Month: February 2024

Joe Varndell has a pretty cool story.

Not only is he super talented on a mountain bike, but he actually studies mountain biking at college. Yep – that’s really a thing you can do now!

Joe joined the Starling Cycles team a few years back and went on to enrol into BASE College in Scotland, studying mountain biking full-time.

BASE is the Borders Academy of Sporting Excellence (BASE) Mountain Biking Performance course, based out of the Borders College in Peebles, Scotland.

Joe’s time at BASE is spent learning how to be a better rider and racer, but also sports science, psychology, coaching skills and everything you need to be an all-round expert two-wheel athlete.

Because we think Joe is rad and we think his story is rad, we decided it was time to put him in the spotlight.

And to add just a little extra element to the story, we recruited EWS racer, veteran rider, BASE tutor and filmmaker Innes Graham to tell the story.

Good luck for the rest of the year, Joe! We’re looking forward to seeing him graduate with flying colours and go on to set some blistering times at the races this year.

You can follow Joe here on Instagram.
And learn more about Joe’s bike, the Starling Cycles Murmur here.

BikePerfect’s Starling Cycles Roost Review Has Landed!

Another review just landed – this time for the Starling Cycles Roost hardtail and courtesy of BikePerfect.

This one’s our first-ever review on Bike Perfect and they’re off to a great start, awarding the Starling Roost an almost perfect score of 4.5/5.

The Starling Cycles Roost is our high-end hardtail mountain bike frame. It’s made from beautiful stainless steel and built to be bullet-tough, bags of fun and perfectly balanced to be as good up as it is along and down.

It’s not a super-slack gravity monster, it’s not a steep-and-scary XC whippet, It’s designed to be a super capable, all-rounder that can be pushed really flippin’ hard.

So what did BikePerfect think?

Reviewer Rich spent a couple of months on the Roost, razzing it through the winter and around plenty of Welsh trails centres and sneaky, off-piste tracks.

He praised the ‘feel’ of the Starling Cycles Roost’s steel tubing saying “I’d forgotten the much more forgiving nature of steel tubing which (when built properly) has a compliance that takes the sting out of rough trails and massively improves the ride. That feeling helped to ramp up my confidence”.

He also noticed a big difference between steel and alloy in back-to-back testing saying “The difference between the bikes was stark and the aluminium bikes felt incredibly stiff and harsh compared to the Roost”.

And of course, he loved the ride, finishing the review by saying:

If you’re after a capable, lively, highly versatile and really fun to ride MTB, the Roost should definitely be right up there on your shopping list.

You can read BikePerfect’s Starling Cycles Roost hardtail mountain bike review here.
You can learn more about the Starling Cycles Roost here.

Rob from The Loam Wolf dropped into Starling Cycles to collect his long-term review Starling Cycles MegaMurmur – our long-travel, steel-framed 29er.

Loam Wolf has followed Starling for a while now, reviewing the V2 Murmur back in 2018, our prototype Spur gearbox bike, later joining us for a factory visit and then reviewing the Roost hardtail.

Rob will be riding the bike throughout 2024 and using it as a test bed for a load of LoamWolf review components. Given how tough, easy to maintain and low hassle our bikes are it feels like the perfect tool for the job. Especially for a year of brutal Scottish trails on Rob’s local hill.

Starling supplied the frame and shock, Rob brought along his own selection of hand-picked components and James did the building.

Keep an eye out for Rob’s Mega’ over on The Loam Wolf soon.

You can learn more about the Starling Cycles MegaMurmur here.