This article was produced in association with Scott
Life’s too short for bad coffee and heavy bikes, it’s said. Or at least that’s what Scott’s Tony Fawcett said last time I talked to him. He would say that. Although I don’t know who his preferred coffee roasters are, I do know that his bike brand recently launched the new Addict RC, which weighs 5.9kg in its top build.
Obviously nobody wants to drink bad coffee, but haven’t we in the last few years had it drummed into us that in the case of bikes, it’s aerodynamics that matters, not weight? According to the laws of physics, more watts can be saved by reducing wind drag until a point where gradient becomes so steep that speed drops below the point where aerodynamics have a significant effect. But there’s no formula for the amount of pure, sensory joy that riding a very lightweight bike produces, and Scott knows this – that’s why the Swiss brand created the Addict RC. At its launch back in November, I asked Scott’s lead engineer Max Koenen what the thinking was behind making a bike like this.
“It’s slightly unique, what we’re doing now,” he said. “Most of our competitors are unifying their competition race bikes but we decided not to – and one of the reasons was because the Foil RC is pretty light, close to the 6.8kg UCI rule, so the pro teams on flat stages will always go for the aerodynamic bike. But we saw room to make a lightweight bike that is a bit more for the consumer and the people not bound by the 6.8kg rule, so that’s why we went spectacular with the weight numbers.”
For the launch in November, Scott sent an Addict RC mainly for us to photograph for Rouleur 132. For the words, I interviewed Koenen and went into detail about how exactly the bike was conceived and developed. This time, I’m going to ride it.
perfect match
I’ve got the Addict RC Ultimate, which is the flagship frame made with Scott’s HMX-SL carbon construction. As well as reducing the frame weight in order to bring the new bike in under six kilos, Scott shaved grammes from other areas of the frame kit – the frame, fork, seatpost and hardware – and claims a 300g reduction in weight compared to the frame kit of its predecessor. The new Syncros integrated cockpit is 40g lighter for the same strength and stiffness, and a new seatpost is a claimed 10 per cent lighter and 30 per cent more comfortable. This top build comes with a SRAM Red groupset and the awe-inspiring Syncros Capital SL wheels, which weigh just 1,170g in this 40mm version thanks to a one-piece carbon design that moulds the rim, spokes and hub flange together, resulting in wheels that are unbelievably responsive. They’re the perfect match for the Addict RC Ultimate frame. Both are about lightness and speed and they complement each other in a really unique way. And, although they’re impressively silent like the rest of the bike, when they get to 30mph on smooth tarmac they start to sing – as I discover on the hilly route I’ve devised.
My Surrey Hills route ascends Leith Hill, whose tower built on the summit marks the highest point in southeast England. Then there’s Holmbury Hill, Radnor Lane, the descent into Peaslake and some lesser undulations until a right turn just before Cranleigh heads up the 21 per cent brute that is Barhatch Lane, the crux of the ride. Turning homeward, there’s the draggy A-road climb of Coast Hill before a finale up the iconic hairpins of Box Hill giving way to a sweeping highspeed descent towards Reigate down Pebble Combe.
To test the Scott, I’ve shoehorned into a 55-mile ride the highest, the toughest and the most iconic hills in Surrey and, meaningfully for me, I’m also passing close by Tenningshook, the name of the house that my grandfather built in the 1930s. Frank Smythe was a mountaineer who equalled the height record on Mount Everest as part of the British expedition of 1933. His ascent of Kamet two years earlier was the first peak over 25,000ft to be climbed. He was a household name and published over 20 books about his climbing – but he died of cerebral malaria when he was 48 so I never got to hear about any of it first hand. Life was sadly too short. I do know from his books, however, that he loved the English countryside even more than the Himalayas and chose that particular spot for his house, in the woods between Sutton Abinger and Holmbury St Mary, over anywhere else. In The Spirit of the Hills (1935) he describes a 50-mile walk in the Surrey Hills with a friend some years earlier, in which his mind must have been made up: “Home to an Englishman is not only his house, his street, his village or his town, it is the English countryside. To know how much it means you should walk over it as we walked during a moonlit night in June. It was a still, calm evening when Hugh Slingsby and I left Ashtead and the glow worms were plain to see on the slopes of Box Hill.” The next day they “lounged along the hills”, and he declared: “There can be few eminences whence the eye can take in more beauty than Holmbury Hill.”
