Building A Life In The Sun - The Roost DH Story

“Brace! Brace!” Mal doesn’t give you much warning. He drops a gear, hammers his foot into the carpet of the already-straining minibus and smashes it as hard as he can into the gravel track. “You need some momentum to get up this,” he explains as the van bounces and slips its way up the climb. That bit of pace isn’t enough though, soon the wheels are spinning on the loose stones and we’re slipping back down. “I told you it wouldn’t work, you idiot,” chips in Ben. “I told you we should have bought the gravel rake...”


Mal and Ben, the two young guys behind the new Spanish downhill holiday company, Roost DH, don’t mince their words with each other. You don’t need to waste time being nice when you’ve known someone as long as they’ve known each other. Although they weren’t always this close. When their families moved next to each other when they were 11, they couldn’t stand each another. “I didn’t like him from school and he didn’t like me. We were forced to hangout,” Mal explains. “It was fine because after a while you put your differences aside and become very good friends, which is great, and a lot of that relationship has been formed out on bikes. During our teenage years it was on the trails - digging, chatting shit and jumping.” “Getting drunk, talking about girls,” adds Ben, with a laugh, “that’s how we grew up – at the jump spot.”




As they got older the bikes progressed, dirt jump bikes gave way to trail bikes and eventually downhill bikes. Cutting their teeth on the Surrey Hills and in Swinley Forest, they made their way to downhill and, like most Brits, racing. For Ben it wasn’t a smooth start though, “I remember my first race at Penshurst. Both my grips fell off while I was doing a drop. I ended up doing a suicide while I was going off it, on the landing I just slid out and ended up covered from head to foot in mud.” Following the now-traditional coming of age for British downhillers, they found themselves heading out to Morzine before long. “It’s the natural progression from UK downhill,” remembers Mal. “You go out there, fry your brakes and you shit yourself the first time. But we loved it. In between second and third year at university we both did a season working at Alpine Elements. We lived the seasonaire bum life, we even shared a room.”

It was Ben who got Mal his job out there. “I got work as a general assistant, then within a month got made into a downhill mountain bike guide and found Mal work out there with us.” Mal ended up working as a barman, “it was fun, I was riding every day and then getting drunk with the guests at night.” That was the seed sown for them: “it was just like, shit, we need to get out of the UK, this is what our lives need to be.” After that they dived into the seasonaire lifestyle full-gas. They did another summer in Morzine, Ben then headed out to Whistler and Mal to Chamonix. But as any seasonaire will tell you, seasons don’t last.




At the start of 2011 they found themselves back in the UK. A friend had hooked them up with jobs in the Sram tech centre and they were working day-in, day-out servicing suspension, brakes and drivetrains. As much as they enjoyed the work, there was an itch. As Ben puts it, “I just couldn’t stay in a nine-to-five job. I wanted to be back out in the mountains riding my bike.”

In 2007 during their first season in Morzine, local ripper, Pedro, told them about Spain. “In the winter, when you’re struggling to ride in the UK, you can go down to Spain and the trails are dry and amazing. There’s even a chairlift there.” Mal remembers his words clearly and a few short months later they packed the bikes and headed south. “We spent the whole week using the Benalmadena cable car, which was a nightmare because you had to take your wheels off every time you did an uplift. We spent literally an entire week riding two tracks, well, just one: Bajada, as the fast track wasn’t as good as it is now. Day-after-day we were just smashing out runs, I think one guy snapped his frame as that track’s so gnarly. After that we were like, ‘ok, Spain’s pretty good then,’ and we kept coming back and searching for more trails.” “It was a pretty exciting little adventure after that,” recalls Ben. “We went round, read guide books, talked to locals. We got uplifted in the back of minibuses, vans, a lot of the time not knowing where we were going. There were just so many sick tracks.”



When they ended up back out there on a week’s holiday from their jobs at Sram in January 2011, things just seemed to fall into place. They rented a pick-up from one friend, stayed in another’s villa in Mijas and toured the area hitting a different DH spot each day. Over the past four years they had guided, hosted chalets and repaired bikes. Mix in the fact that they were itching to break free from an average working life and the decision was a natural one: Roost DH was born.

“We did, maybe, think we’d just get to ride our bikes every day, living the seasonaire bum lifestyle again,” admits Ben. “We didn’t realise how much work it would involve. Literally, from that holiday, a year ago, until now we’ve been working flat-out on it. Everyone tells you that when you start your own business it’s a 24 hour thing, but I thought they were joking. It never ends, Wednesday afternoon was the first time I’ve had to myself this year. Four hours when I chilled out and watched a film.” Mal carries on, explaining that, “the investment has been huge for us. We had to buy bikes we knew would work out here, tools for the workshop, spares for the workshop, first aid qualifications, MBCUK guiding qualifications, setting up a UK business, accountants, registering to trade in Spain, red tape here in Spain, deposits for the villa, the bike trailer, minibus, transferring everything here...” The list seems endless. Yet his top tip is to be careful in Ikea: “we had to deck out the villa and you’d go in for one thing and come out with ten times as much as you went in for! If Roost fails, I’m seriously going into flat-pack furniture.”




Would they go back to the seasonaire lifestyle though? There’s no hesitation for Mal, simply, “no, this is a lot more satisfying. It’s a lot of hard work, and a lot more hard work than I could ever have anticipated. As a seasonaire you’d ride your bike every day, get in, do your duties and clock off. But now, you can see what you’re doing is affecting people. All the guys here this week have had a great time and that’s down to what we’re doing, and it is really rewarding.” Ben carries on, “the feeling you get when you come down a run and maybe you’ve had an ok run, or you’re driving, and you come down to the bottom and your guests are beaming ear-to-ear, saying it was awesome... When you know you have created that it feels amazing... That almost feels as good as having that feeling yourself. It’s not something I anticipated, but it’s really cool, seeing other people’s enjoyment from your hard work is awesome. If I can continue to do that, I think we’re onto a winner...”


Today they are based at “El Chalet” in Alhaurin de la Torre, although if Mal gets hold of a decent-sized chisel it probably won’t keep the awful name above the door for long. They chose the location carefully, it’s just ten minutes from Malaga airport and an hour on the road gets you to easily a dozen good riding spots. With the big-screen TV on the wall, swimming pool, motos chained up outside, a fully-equipped workshop and a pile of mountain bikes out the back they’ve done things properly. It’d be easy to wheel out the old cliché that they are living the dream, but that’s a phrase for people who have never left the safety of their deskjob. Mal and Ben have done something real. They’ve risked a lot, worked hard and there’s still a long way to go for them, but seeing their passion and determination, you wouldn’t want to bet against them making a success of it...

www.roostdh.com