Something old and something new - Hopton

Early 2000.  Cold hard frost on the drive down making the road glisten with ice.  2 hour drive from 6am to get to the race in time for practice.  Midlands Super Series at Hopton Castle.  Fairly new downhill bike.  First ever downhill race.

Cut to 7:30pm.  After 2 hours in hospital and an epic dose of anaesthetic while my shoulder was manipulated back in to place, my dad and I picked up my car from the race site where the organisers had kindly loaded my bike and gear while I was enjoying an ambulance ride.

Back to 2012 and March 10th saw the Pearce Cycles XC route re-open at Hopton.  This is a 12.3km red graded loop which is a mix of fireroad, sections from the older downhill trails, as well as old and new singletrack.

It was a sunny day in March, just a couple of days after my ride at Eastridge and the day after the Tarw at Coed-y-Brenin.  I chose the Bedstone Hill car park which is up a really narrow, steep road but there was still plenty of space at the top and it was seemingly free too.

The first section of the trail was pretty uneventful fire road / double track and serves to link to the main car park at Hopton Wood.  The following section of singletrack was immense!  Great flow, sensibly cutting across the wooded hill side and able to be ridden at full tilt.

This is how you build a trail
The trail features a fairly long climb up singletrack and fireroad not long after and despite the effort it was interesting to ride with some more technical sections along the way.  This passes close to sections of the old downhill trails and it was nice to see them still in a rideable condition so long after the last time I visited Hopton to photograph a race in spring 2006.

Keep your eyes on the trail
The climbs are made up for with some good views and excellent singletrack sections that use some of the less steep downhill trail sections.  I recognised parts from past trips to Hopton and these are mixed with some sections that looked like they had been freshly cut for the re-opening.  Over the course of the trail there were corners of all kinds to stretch your riding abilities.  As you may expect in a newly re-opened trail, all of the signage was clear and easy to follow.

Little did I know this would be the last sunshine the UK would see for months!
The home stretch back to the Bedstone Hill car park was a long flowing section of trail cut into a hillside that had been recently deforested.  On reflection, I'd have liked it to have been more technical, but it was still a blast to ride it quickly and for a red graded trail is probably pitched just right.

Final newly cut singletrack
From my experience, I'd recommend starting at the Bedstone Hill car park, as it means you get a nice singletrack section to finish, instead of a fireroad climb back to the other car park.

In conclusion this was a great trail and a brilliant example of combining new trail with older sections to create a well rounded experience.  Definitely one that you need to ride and one that's worth riding twice.

Back in time - Coed-y-Brenin - Part 1

Second day of my week off and the sun was bright in the sky as I drove through Snowdonia to reach Coed-y-Brenin.  The views once you pass Blaenau Ffestiniog are incredible every time.  

As the satnav told me I was getting close, I saw a sign to the visitors centre on the left of the road. Confused, I pulled in but then thought better of it and carried on down the road a couple of hundred yards to where I knew the entrance was.  More like where the entrance used to be! Coed-y-Brenin has a sparkly new visitors centre, correctly signed with the obligatory high ropes course and children's adventure playgroud, cafe, and bike shop.  Very bling.

I decided to hit a couple of easier sections out of the car park as a warm up and rode the Badger and Pinderosa sections of the Temtiwr trail before heading back to the trail head.  Flowed pretty nicely, fairly rocky, quite good overall.

Red Bull trail head - through the horns!
The trail for the day was going to be the black graded 20.2km Tarw trail, better known to most people as the Red Bull trail from days of yore.  Like the nearby Marin trail but with better facilities, this was one of THE trails to ride around the early 2000s when trail centres were still finding their way and figuring out what people wanted.

Because the car park has moved to the other side of the road there were a couple of short sections to get back to the old visitors centre and car park, where the original Red Bull trail once began.  On more than one occasion the Tarw trail made me feel like a time traveller: seeing the old centre and car parks all boarded up, remembering when I had parked there the best part of 10 years ago.

The initial climb seemed less severe then it once had as it followed purposed built trail from the abandoned car parks up to the fire road.  The surface was loose and seemed like slate chippings until the fire road took over.  The old dual slalom track that had paralleled the first climb seemed overgrown and utterly out of use.

Awesome views to the north
At the end of the this very long, uneventful climb you reach the start of a singletrack section named Heart of Darkness.  So named as it used to be a very tight section that wound its way between closely spaced trees. No more however.  In another time-traveller-like experience since the section had been utterly deforested resulting in a length of trail that felt more like a game of tree stump pinball and one that is not suited to its name at all.  The section didn't flow very well and left me hoping the next bits of singletrack would be better.

Heart of... lightness?
The next three sections, Snap, Crackle, and Pop were rocky and fairly straight downhill runs.  I'd imagine they'd be an absolute nightmare on a hardtail, but my full sus rig allowed me to smooth out the worst of it while picking the best line.

Another fire road climb loomed so I took the opportunity to eat some food and tighten up my shoelaces (shoes being eaten by chainstays is not a good thing).  So much fire road.  I mean, I understand that complaining about fire road is one of my pet mountain biking hobbies but I could not believe the amount of dull riding on this trail.  

Rocky Horror show about two-thirds of the way round was the first section that was genuinely fun to ride, and even that ended with a horrendous rocky gulley at which I just hopped off and pushed - far easier.  A further  million years of more or less flat fire road later led to a huge fire road descent.  I mean, so much height is lost on fire road, it's almost criminal.  All the effort put into gain that height for what reward?  A high speed blast down a featureless wide path?  Thanks.  