It’s mid-February when I head out on the Scott for my Surrey Hills ride which quite humblingly is only five miles longer than my grandfather’s walk almost 100 years earlier. There are still no signs of spring, no carpets of drifting bluebells and even snowdrops seem thin on the ground. The daffodils are still tucked up inside their bulbs deep in the verges. The lanes have refused to dry out, even though it hasn’t rained all week. There is a low sun, and as I leave Dorking behind and drop into the little ring for the first steep section leading up to Coldharbour, the tightly packed, bare beech trees are creating a slow-motion strobe effect. As I climb higher, I also go deeper and darker – the lane narrows, the trees crowd in and there are high banks on either side as if the road is carved into the hillside. I more frequently descend this road in the opposite direction at 40 miles per hour or more and am looking out for cars coming up, conscious that there’s no emergency escape route for me or them. But now, spinning easily in the saddle, there’s time to take in the grotesque shapes that the moss-covered tree roots form in the banks. I’m getting green, leering trolls, grinning Gruffalos and wrestling rhinoceroses. I think about how when he was near the summit of Everest in 1933 without oxygen, my grandfather apparently saw a UFO – much cooler.
It’s back to reality for a moment as the road levels out and emerges into the light for the Plough pub at Coldharbour, where mountain bikers and dog walkers are milling in the road. For a moment, good-humoured chaos reigns, everybody is saying, “Oh, sorry”, I get through and then do a slight right up a ramp that leads to the road running below Leith Hill’s summit. If it was a couple of months later I would admire the spectacular rhododendron bushes along here but, like other sensible deciduous azaleas, they’re still hibernating. Rhododendrons are more common in the Himalayas and I once heard a story that Frank Smythe introduced a subgenus to the UK. It’s not completely impossible – he was also interested in botany, brought plants and seeds back from expeditions, and one of his books, The Valley of Flowers, is all about this. I’ve been to Tenningshook just once, invited by its latest owners, and we didn’t explore the garden, but I do remember huge rhododendron bushes when I visited Yew Tree Cottage in Colgate, where Frank lived with Nona after he and my grandmother divorced and Tenningshook was sold.
This section is twisty and the surface has got a lot worse since I was last here, but the Scott feels nimble and responsive and the low weight comes in handy for bunny-hopping the worst potholes. The Addict RC has clearance for 34mm tyres, which necessitated a reworking of the geometry: the bottom bracket was lowered to equalise the centre of gravity, the seat tube moved forward 5mm to make more space for the bigger rear tyre and fork rake increased to achieve the same trail values as before – but crucially keeping rider contact points the same as before and aligning with the geometry of the Foil RC, the aero bike used by Scott’s pro teams, so that riders can switch quickly from one to the other.
