a day? Free Dinner for the Winner!

We can't guarantee at this stage that Oscar will be available - but if he is he'll not only ride with us and give some hints and tips, but he'll probably come out for dinner at some point too - he has a lot of interesting stories to tell about his many years of racing, and now coaching, on the World Cup scene - and his other job as the boss of Grandvalira. We'll also try to get our sponsors at Vallnord to persuade a certain local recluse to venture out for a beer....but Mr Gracia is a difficult man to pin down these days!

The 100k challenge is a new addition for 2012 - if you want to take part make sure you bring either a GPS or a computer with you - and the person to descend the greatest number of kilometers wins dinner on us! You have to hit at least 100km though...that's 62 miles! It is possible....we think!

We shoot your group riding throughout the week, using cutting edge Drift HD onboard cams (thanks to Action Cameras UK) and also handheld HD cameras, and this footage is then edited up into a fantastic memento of your week. This takes us up to 10 hours of work to edit together, and is fully titled showing exactly who was there, where you were riding and all the names of the trails. We add great music and produce a great, professional looking movie of your week -  and are around 15 to 25 minutes long normally. Until now these have only been available to watch on youTube, but after investing in some new hardware and software we are now able to offer your movie on DVD. If your player supports it we can even produce your movie to watch in full High Definition!

Your DVD will come in a full-size case, complete with a customized cover using photos of your week....great for leaving on the coffee table as a talking point!

We are offering DVD 's for only £15, despite the amount of work that goes into them. We will be offering this as a standard option with all new bookings, and we can also produce DVDs for any weeks in the past, so if you have already had a holiday with us and want to watch your movie on the big screen please let us know!

Here's an example of one of our weekly movies....

Click here to view the embedded video.

We have been able to slice a full £100 off the price of our Andorra holiday thanks to our Sponsors at Vallnord Bike Park, who have helped us negotaite some very special rates at a local 2* hotel, based 30 seconds from the nearest lifts! The accommodation is much more basic than our normal hotel (which is a high end 3*), but it's clean, with private rooms and en-suite facilities - and unlike the 3* hotel it is in the heart of the town centre close to all of the shops and evening entertainment. The 2* hotel is owned by a more expensive hotel across the road, where you go for breakfast and can use their facilities.

Therefore by going for the Budget Option you can now book for Andorra for only £395 per week instead of our normal £495! If you'd rather go upmarket we are now also offering a 4* option too - watch this space for news very soon! We'll also be offering a new unguided Vallnord Bike Park holiday from only £245....news coming soon.

You won't miss out on anything else - it is only the accomodation that is 2* - you'll still get the full 5* Singletrack Safari treatment in every other way!

These prices are available immediately for all of our dates during June, July, August and September - for full details of prices and availability please click here.

We introduced our "Gravity Week" in Andorra last year, and it sold out completely! For 2012 we have introduced more of them - and now they are available in The Alps too.....be quick, we expect these to sell out very rapidly.

Whilst not specifically a "downhill" week, these holidays are about using the lifts to do all of the hard work to allow you to maximise the fun you have coming back down! All the riding is designed to be suitable on a regular trail bike - it's simply aimed at people who prefer to spend their time on the descents! A lot of people simply don't enjoy climbing, some people are worried about their fitness, whilst others like to use the holiday to take some time off climbing or, of course, you may be someone who only rides downhill - whichever description fits you this holiday will leave you very happy indeed!

It's not all about big-travel bikes and full face helmets (although if that is how you like to ride you will have a fantastic time too!) - the holiday is really aimed at people who simply want to increase the amount of time they spend descending. We will use a selection of specially-designed routes that start from the top of the lifts and allow you to ride all day with minimal climbing...there's still the odd bit here and there to get to some of the natural descents - but nothing more than a few minutes long - whilst on many days there simply won't be any climbing at all!

Here's the itinerary (plus some videos) for the week:

Sat - luxury transfer to Chamonix hotel from Geneva airport

Sun - Chamonix Uplift Day - including the amazing "Blair Switch Project" and "The Full Montets" and much more!

Mon - Portes Du Soleil Playday - we'll get you to Les Gets, Morzine, Avoriaz, Chatel and Champery in one day!

Tue - Border Patrol - our favourite trail in the World, full stop.

Wed - Day off at your leisure in Chamonix - late afternoon transfer to hotel in Alpe D'Huez

Thu - The Everest Challenge - can you descend the height of Everest in a day at Les Deux Alpes? That's 8,848m or 29,029ft!

Fri - Ride the Megavalanche - you can ride this trail on nearly any bike - you can conquer it too. Don't believe us? See the video below!

Sat - Luxury transfer to Geneva from Alpe D'Huez

Click here to view the embedded video.

Normally priced at a £365 per person we are now offering some enormous savings when you book for 2 or more people...four people can save a frankly ludicrous £565. That means per person you only end up paying £233.75 each for a week-long holiday!

Yes, this is quite frankly a very, very silly offer - only made possible because we have managed to strike some great deals with our accomodation providers on your behalf.....

Person 1 - £365
Person 2 - £265 - SAVE £100
Person 3 - £165 - SAVE £200
Person 4 - FREE! - SAVE £565

What's the spec and cost?

High Roller II 26x2.4 EXO Folder 60a compound, £39.99

So, if the original is so great, why mess with a winning formula, right? What makes this a better tyre?

