• True North
• £18.50
• www.descent-world.co.uk

Ah, bike videos. It doesn’t matter how comfy your saddle, it’s never going to match your sofa. And generally it’s warm and dry in your front room. Unless you’re a student, probably. In cases of extreme exterior nastiness, a good bike vid is the cure. Plenty of sunshine, dusty trails, big-name riders doing crazy stuff…

That’s most bike vids anyway. descent-world’s True North is a little bit different, though. Sure, there’s sunshine and dusty trails in various foreign locations (Spain, France, Italy) and big names aplenty. But this video hails from Scotland, and there’s a healthy dollop of local flavour. Which occasionally means thick mud and heavy rain, but always great riding.

What we’ve got here is a film following a bunch of Scottish (and a few English) downhillers at a bunch of venues. Mainly at races, but with some dirt jumping segments to break things up. And there’s bona fide Real People in there too – not people you’ll have heard of unless you’re part of the Scots DH scene, but racers who show up at every race going, race because they love it and keep the whole thing rolling. This is their fifteen minutes of fame…

And that’s what we like about it. It’s not big, brash, glitzy or glamorous. It’s not an over-the-top freeride flick, it’s the best bits of reality – no-one here’s riding because they’re on a video, they’re riding either to win or for the hell of it. There just happens to be a camera pointing at them. And it works.

At 55 minutes it may be a tad long, but the editing’s pretty tight and it doesn’t outstay its welcome. And hell, you’ve got a remote haven’t you? Exactly.

Verdict: If you’re a downhill nut, this is a must-see. It’ll remind you why you do it. Keeping it real is a bit of a jaded term these days, but that’s what True North does…