The chilly descent on the north side of Leith Hill, where the woods thin out and the light comes back, will take me as close to Tenningshook as I’ll get on this ride, but now I’m thinking about taking a good line and leaning the Scott into the 90-degree left-hander that can feel unexpectedly tight after a fast, long descent. But no such trouble with this bike – it nails bends going down just as it does going up. I could have taken it faster. Now up and over Pasture Wood with a brief and slightly longing glimpse into the gateway of Heartwork Coffee, but I ignore the pull of the flat white and little biscuit, press on and start climbing Holmbury Hill Road, skirting below that point where my grandfather claimed the eye couldn’t take in any more beauty, until I’m faced with the unlikely sight of the entrance to the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, the UK’s largest space research group that’s been behind satellite launches for decades. Fittingly, out of sight and around the corner to the right of the gateway, the road goes steeply skywards without any countdown, and if you’re not ready for it and in a low gear at this point the launch might need to be aborted. I’m a big fan of the latest SRAM Red, which shifts the derailleur up to the largest sprocket cleanly under a decent amount of pedalling force until it engages with a muted, woody thunk that resonates through the frame. Scott achieved the Addict RC’s raw frame weight of 600g thanks to an innovative PP mandrel manufacturing process. This is a high-precision moulding of inner surfaces and transition zones that leaves the inside of the frame super clean without voids, wrinkles or excess resin, leaving only what’s necessary for stiffness and strength, and I’m sure that the smooth insides of the tubes are what creates the sound. To me it’s a little like the sound of a double bass string hitting the fingerboard then being amplified by the thin-walled, hollow body.
royal visit
It’s back down to earth momentarily in Peaslake, the mountain bike mecca of the Surrey Hills, and then straight out and up again in the direction of Ewhurst. There are neat paddocks sloping upwards to the right, and a little further on looms the grade II-listed Victorian pile that was the home of Sir Henry Doulton, founder of Royal Doulton, and is now the Duke of Kent private school. Clearly there was more money in lavatories than in mountaineering, but Henry Doulton and Frank Smythe shared the almost fanatical love for the Surrey Hills. According to the school’s website, Doulton’s biographer Edmund Gosse wrote that Sir Henry had been “permanently bewitched by the beauty of the spot in which he chose to build his house. He announced, with a conviction that he maintained to the last, that there was more beauty of scenery in the parish of Ewhurst than was to be found, equally composed and combined, in any other parish in England. When gently reminded that he had not seen all the English parishes, he admitted it and said that after seeing Ewhurst, one would not want to see them.”
This is the last opportunity to breathe in the prettiness of the surroundings. Barhatch Lane, which comes next, takes your breath away with its unrelenting steepness. It’s 1.5 miles with a maximum gradient of 21 per cent and a road sign at the bottom warning of this, but that comes near the top after the gradient has steadily increased for a mile. Simon Yates has the Strava KOM with 5:34 and an average speed of 16.4mph. I did it in 9:44 with an average of 9.4mph. It sounds slow, but when I last rode it in summer 2024 I didn’t get inside 10 minutes even though I was fitter and was training for the Maratona dles Dolomites. I’m going to put it down to riding this very light bike. And last time, I was riding the Van Rysel RCR Pro, which is not heavy. The awesome Syncros Capital SL wheels are a big contributing factor on a really steep road like this. A lot of torque goes through them in bottom gear, low cadence and high wattage and it’s actually possible to feel the stiffness and lightness working for you.
That said, I don’t mind admitting that the next part of the ride is a bit of a blur; my legs are starting to feel a little shaky and my feet are cold. The magic of the Surrey Hills has dissipated for the time being, replaced by the synthetic sweetness of the gel I swallow in a layby once I’m back on the main road to Dorking. I remind myself that there are only two more climbs to go though – Coast Hill is just a long drag while Box Hill is purely ceremonial and I’ve done it so many times that I can do it in my sleep. This is how we talk ourselves through the moments of self doubt. But by the time I get to Box Hill, the gel has kicked in, I’m awake again, the famous zigzags are easy compared to what I’ve just been up – I even ride up in the big ring – and I stop at the viewpoint to get a picture of the Scott, which is by now completely mud spattered. You can see across to Leith Hill, which is now a hazy blue hump rising in the background.
I’ve been out for less than three-and-a-half hours but it’s still been an epic journey both into the future and the past. I’ve done the nostalgic Tenningshook flyby and time travelled in my mind back to my grandfather’s 50-mile walk, and at the same time the Scott Addict RC has proven for me beyond doubt that it has set a new high mark for lightweight disc-brake road race bikes. Now for some good coffee.
