“…owning a Morewood is akin to running an Apple Mac, or grinding your own coffee beans: slightly left of field and the mark of a connoisseur…”

Patrick Morewood has been building bikes by hand in Pietermaritzburg for over a decade, and in that time has built a reputation for no-nonsense downhill machines that look the part, and do the job too.
In South Africa, owning a Morewood is akin to running an Apple Mac, or grinding your own coffee beans: slightly left of field and the mark of a connoisseur.

Sure, more than 90 percent of Morewood’s sales are in the company’s overseas markets (mostly in the US and Europe), so it was only with the introduction of the five-inch-travel Shova bikes a few years ago that they began to make a name for themselves in South African cycling, outside the cliquey downhill market.

The Shova is a truly great trail bike – robust and plush. The bike that can bomb any trail, but a little porky for the South African mindset, which seems hell-bent on racing everything and anything. Few Morewood owners tackle the Epic on their Shovas, even though it would be a wonderful ride, because we have created a whole category of bikes for these long events: marathon bikes. Generally, they are skinny and lightweight and have four inches of travel. And they are usually expensive and fragile. This is an area of the scene Morewood has been looking at for a number of years, realising that the Shova was never going to be seen as a race machine. For them the main dilemma was how. It would be easy to fly to Taiwan, speak to a couple factories, and have a carbon frame made up. But that is not their MO. The company has been built – and has thrived – on its bomb proof reputation, and the fact that all the frames are built by hand in South Africa. Patrick has since been joined by two more welders to keep up with the demand. Aluminium, hand-built here, was the only way to go.

Guru

And so it is that i meet Morewood’s marketing guru in Tokai forest early one morning. Bleary eyed, we drag the bike out of his rental, and the first thing that strikes me is the simplicity and the raw beauty of the bike. Sweeping curves, a seductive red paint job and a beautifully crafted swingarm certainly get the growing love affair off to a cracking start. It is completely different to anything we have seen from Morewood – no oversized square tubes, no Doppler effect graphics – this was the gorgeous cousin come to visit.

The Faerie Garden at Tokai is the first opportunity I have to pedal the bike in anger, outside the car park. It is a twisty, tight singletrack climb, with switchback corners, muddy roots and the sort of thing wicked race organisers love to throw in for excitement. The ride up was a revelation.

Stuck in Morewood-is-heavy mode, I was blown away at how light and nimble the bike was. This, of course, is because it is light and nimble. At just 10.4kg, you will have to shop extravagantly to match its weight. A quick peek at the spec sheet on this page will show you that the standard built leaves plenty of room for further weight savings, but the guys at Morewood are happy with the balance between sveltness and reliability they have here.

And the geometry just plain works, with the front end staying pinned to the ground on the steep stuff and the rear wheel digging in and demanding traction from the terrain.

Coming back down, and we hit the woop zone with this bike: if you want to get through technical terrain fast, look no further. Steering is precise – often the Sid Team fork can feel a little soft, but not here – and the aggressive, low position just made railing the corners fun, fun, fun. It is difficult to tell you how the rear suspension coped with everything, but that is exactly how it should work – the back end was as smooth as butter, with only the occasional chatter under hard braking. If anything, it was too smooth, because it made us wonder whether the fork was okay;it felt harsh by comparison.

Super plush

“…this bike is totally ready for multi-day and 24-hour racing…”

Climbing back up again we focused on the rear some more.It is super plush, but without soaking up all your pedaling energy. Standing and honking will produce some bob, as will mashing the pedals when seated, but then there is no suspension setup that doesn’t – or at least not on that actually works.

Much of the development of this bike was done in conjunction with local racing legend Roan Exelby, and two aspects come through directly from him; this bike is totally ready for multi-day and 24-hour racing, and the days of the hardtail as a race machine are numbered. The extra control and comfort – now that the weight of the bikes has dropped – makes such a big difference that the more and more top racing snakes are going this way.

In fact, Morewood and Exelby have been doing plenty of testing on the new bike (and the old hardtail Roan was riding), and the raw data has shown that the full-suspension bike fully-open, is up to three seconds faster – in blind testing – over 10-minute loop.Extrapolate that over a six-hour race and factor in growing fatigue on the hardtail, and the difference is marked.

As a single pivot, the simplicity is wonderful, and i am glad Morewood has stuck to its guns here – the last thing most of us are looking for in a bike is a complicated suspension system that requires heaps of maintenance. Morewood believes in an oversized sealed bearing pivot, and has spent years perfecting it for the demanding downhiller market. Here, it will be reliable and strong, and if you do decide to ride through grinding paste, will only cost about R250 to replace the working parts!

Beast

A bike that could comfortably win the Absa Cape Epic.

Eventually, it was time to return the unnamed beast. We did so reluctantly. Morewood has a real winner here: it is practical, simple, balanced, reliable and, above all fast. A bike that could comfortably win the Absa Cape Epic. But also a bike that will give a regular rider years of fun Morewood’s ethos is to build bikes that maximise riding time and enjoyment. It has managed that here, with a bike that is simple to service, easy to ride and great fun.

It is a real world beater, and if Morewood can shake the image that its bikes are overbuilt and heavy tag, they will fly from the shops. Already, there are more than 40 pre-orders on a bike that isn’t even available yet – the one we rode is one of four prototypes – and it hasn’t even been shown to the German, French or American markets.

Sweet

“…here is a bike that rivals any, and outperforms many…”

The most important bike in South Africa? Let me tell you why I say that, quickly. we are besotted with overseas equipment and bikes, and often we don’t realise that these objects of lust are built by tiny factories in barns in the middle of America. They are built in far smaller, less professional operations than right here, on our door step. And here is a bike that rivals any, and outperforms many, of those ultra-desirable boutique brands (outside South Africa it is actually a desirable boutique brand) and it is made right here. I promise myself not to use the phrase “local is lekker” in this review. I am struggling.