As you’re probably aware, I’m a big fan of beautiful bikes. For me, a bike is a very personal thing and I like to think I can show a bit of my character through the choices I make.

So, when I came back from Spain with my factory-settings, factory-look Trance, I felt a little conflicted; the bike rode beautifully, but was actually pretty ugly!

I knew that if I was ever going to be able to sell my beautiful Anthem, Star Girl, it’d only be for another stunner. So, I decided to make a few changes to the Trance.

First up was a little trip to the powder-coaters, who shot blasted off the original paint job and gave Pablo (as he’s now known) a smart new black coat. Then, it was time to decide on the accent colour and for this one I knew it had to be purple. A little trip to the local bike shop and I learnt that Hope had brought back their purple range for 2014 – what a stroke of luck! So in went my order – wheels, stem, seat post clamp, rear quick release – all purple please!

As we were going to be making these changes to Pablo anyway, it seemed a good time to do some other upgrades, to make him ride that bit sweeter. So, we:

• Changed to longer forks, giving me 150mm of travel, to help take the impacts of bumps and drops
• Switched to a bigger rear shock, for the same reason
• Added an angled headset, to give me a longer wheel base for greater stability and to shift my weight back, making me more confident on tricky descents
• Swapped the Giant dropper post to a shorter Reverb, so that I can reach the pedals properly when it’s at the top!
• Switched to a shorter stem for more responsive steering

And the verdict? Well we took a trip to the Forest of Dean last weekend and Pablo was fantastic! Not only did he get a lot of admiring glances, but he felt brilliant to ride too. The tweaks really have made a difference and I felt more in control than I have before.

So it seems Pablo has a found a place in my heart. And here he is:

Pretty gorgeous, right?