We showed you Trek’s new, lighter Remedy recently and we had a chance to ride on at Interbike. Not, alas, the rather lovely carbon fibre model – for reasons best known to itself, Trek was only letting dealers ride that one. These days, though, an aluminium bike is almost a novelty, so it’s all good. This is the Remedy 8, which’ll cost you £3,000 in the UK – there’s also a Remedy 7 at £2,300, with the 9.8 and 9.9 being the carbon bikes.

The Remedy has been somewhat refocussed for 2010, being more all-mountain and dropping any hint of freerideyness. To that end, the frame has been lightened (although mainly in areas like the rocker link – the front end is as beefy as ever) and the spec has been deburlened. The most obvious example is the fork. In 2009 the Remedy sported a Fox 36, while the 2010 Remedy 8 gets an F32 TALAS with tapered steerer and QR15 axle. At full length there’s 150mm travel from the fork, perfectly matching the back end.

At the back end the Remedy now has a dual-chamber DRCV shock, first seen on the Gary Fisher Roscoe last year. It’s effective out on the trails – mostly linear feel, no saggy bit in the middle and a bit of ramping at the end. The Remedy sucked up everything we chucked it at in a notably controlled manner.

We loved the handling, too. It might have gone more all-mountainy, but Trek has kept things fairly relaxed. The listed angles are 68/73, although we measured up the demo bike at 67/74. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top tube came up a little shorter than the official number too. Whatever the numbers, the Remedy is in the increasingly-popular slack front/steep back school (to a lesser or greater extent depending on which numbers you go with), which works well. You have to haul the bike around a bit at lower speeds, but that just makes you feel more involved.

It’s pretty decent on the climbs, too. We weighed this one at 13.9kg (30.6lb) with bog-basic SPDs on, which is entirely acceptable. That steep seat angle helps to keep the bike on line up hill, and if it gets really steep there’s always the TALAS lever to help out.

We like the Remedy a lot – based on riding the aluminium one, the lighter carbon fibre model should be a proper hoot. More details at www.trekbikes.co.uk