But at his point it all falls miserably apart. For all the Foxy’s big talk the back fails to deliver because under that mythical forward geometry lies a bike that is really only a skinny 140mm travel trail bike. It’s a stiff 140mm bike yes, and it’s true that in smoother faster singletrack with less acute cornering the bike delivers great stability and speed, yet that type of riding is but a small part of trail riding. The 160 fork wasn’t put there to look pretty, it was meant for action.

There is such a mismatch going on with the Foxy that no matter how much attitude of the angles or the aggression that the Fox 34 provides the poor little Foxy with its poorly performing rear simply cannot live up to the expectation. It was very disappointing.

The benefits of the longer front centre on the Foxy were clear, this would be especially beneficial on the steeper terrain. Given the Foxy’s lack of muscle the longer travel Dune seemed a far better option for the ‘Forward geometry’ concept. The Dune XR arrived for some enduro style action – rides consisting of short downhill stages linked with pulls back up fire roads.

At over 48” long the Foxy was a juggernaut, it required an adjustment to your standard riding style, it was more of a downhill bike in angles, in fact it was longer than pretty much most of the top bikes on the World Cup circuit! The Dune XR arrives much shorter – 20mm shorter for some reason – which seems opposite to normal behaviour, for longer travel bikes are characteristically longer up front. Not so with the Dune, although it’s still over 47” on the wheelbase numbers. To put into perspective a size large Dune XR (2013) is still longer than any other 150/160mm enduro style bike on the market.

We now had a 180mm Fox fork bossing the show up front, but with 160mm at the rear the Dune was bound to be more than capable at the point when singletrack becomes slightly more feral. We still had the magic numbers to guess when cutting the fork down and we were still cautious when tightening the pivot bolts. And off we went again.>>