Author: Jamie Edwards

Aint Nothing Like Good Times And Bike Rides…

At the end of the day, it’s all about riding bikes in the woods. And so, if we can find an excuse to get the community together and go for a ride we’re to grab it with both hands!

And that’s how our Starling Owners Rides came about.

This month we hosted a Starling Cycles Owners Group ride, right here in the UK.

We put a shout-out on the Facebook Owners Group and met up at the awesome Forest of Dean Cycle Centre, AKA Pedalabikeaway.

We rode bikes, we drank beers, we made some new friends, we showed off our builds and, most of all, we just had a good laugh in the woods. Exactly what it should be all about.

The day started with a quick talk from Joe about the state of the bike industry, where Starling is at right now and what our plans are for the next year or so. Also about a couple of upcoming new bikes… watch this space for more on those.

And then, we hit the trails around Pedalabikeaway. We made a beeline for those steep, muddy and rooty runs that most of you probably know. They’re the exact trails that Joe designed the bikes for and exactly what he loves to ride. Perfect for our owners ride.

We chipped out a few steep and slippy ones, then nipped back to the Cycle Centre for lunch and a chat.

It was great to see the range of bikes that showed up, and see how a few of our owners like them setup. Poshest bike of the day probably goes to Owner’s Group Big Cheese Rob Williams for his stunning Stainless Murmur that’s dripping in Hope components.

With lunch onboard we bid farewell to a few riders and zipped back up the hill for a few more laps. It was more of Joe’s favourites and we lapped out those Mini-Enduro favourites. Short, steep climbs and some really fun, slippy and sketchy downhills. Perfect stuff.

Once the legs were cooked it was back to the centre for a bit of apres – because what’s a ride without a bit of a social and a beer to wash it down?!

How About Hosting Your Own Owner’s Ride?

We’ve hosted these rides before but with all the busyness of running a business, we’ll admit, it’s been too long since the last one in South Wales. This was our first chance to get everyone together in ages and we’re really keen not to leave it so long next time.

We’re aiming for another Starling Cycles UK Owners Meet in the Autumn, with updates on our mailing list and social.

If you’d like to host an Owner’s Ride in your country, please give us a shout. We’d love to support you, help organise and throw some resources your way. We’d really love to see a whole load of Starling Owners meet up all over the world.

You can join the Starling Cycles Owners Group on Facebook here.

Are you a German Starling Cycles Owner, or Steel Bike Rider?

IronWorkx.De are hosting a Bike N’ BBQ Camp for Starling Riders (but all riders are welcome) May 9-12th. You can find out more here and contact them to register.

We love April Fools here at Starling – but we thought we’d try something different this year. 

Rather than pretending to rebrand or make a goofy bike, Joe fancied a bit of a rant. 

You see, Joe’s biggest gripe is the idea that more technology, more money and more marketing BS equals more performance. 

When, in fact, it’s usually the opposite. 

April Fools is all about fooling people, all about a bit of BS. And Joe reckons the industry spends every day fooling people that more bikes mean more speed, more performance and more fun. We’re constantly being told that if we chase the latest and the greatest, the newest and the shiniest, 15% more of this and 5% more of that then we’ll be better riders. 

But it’s not all about throwing money at the problem. There’s more to it than that and – he reckons. It’s more about the thing stuck on top of the bike, than the bike itself. It’s more about hard yards than hard cash.

So for this year’s April Fools Joe has gone for a bit of a rant instead, talking all about BS in the bike industry and the April Fools joke that gets played on everyone every day of the year. All, of course, meant in good spirits and with a bit of tongue in cheek! 

See what Joe thinks all about bike industry BS and how to be a faster rider on the video… 

Hardtail aficionado Steve, AKA Hardtail Party, has had a Starling Cycles Roost hardtail on review for the last few months – and has just published his review.

The Roost is our stainless hardtail mountain bike frame. It’s designed to be a real all-rounder, for bombing tech or big and pedaly adventures. It’s built with super modern geo but isn’t too slack to be unwieldy. In short, it’s made to be super fun and super versatile. It’s exactly the kind of bike we want to ride. And, to be a little extra special, it’s made in beautiful, raw-look stainless steel.

And how did Hardtail Party feel about the Starling Roost? You’ll have to watch the review for yourself for the full story but (spoilers!) he REALLY liked it.

Here’s just a few of Steve’s comments from the review:

This thing corners like a dream!

Ooh – I like this thing. It is zippy. Wow, I’m surprised, it wants to kind of accelerate everywhere.

This bike is SO special. The guys at Starling really know how to tweak the geometry to get the most out of it. There’s so much special stuff going on here and there’s so much more going on here than it looks like on paper.

It’s for people with a little bit of ADHD and want to play and awaken the inner kid inside of them.

And just in case you missed it last year, Steve also published a First Look video of the Roost back when it first arrived at Hardtail Party HQ. It’s a great video to really dig down deep into the geometry of the Roost and get a feel for what the bike is all about.

You can check out Hardtail Party on YouTube here.

Find out more about the Starling Cycles Roost here – they’re in stock now and ready to ship.

We love getting our bikes featured on The Radavist… but how about when two get featured at once in a double-trouble, two-in-one feature? Now that’s something extra special!

The Starling Cycles Swoop is our super-versatile, steel mountain bike frame with 27.5″ wheels. It can be run in ‘Trail’ mode with 130mm travel or ‘Enduro’ mode with 160mm.

Switch the rear shock, adjust the shock mounts and you can jump back and forth between short-travel shredder and big-hitting, hard charger.

Partners Alex and Nikki both have Swoops of their own, one setup in Enduro and the other in Trail. With the unique situation of two riders on the same bikes in two different setups and both sharing the same adventures, The Radavist saw an opportunity for a double review.

No arguments here!

Nikki “wants a bike that rides well, looks good, and tunes out all the jargon” whilst Alex is a self-confessed “giant bike nerd”.

Despite their differences, both riders were attracted to our bikes because they were tired of mainstream bikes ageing quickly and becoming outdated in just a couple of years. They wanted bikes that looked good, descended well and would last for ages – no quickly out-of-date standards or dated looks.

Their builds are pretty interesting – both set their bikes up for rough, rocky and technical US riding but also to be capable of big rides and some bike-packing adventures. There’s nothing obscenely featherweight, but, both opted to keep the weight down and the rolling speeds up – with John’s Swooping coming in around 32lbs, whilst still running a Fox 34 and 2.4″ tyres.

On the trail, Alex reckons they’re having a blast on their Swoops. His bike is setup with big travel 160/170mm and says:

“Fast downhills are a breeze. The bike goes where you want it to with ease and feels confident. Mine eats up chunk better than hers of course, but they still take it all in stride. They soak up all the chunky and rough corners and love flying into supportive berms and ruts and bouncing right back out”

Nikki is a little more matter-of-fact in her review and Alex reports that:

“Nikki said that going uphill the bike rides “normal” and it “goes up rocks well.” Downhill is “not sketchy.” I have to agree”

Of course, we don’t want to spoil the review by copying and pasting the whole thing here so, we’ll let you read it for yourself right here on The Radavist.

Photos by John Watson / John Weinberg

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.