Well, firstly the original was a little prone to suddenly washing out sideways when it reached the limit of it's traction - which admittedly took some effort - so this one has slightly angled side knobs which help resist this and give some additional cornering confidence. This is combined with a broader central tread to ensure there's always some bite whilst leaning into corners as you shift weight onto the shoulders of the tyre.You'll also notice that all of the knobs are now more detailed with sipes (the little cuts in the blocks) and slightly concaved edges - this should make the tread more flexible in certain directions by allowing the rubber to flex.The final difference in tread shape is that the braking surface is now more aggressively designed to bite when you throw out the anchor - the central knobs are squarer on the leading edge which should help them dig as you, er, tug.

Secondly, this tyre is noticeably deeper than it's folding 2.35 predecessor. We like a folding tyre here at StS (when you are riding up 1000m climbs it's a sensible place to try to shave a bit of weight)  - but the 2.35 LUST folder was ridiculously lacking in the carcass depth department. Few reviewers have mentioned these differences - but one of the reasons we stopped using High Rollers for guiding was that  the carcass was so shallow - reducing the air volume and therefore the ability of the wheel to shrug off rock strikes.....important in places like Spain and Andorra. 

Despite what you might have read elsewhere it certainly seems a wider tyre too - we don't have an old High Roller kicking around to measure, but it was a well-documented fact that the 2.35 came up as being closer to a 2.2. Well, I have just measured the tread width on a DT Swiss XP1600 rim at 2.38", with the carcass being 2.28". That's a decent sized set of boots.

How does it perform? Is it really better?

In a word, yes! We just spent 9 days riding this tyre in North Wales in all conditions imaginable - trail centre hardpack, wet mud, moist moss-covered rocks, gravelly berms, lethally slippery roots and dry flowing turns (we had a bit of a mixed bag of weather) - and it performed remarkably in all of them. And I don't use the word "remarkably" lightly - these seemed to offer far more grip in the wet than I remember the original High Roller possessing - it was always good for traction and drive, but the older HR never seemed to hook up especially well in the wet...I used to swap to faithful Bonty Jones Muds for the sticky season. In this iteration of the High Roller however, it's hard to see why you need a different summer/winter tyre choice to cope with differing conditions - they just grip and grip and, then, just when you expect them to let go, grip some more.

In corners the Cube Stereo Race was transformed - and the enormous contrast from the outgoing tyres (Schwalbe Fat Albert Triple Compound 2.4's) simply served to even further drive the point home. Suddenly, rather than "just" being a great all-mountain bike the Stereo was transformed into feeling like a rip-snorting mini-DH bike. In part this also came from a cockpit change (more of that in a later review) made at the same time - but from a pure grip perspective I was able to lie the bike down into flat corners to a far greater degree, and I could attack the new berms on Coed Y Brenin's fantastic new blue-graded "Slipway" section without even giving consideration to the brake levers.

Braking power - as always with High Rollers - was fantastic too, but it was the wet weather cornering that was the noticeable step-up from the original, along with an unerring new ability to clear claggy mud. On one particularly soggy section the person I was riding with found their tyres really struggling to clear - not so with the HRII's. What tyres did he have? None other than my previous winter go-to-tyres, the Jones Mud.

How are they wearing?

Well, after 9 days of attacking the rocky, abrasive trails in Snowdonia with new-found-grip-based aggression there's not really any signs of wear at all! (The photos here were taken today, after the trip.) A recent review in MBR mentioned that the 3C version was showing some pretty severe degradation after a 10 day trip to the Alps - well, from what I have seen so far there's plenty of grip to be had from the 60a version - with none of the longevity issues. However, I'll be sticking some 3C's on the Cube Hanzz big rig for uplift duties next summer to see how they go!

VEDICT 9/10

These tyres really smacked me violently about the face and neck with their rubbery loveliness. Go and buy some immediately. And we mean immediately - we've been told by a retailer that Maxxis prices may be about to go up by about 25%...even so, these are gert lush rim huggers.

For a preview of what happened - including the days we rode with our friend Oscar Saiz (coach to brit Danny Hart, 2011 DH World Champion) and Lisbon Downtown hero Roger Gonzalez have a look at our amazing new video!

We think this is the best video we've ever done - and it's a proper moster at 18 minutes! Remember to "like" it please, and share it on Facebook too....

Click here to view the embedded video.

We have only very limited availability for the breaks in Spain (May 26th) and Andorra (July 7th) - so get your bookings in as soon as possible to secure a place!

The Spanish break is based in a fantastic 4 star hotel - making it an incredible bargain at only £365. With an airport transfer time of only 55 minutes this is the perfect short break destination - amazing trails are only hours from your door.....

In Andorra our hotel sits at the foot of the trails - and as you may have seen on pages 12 and 13 of November's MBR magazine it is a stunning setting for a long weekend away! The full article will appear in their pages over the New Year period - so we expect to be heavily booked in 2012...and with 4 nights priced at £370 it's sure to be in demand.

In the Alps our 4 night breaks are based from our hotel in Chamonix - allowing us to ride the world famous trails around the town, and also venture a little further afield for a day in Morzine, Les Gets and the Pass'Portes du Soleil route - a staggering amount of riding for a 4 day break priced at only £380.

For full details of pricing, dates and availability visit our Prices and Booking page.