EAT STAY RIDE DERBY

Driving into Derby there are bikes everywhere — on cars, outside shops, bolted to the roofs of buildings and yes, under riders too. With the recognition the Blue Derby mountain bike trail network has earned and the way the town is bustling you would probably guess that it has been around just as long as somewhere like Mount Beauty, but things only really took off in 2015.

Before Derby became a mountain bike town, it was a locale on the verge of going bust. When World Trail founder Glen Jacobs first rolled into Derby he remembers there was only one person out on the street, and they were boarding up the windows of a shop.

“People were living here of course, but nothing was going on, and it (the town) was closed,” he recalls.

In only a few short years, Derby has gone from a 21st-century ghost town, to a bustling mountain bike destination, with a trail network that has earned global acclaim — including two Enduro World