Those of you who saw our recent story on the new Santa Cruz Blur range may have wondered if there was more to come. After all, we’ve been waiting for a bike to fill the gap between the Blur and the VP-Free for ages, and somehow the Blur LT didn’t quite look like it. The LT’s got 5.3in of travel, the Free’s got 8.5 – that’s still a pretty big gap.

Well, the wait is over – this is the Santa Cruz Nomad, a 6.5in travel VPP bike that’s intended to work as a long-travel, middleweight all-day trail bike or as a freerider for those who don’t need as much travel as the VP-Free. Just add components to taste.

The Nomad follows SC’s latest styling cues, with a distinctive hydroformed top tube and plenty of swoopy details. The bike pictured is a pre-production frame, but it’s very close to the real thing. There’s some impressive touches – the top VPP linkage looks massive but is actually two halves welded together to form a lightweight monococque-style link, the front shock mount is also a hollow unit and there’s some very tidy tubework on the swingarm.

We’ve had a brief ride on this one, and our first impressions are that SC is on to a winner. The Nomad has the travel and stability to straight-line all sorts of nastiness, but also has the “kick” and agility to work the trail for extra fun. Want to launch off a little rock or ping off a root? Go ahead, the Nomad won’t just suck your take-off from under you. On the other hand, if you want an easy time of it, the Nomad’ll point-and-shoot with the best of ’em. This could be the bike to convince those that reckon that long-travel bikes take all the fun out of it…

Santa Cruz reckons that the Nomad will be available before the Autumn trade show season, so look at some time around August. Pricing is to be confirmed but we wouldn’t expect any surprises – it’ll be more than a Blur but not as much as a VP-Free. We dare say that more details will shortly be available on www.santacruzbikes.co.uk. Full test as soon as we can…

In other SC news, the Santa Cruz UK demo fleet is hitting the road to give people a chance to try the bikes out on real trails. The first one is this weekend (16-17 April) at Laggan Forest (contact Bothy Bikes 01479 810111 for details), then it’s over to Glentress on 7-8 May (Hub in the Forest, 01721 721736). Next stop is Mountain Mayhem, Malvern Hills, 25-26 June, then Inevent’s Big Welsh Weekend (9-10 July, er, Wales) and finally Kona Sleepless in the Saddle at Catton Park on 27-28 August.