Delamere was somewhere I never got go when I was just getting into mountain biking. It seemed just too far away from where I grew up to be easily accessible, but I occasionally heard stories of the trails there, jumps, mini DH tracks etc. So it feels like I've been meaning to ride here for years and years but for whatever reason never got round to it.
2nd April. A weekend riding lay ahead. Managed to get to Delamere mid morning after installing a new SRAM chain supplied by chainreactioncycles.com. Pretty unassuming car park, nice visitor centre and bike rental shop set up nearby. For an added bonus, the satnav took me right to it!
Parking was a bit steep but the weather was nice so my nicely cleaned bike and I set off to conquer the Whitemoor trail. I'd barely got 200 meters down the road before I realised something was up.
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| The Hardrock - a second hand bargain to be thrashed, I'm impressed so far |
My old chain was clearly really worn, along with the cassette and chainrings, and the drivetrain was just not going to work with the new chain; it was skipping like crazy, 3 or four times per revolution.
I really didn't want to take another bike round the trail and I didn't want to go and consult with the guys at the bike shop, just to confirm my mistake. But I had no choice really, it was that or give up the riding that weekend and fix the bike at home. I do not like giving up!
The obvious was confirmed and I agreed to take out a rental bike for the morning. It was a Kona Cinder Cone, new with shimano discs, decent kenda tyres, and a soul crushing 90mm stem and almost flat low-rise bars. No amount of adjusting made the bars any more bearable and the stem made the ride super sedate. The rock shox tora forks were incredibly under sprung. Riding with the lockout on full made them bearable (I'm guessing the lock out is really just ramped up compression damping) although brake jack was immense; they'd shoot through virtually all of the travel at the slightest touch of the front brake!
The most "hardcore" waymarked trail is graded white at Delamere and the white arrows on a white background were pretty hard to see, making me have to get right up to the posts to see which direction I had to go. Not the best!
It was 14k or so and all on fire roads. Looked like there was probably some nice singletrack in the woods but the centre desperately needs a proper waymarked mountain bike route. The topography of the place would lend it to some lovely singetrack and short northshore runs, just needs some decent investment in my opinion. As it stands currently there’s little to attract trail centre fans to this location.
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| The Cinder Cone in its natural habitat |
In the northwest corner of the forest is a freeride / DH area which looked pretty fun. There was no way on earth my rental bike was up to this though so I'll save that for another day. Definitely will go back for that too, but not for an XC / trail ride until some waymarked single-track is sorted out. I can't impress enough how much this place needs a decent trail for visiting mountain bikers. I've heard such good stories about Delamere but without some exploring any decent singletrack is going to remain hidden. For me at least the appeal of trail centres is that you can rock up and be more or less guaranteed a decent ride (braking bumps aside!).
Another pretty big issue is sharing the trails with non-riders, whether this means pedestrians, horses, kids with stabilisers, dogs, people who think the best way to walk down a 15 foot fire road is as if they're searching for a murder weapon, 6 or 7 abreast. You forget how nice it is not to have to worry about that kind of thing when you're on dedicated trails like those at Cannock or Coed-y–Brenin and can focus on shredding the trails.
After less than an hour's blast around Delamere, I was back at the visitor centre. I'd been wondering about what to do about my own bike's gears and had after discussing a weekend-long rental, decided to buy a new cassette. Turned out to be 8 speed SLX, at a price that wasn't too shabby from Tracs, the bike shop at Delamere. It doesn't have a spider to reduce weight on the larger rings like an XT model but the rings are quite extensively drilled so I was pleased.
Loaded the orange beast back into my car and it was off to trail number 3!
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