Bikemonger's Happy Bottom Bum Butter

Bikemonger's Happy Bottom Bum Butter is a distinctly different unguent for down below, more a wax than a cream, but it nevertheless lubes your bits really well and lasts a long time.

Happy Bottom Bum Butter is not your normal kind of chamois cream, not just because it's hand produced in Dorset just up the road from Charlie the Bikemonger's shop, and not because it's completely chemical free, made from 100% natural ingredients and also vegan friendly.

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It isn't a cream, or even very much like butter – well, maybe butter from the fridge as it's very solid in consistency, firmer even than lip balm, more like surf wax according to those who know such things.

But don't let that put you off.

As it's a firm ointment Happy Bottom Bum Butter requires a fair bit of mushing about with the fingers in the pot to harvest enough lubrication to smear about down there, no quick two-finger dips here, and if you can avoid it, no double-dipping, thanks. But unlike other creams you really don't need to gather much to go around, so this tub of Butter should last you a very long time; Charlie the Bikemonger says this 100ml jar should last you around 7,000 miles. We'll have to get back to you on that one.

Happy Bottom Bum Butter is full of really nice ingredients to stop things getting nasty in your crotch. There's clove oil in there for its anti-microbial properties, tee tree oil which is a natural antiseptic and also good for healing any damaged skin you might have, something the Egyptian geranium oil is also useful at doing. Made from these and other 100% chemical-free natural ingredients, it's also vegan friendly. I've never even wondered about the meat content of what I've slathered on my meat and two veg, but this sort of thing is important to quite a few people, so that's a good quality to have. It's also produced just up the road from the Bikemonger's shop in Swanage and supplied in a PET recyclable container so it's absolutely chock full of happy fluffy bunny huggy vibes.

Because it's a thick substance and not as easily spreadable as other chamois creams, you have to be quite, um, intimate with your bits to get it happily distributed. I guess if you're used to splodging things around your downstairs area then it's not such a big issue – it just feels even more immodest than usual. As you're rubbing it in you'll notice that Bum Butter has a pleasant scent, it's slightly medicinal and there's a gentle waft of cloves to it.

The Bum Butter absorbs really well into the skin, in fact it's hard to tell it's there. There's absolutely none of the off-putting sticky clamminess that some other chamois creams can suffer from, and there's no 'tingle' either; you may or may not see that as a good thing though.

> Read other road.cc reviews of chamois creams and skincare products here

And it works. Despite not being able to 'feel' it doing its lubricating job when riding along, like stickier balms, nevertheless things stayed comfortable in the undercarriage area for long days in the saddle. There was no fading after a few hours like some other creams I've tried, and there were no awkward saddle shuffles towards the end as a gentle wearing off of effectiveness down below led to discomfort. The tiny bit of extra work required on application at chamois-up is more than compensated for by exceptional longevity in the saddle.

The Bum Butter has fans in mountain bike cross-country racer, former British National Champion and current Ladies National Fatbike champion Lee Cragie, singlespeed round the world rider Markus Stitz, and Rio Olympics gold medal paralympic cyclist Karen Darke, so your bum is in well recommended happy company.

Verdict

Very good non-sticky pleasant-smelling all-day tenacious balm, though a more hands-on application required