Siu Hoi Luk

Dec 19, 20213 min read

Sunday Morn MTBiking

Updated: Jan 11, 2022

I recently got into mountain biking because of the thrill and nature aspect of it. Today I went out with my buddy Guo Ren (GR) who has been doing this for years and he showed me some of the easier trails for mountain biking. The route we took today was:

Rail Mall > Bukit Timah (partial) > Chesnut Park > Mandai Trail > T15 > Singapore Zoo

And back the same route to Rail Mall!

I stay near Buona Vista, so I had to ride to the rail mall via the green corridor. The paths are quite busy on Sunday mornings, so I took around 25 mins to get there from Buona. Along the green corridor, there's actually an entrance to the famous Clementi forest that got really popular last year when COVID-19 just broke out. It's a really peaceful trek that is just challenging enough to make it exciting. I've been there 3 or 4 times now and hope I get the chance to visit again and make a guide for that trail.

After meeting with GR at the rail mall, we went straight for the trails. We entered via Dairy farm nature park entrance. Our first (and probably toughest) route was trail 14, 15 and 16 of the Bukit Timah MTB trail. There was a series of drops in one of the sections, I managed the first few but when I got to the last 2, which were the steepest, I chickened out and just walked those. hahaha. Afterwards, it was pretty straightforward. We continued cycling towards Chestnut park via beluka trail and onto Chestnut Ave.

There's a large sheltered area just at the entrance to Chestnut Park where mountain bikers often rest at. There's also a Mountain bike rental shop here that you can rent from. But I have not tried these bikes yet and I'm not sure of the quality of these bikes. Today there were relatively few people here as it rained heavily the day before, making the trails wet and muddy.

From Chestnut entrance, we went onto the northern loop trails and cycled to the observation tower where we took a short break. After that, we continued down Gangsa track all the way to the entrance of T15. From there, we cycled along the road to Singapore Zoo!

The Trails were supper muddy that day as it rained heavily the past few days. Hence, my legs and basically my whole body was like the picture, covered in mud. Luckily, these kinds of mud stains are very easy to come off. Once dried, the sand particles can be brushed off.

We had KFC at the Zoo! but we were both muddy so we had to sit by our bikes for lunch. Our ride to the zoo was pretty interesting, we had gone on the same track a few months back, but this time the route was majorly different as a lot of construction had been finished. We were pretty shocked initially as the whole landscape had changed with fake rock features and an underground area that looked like hotel receptions (sry no pics). Then we realised that it was the future Bird Park in construction! We saw a large bird net/cage thing from afar.

Bird Park construction - Bird net/cage thing on the left

After lunch, we went back via the same way that we came!

Our bikes were rekt by the mud, spent an entire hour-plus cleaning all the mud off.

My Bike

The bike I'm using is a Polygon Xtrada 5, its a beginner kinda bike. Nothing fancy, just a simple hardtail mountain bike! The picture above is at pandan reservoir.

Link: https://www.polygonbikes.com/product/mountain/xtrada-5-5/

Some bike specs for you guys that are interested:

Frame: ALX XC 27.5” & 29”

Fork: SUNTOUR XCM-HLO, 120MM (27.5”) / 120MM (29”) TRAVEL

Rear Shock: -

Head Set: ZS 44/28.6 | ZS 56/40

Stem: ENTITY SPORT, ALLOY E:45MM BB:31.8MM

Handlebar: ENTITY SPORT, ALLOY W:760MM R:12MM BB:31.8MM

Rear Derailleur: SHIMANO, DEORE RD-M4120 10-SPEED

Shifter: SHIMANO DEORE SL-M5100/SL-M4100 2X10-SPEED

Bottom Bracket: BSA THREADED

Crank Set: PROWHEEL, VORTEX 551-TT-B 36-22T 10-SPEED