Mondraker Crafty x The Widowmaker

If there’s one trail that mountain bikers in the Plymouth area like to get stuck into it’s The Widowmaker. Notorious for its ability to absolutely trash your bike and leave you in the middle of nowhere the name was coined right back in the early 90s when attempting to ride this trail on a non suspension bike with substandard brakes left plenty of riders calling for the air ambulance. These days, modern bikes have taken the sting out of the tail, disc brakes and suspension have meant you’re less like likely to make a widow, more likely to just become a divorcee thanks to the escalating cost of modern mountain bikes. 

Entering the Widowmaker at Nun's Cross, Dartmoor

On a recent video shoot for outdoor brand Manumit we got some saddle time with the Mondraker bikes Crafty RR, a full fat electric mountain bike that is more than capable of slaying the Widowmaker both down the downhill and even riding back up it. Mondraker is a Spanish bike brand, best known in the mountain bike scene for their attachment to race led development, they have been responsible for many of the accepted normals in mountain bike frame geometry and suspension in the past decade and they also make a pretty wild looking ride. 

Let’s talk about the bike first, these beasts come in at about £9K which is a lot of money, especially for a bike, but this is no normal bike. It’s running a Bosch electric motor with integrations to your smart phone, it’s got top of the range Fox suspension and a carbon frame. For an electric mountain bike it’s surprisingly unheavy and once you start riding the whole thing absolutely flies. A full day of riding up and down The Widowmaker and the bike still had 50% of charge at the end of the day and I am not a light rider. If you're interested in one then Rockets & Rascals on Plymouth's Barbican can get you in the saddle.  

Descending into the mist, it's like this at least 300 days a year (allegedly)

Now to the trail, so the top of The Widowmaker is at Nun’s Cross, a convergence of paths leading from Cadover Bridge and the "Scout Hut" towards Princetown. It’s the most direct route to get off the top of the moors and down to Burrator Reservoir so it’s reasonably popular with walkers, in terms of cyclists it’s less popular - largely due to the risk of injury. The trail begins with an hors d’oeuvre of rocks, lots of boulders and baby heads, if your bike survives this section puncture free then you cross Drake's Leat, drop into a nice little stream crossing then onto a slight uphill before the next section, a narrow rock filled gully with gorse bushes to both sides. Things then speed up as we hit the forest section and if you’re feeling the flow you can pull a few nice little jumps off the corners and hedge lines. The end section is fast and flowing as you feel Burrator reservoir draw near and plenty of options for a fun pedal back to Plymouth, or a visit to one of many moorland Pubs on the way home to Rockets & Rascals. 

The mid section gravity is less helpful

We’ll try to pull together a ride out to the trail this summer so keep posted on the socials, it’s a 3-4 hour ride but on a sunny day it’s a beauty. As you’ll see from the video, we didn’t get that luxury! 

The final edit of Mondraker x Manumit Apparel