What was your lockdown project? Sourdough bread? A morning fitness regime? A pallet-wood garden seat?

Ours was a dirt-jump bike..

With so many of our ambassadors continually extolling the virtues of a session at the track, trails or pumptrack, we knocked some very talented heads together and sketched out a design.

For the working prototypes we called on Sheffield framebuilder Matt Bowns of 18 Bikes to metal glue-gun us together 4 identical frames.

We sent these 4 frames up to Five Land bikes for a bath in the E-coat and a few layers of lovely glossy black paint.

Finally back to Sheffield for some custom graphics from HKT Products (the keen eyed will notice these as a tester for the amazing Afterburner paint on the new Jeht).

3 frames went out to the ambassadors - King of Bolehills Dave Camus, A Line coaching Gareth Jones and Perennially steezy Will Easey. The last one stayed in the family as a test / photo / pumptrack mule. We had some help from Mark at Fabric who supplied each of the bikes with Magic saddle and grips but obviously Camus went much further with his build... No bolt was left un-anodised, and the whole thing looks like it fell backwards through the Hopetech factory - in a good way.

Built with Reynolds 853, tough 26" wheels and top notch parts, these bikes ride like a bloomin' dream! They're light, tough and lightning quick.

They're also not for sale!

We don't know about your local, but Bolehills BMX track has been at (socially distanced) capacity morning, noon and night, for pretty much the whole of the summer. Reliable, small and uncomplicated bikes like these have saved the sanity of so many people (and parents) this year. Unfortunately with the massive delays on production in the far east, the thought of upsetting the (already brimming) apple cart by adding in another new model isn't the most sensible idea right now so whilst the project has been more-than fun, that's all it is at the moment. Please don't email us about getting hold of one of these, it's not happening in the near future. However, if you're in the market for a pump track bike then you could do a lot worse than try the BFe 27.5 More than a few customers have already purposed a BFe for track razzing duties.

So rather than sit on a bunch of media for a bike that might not see the light of production for a long while, here's a selection of sunny photos which will hopefully inspire you to venture to your closest track and see what all the fuss is about.

Young Joel Blomfield of Shralp Clothing borrowed his dads old Mongoose kit for a little session. It's a funny one when your "new" clothes are twice as old as you.

You can get pretty lucky with conditions at places like Bolehills. Surfaced tracks are built to drain well and withstand thousands of hours of use. You might find that they are still running well into winter, when all the usual trails are a soggy mess. And the newer tarmac ones are even more reliable. Be sure to check out the BMX and Pumptrack directory for your closest spot.

Most of these places are built with love and passion. Sure a council might occasionally pony up a little cash, but most of the time the scenes are built by volunteers; you can pay back your stoke by lending a hand at dig days, picking up litter or sometimes just buying a t shirt or sticker from the locals to help pay for some more surface. Cotic donates a percentage of its profits each year to trail maintenance schemes and it's not just mtb routes that reap the benefits. As the artist Cy Whitling says, "Being local isn't defined by how much you've taken from a place, but by how much of yourself you can invest into it."