Unusually, I'd taken a print out of the trail map with me and was sorely looking forward to the Pins and Needeles and Flightpath sections, as they looked like they may hold some downhill delights.  Underwhelmed and lacking flow, both sections disappointed.  A long stretch of Pins is clad with the ubiquitous rock seen all along huge amounts of the trail.  What I think the trail builders have not realised is that while riding over jagged rocks is fun occasionally, it should really form interesting obstacles, or be used to reinforce a trail section, not provide the main trail surface for what feels like kilometers on end!  Again, spare a thought for the unfortunate hardtail riders on this stuff.

Felt like miles of this stuff
Flightpath (which despite its name offers no chances to get airborne) spits you out onto a familiar track to the old centre site, and provides a short cut back to the new centre that probably shaves 10-15 minutes off the duration.  Not being one to quit half way through, I took the longer option and was glad I did.  There was a 5 minute or so climb on, your friend and mine, fire road before covering exactly the same distance in the opposite direction on surprisingly good singletrack.  I don't remember ever having ridden this section in the past so can only assume it's a more recent addition.  Gratifying though it was, it did not make up for the the trail overall - I was actually bored while riding much of it.

Considering the Tarw trail when I got back to my car, I could understand the name change.  The Red Bull trail was seen as extreme and a decent blast a decade ago.  By changing the name, the Red Bull moniker can retain its legendary status linked to being one of the first purpose built trails while the Tarw trail gets to take all the criticism (which a score of 5.3 on moredirt.com as I write this shows it is receiving).

I don't have a set way of assessing a trail, but generally it has to have a good amount of singletrack, reward the rider well for their climbing effort and be fun to ride.  Even  with the sunny rays of a beautiful spring day to brighten my mood I can confirm that the Tarw trail does none of these things.  The black graded Beast and MBR trails are on my to do list too so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Coed-y-Brenin can redeem itself in terms of proving a quality, exciting mountain biking experience!

Dry, loose, and steep - Eastridge Revelation Trail

Straight out of the car park, the Eastridge red route hits you with a pretty technical section of singletrack that flows around the contours of the hill.  Taking in some roots, rocks and interesting corners the initial section leads into a well thought out climb full of switchbacks that seems to go on forever, right to the top of the hill.

It's fair to say that it had been some time since I'd been out mountain biking in earnest.  After a run around the vastly improved Llandegla red/black over the Christmas break, this was the first weekend this year where the slate was clean - no plans other than fix up my bike an get out and ride.

The trail continued on a natural, loose surface and came to the first downhill section.  Just as the forestry commission website had made clear, these trails are not smoothly surfaced and were almost fall line routes straight down the hill; the challenge being provided by copious roots and ruts, including braking bumps, and the riding close to trees, tight on either side.

I had spent more of the morning than I'd have liked bleeding my Hayes discs after the local bike shop put in an atrocious effort that left me with no rear brake on my last outing - the lever bottomed out and no force was making it to the calliper.  Pleased to say they were working much better today.

As the weather had been so dry recently the trails were really dusty, the sort of conditions I really like.  A couple of times I found my front wheel lost grip and drifted round corners until hooking up again on a root or small natural berm.  I can only imaging how insanely muddy the route would have been in the rain!

Feeding the hungry brakes with Dot 4 goodness
Plenty of long fire road riding punctuates the rougher/fun sections and some of these seem like missed opportunities to cover the same distance with more enjoyable singletrack in the woods instead, similar to the trail's opening.

The trail offers up a handful of steep, loose, rough DH sections which for the most part are fairly straight runs (although one had a long series of great, technical switchbacks) with a surface very reminiscent of the two full-on DH runs at the same site as well as the terrain further south at Hopton.  They really did take me back to my DH racing efforts at Hopton and Eastridge, as part of the Midlands Super Series and the BUSA Student Champs.

Are a few natural-feeling DH section enough?  Thankfully the 5 mile loop has an excellent singletrack section making up the mountain bike equivalent of its back straight: Tom Foolery.  This was an awesome flowly section of natural feeling trail, like riding in the perfect local woods.  In the whole ride I didn't see another soul and it felt great to hammering out this section knowing no slower riders of dog walkers would be in the way.  The woods are super dense too and today they were brimming with spring flowers and the sounds of birds in the trees and other wildlife in the undergrowth; a startled rabbit leapt across the trail in front of me at one point and disappeared into the bushes.

Peaceful forest trails a short way after Tom Foolery
Driving to the trail head was pretty straight forward and the directions on the forestry commission site are spot on.  There are even brown road signs pointing out the "Eastridge mountain bike route" to help you out.  The lanes nearby are pretty narrow through and include more than a couple of corners where the visibility is really limited.

I thought I could be in and out of Eastridge pretty quickly.  The 5 mile trail is deceptive and it definitely feels like the trail builders have managed to squeeze a lot into its modest length.  I'd like to see the same level of attention put into the downhill bits as has been paid to the climbs though.  Fall line runs really deprive the rider of a well earned descent by making the section shorter compared to a route that winds its way down the hill side, with berms and jumps, both features that were pretty lacking at Eastridge in comparison to the more modern trail centres in the country at the moment.

But, for what it was, a refreshingly different riding experience and the superb Tom Foolery, I'd say it's a trail you have to ride.