1 Whyte 403 from £599 Suitable for kids from 8 to 12 Whyte bikes re designed in the UK and regularly win ‘Bike of the Year’ awards. Their 901 has been called the ‘best hardtail mountain bike ever’. The 403 is a mini version of those bikes capable of serious off-road use these bikes are perfect for any mini- mountain bikers out there. Trek Wahoo from £300 Suitable for kids from 6 to 12. The Trek Wahoo bikes come in 3 sizes and each size comes in 6 different colours so it’s easy to find one your kids will like. The Wahoo is built as a mini hybrid bike so it will be easy to ride on the street or around the local park but it can also handle a bit of off-road riding if needed. CYCLES UK (Greenwich) 135 Creek Rd, SE8 3BU t: 0208 692 3148 e: info@cyclesuk.com w: cyclesuk.com Most of us can remember getting a bike for Christmas and how well, or badly, our parents managed to hide it. Picking it, storing it and wrapping it it, storing it and wrapping it continues to be a challenge for mums and dads but regardless of the latest games and tech trends, bikes remain one of the most popular presents for children. These days you can buy cheap kids’bikes all over the place. Supermarkets and websites like Amazon and eBay are flooded with low-priced kids’bikes at this time of year. The problem with many of these is that they are cheap for a reason. Buying a bike from a proper bike shop means there will be no nasty surprises on be no nasty surprises on Christmas morning. When you buy a kids’bike from a proper bike shop they will be able to give you advice on sizing and let your child sit on a range to test them for size (if that doesn’t spoil the surprise). They can also check the sizing of helmets and make sure they fit correctly too. Perhaps more importantly, the bike will be built for you. Many internet operations ship bikes as they come from the factory and you will have to put them together yourself. There are obvious safety issues if that isn’t done properly. CyclesUK also use the build process for quality control. We recently had a bad batch of bikes in from a very well-known kids’bike brand. We had to build four bikes before we got one we were happy with. The other three got rejected and sent three got rejected and sent back the manufacturer. That’s fine for us to do as a shop but lots of hassle for you if you are buying bikes online in the run up to Christmas. We’re also quite fussy about the kids’bikes we sell. There are lots of cheap brands out there that we won’t touch as the quality is just not good enough. We want kids to love their bikes and become dedicated young cyclists. Not only will this keep them fit and active, and give them great days out, they will also make excellent future customers for us. Getting those kids on great quality bikes now is the best way to make sure they fall in love with them. If you do need to keep the bike a secret CyclesUK can store it for you until the last minute so you only have to try and hide it at home for try and hide it at home for a couple of days, the only thing we won’t do is gift-wrap it for you, though we can point you to a few‘How to..’ websites, if you insist!