Local knowledge - The Forest of Dean

I left Cwmcarn and drove up to the Forest of Dean, arriving at the Cannop cycle centre early afternoon.

I was impressed to see the facilities on offer - a decent shop, cafe, bike rental and DH uplift service, topped off with a very full car park!  It was so full in fact that parking had extended up the fireroad to the right of the main parking area.

The Forest of Dean has a range of DH trails, as well as two waymarked trails, the blue Verderer's at 11km and the red Freeminer at around 3km.  As I'd already hacked my way around the Twrch a couple of hours earlier, I chose to do the harder of the two first.

Both trails start right next to each other and the Freeminer is made up of a small number of a relatively short singletrack sections.  Some looked like they were recently constructed, while other looked like they hardly saw any use at all and were quite overgrown, including thorny briars running at head height across certain boardwalk sections, which I stopped to remove.  There were a couple of small berms and rollers, but ultimately this trail felt only a step or two above a ride around your local woods.

The Verderers trail takes in a little more fireroad to start with but the route quickly turns into a mostly purpose built single track trail.  This trail is graded for more inexperienced riders and the surface is mostly of the man made and more heavily groomed variety so a full sus is definitely not required.  The woodland and the way roots feature in the trail reminded me of Thetford, but with more significant climbs and somewhat less flow. 

Aside from a nicely designed loosely switchbacked climb there were no overly technical or stand out sections at all until the final downhill run.  But this final run was worth the effort!  Stacks of berms, rollers, and table tops meant that I couldn't help but get airborne and had to throw in a few whips and old-school X-ups on the way down.

And I liked that last section.  It was fun and appeared well made but safe; the type of trail that you get more out of the more you put in when it comes to speed and technical ability.  However it just makes me question the rest of the blue trail more in comparison.  When held up against the final downhill run, I felt that the entire rest of the trail was thoroughly dull and should basically be avoided (instead take the fireroad up to session the last blue downhill).

The obvious popularity of the centre measured by the crowds present means it must be doing something right and I suspect this is on two fronts.  On the one hand the DH trails and uplift provide a great facility for the gravity-oriented crowd and on the other hand the blue provides a varied introduction to mountain biking, with a somewhat-out-of-place awesome final section. 

The Forest of Dean is renowned as a venue that is brimming with singletrack you can only find with local knowledge; otherwise it's easy to get lost.  If you were a relatively experienced rider planning to stick to the waymarked trails but looking for a longer route outside of the DH runs, you would be better off looking elsewhere, especially with some of the South Wales centres nearby. Introduce a 16-19km red graded route, a pump track and more suitable parking to deal with busy days and we'd really see a fully-equipped venue.

That said, I'm looking forward to my next Forest of Dean visit with the Downhill bike in tow!

What goes up must come down - Cwmcarn - South Wales Trail Offensive Part 1

After all of the marketing leading up to the opening of Bike Park Wales this weekend, I decided to avoid being swept up in the hype train and chose to visit two nearby centres instead.

Cwmcarn rose to popularity as a regular downhill uplift venue in south Wales.  Just north of Newport, the centre boasts a black downhill run and a red XC route courtesy of Cognation, complemented by a few freeride lines at the top of the mountain.

Setting off bleary eyed at 6:30 in the morning meant I arrived at the visitors centre car park just after 9:00.  The facilities are pretty impressive with super-clean looking toilet blocks including changing rooms for those that don't want to strip down in the car park.  The parking fee is really low at £1 for 2 hours or £3 all day.

The Boar

The Twrch trail is red graded and 15.5km long, just shy of 10 miles.  The initial climb up through the wooded valley starts out gently but ultimately can be summed up in one word: long.  Crazy long.  I'm not the fittest rider in the world and I'm sure I hadn't reached the summit after 45 minutes of solid ascent.  In fairness I stopped off half way up to check out some wood carvings to the side of the Mabinogion section and get my breath back, but still, the length of time that you will be climbing here is substantial.

As well as the length of the climb, it's worth mentioning that it is nearly all fairly technical singletrack with many rocks, roots and loose or slippery sections.  If you can clean this on your first time, you should be pretty chuffed!  There are some mellow switchbacks which should pose no problem to any experienced rider as, for example, the ones on Cannock's Monkey are far tighter.

Breaking out of the wooded singletrack brings you to a section of fire road before a short exposed singletrack section, not unlike some of those at Llandegla, brings you to the summit and some excellent views out across Newport and the Bristol channel.

Major climb done with - views at the start of the freeride section

After admiring the views, the next section involves picking one of the lines making up the freeride park.  This relatively brief section meandered down the hill and gave me some good cornering practice, but ultimately wasn't that heavily built up, feeling more like a worn in slalom line than a heavily bermed groomed run.  This seemed like a great area to spend a couple of hours but I was more inclined to push on, hoping I'd seen the back of the ascent.

The Twrch trail follows a more or less straight line skirting around the tops of the hills, dipping in and out of wooded sections and making the rider pass through numerous "bike stiles" which really break up the flow.  I'm sure they're there for a good reason, but they are not wide enough to ride though without significant hassle and, in a perfect world, a gate opening in the direction of travel would be infinitely easier for the riders to deal with.  Also, some of the downhill sections here were almost fall line, gulley-run style affairs, which was disappointing as height is lost pretty quickly here without much technical challenge.

Downhill at least

Entering the Castle Valley section, the trail takes on an overall downhill feel and follows the curve around the mountainside through light woods, which in my opinion, was fairly unremarkable.  I'd heard this was on really steep hillside but the trail was wide enough that it didn't feel sketchy at all and if I hadn't been told, I would not have even noticed the gradient of the hillside I was traversing.

Angels Posts is a rocky section that allows you to power down the mountainside quickly, providing a great place to practice your line choice and looking-ahead skills so that you can carry as much speed as you can.  Following a local down this section was awesome as I really could let off the brakes and try to match his speed as much as possible.

Entering Castle Valley - annoying bike stiles 

The last section leading back to the car park cranked up the speed and man-made feel and featured a couple of features where you can get airborne the largest berms of the trail outside the freeride zone.

All in, I was satisfied with my 2hr time, although it felt like I had been climbing for an eternity and the downhill payoff was not enough to outweigh all that effort put in to get to the top.  While there was a lot of singletrack on the route, much of it was quite wide and felt more like old walking trails and not purpose built for MTBs as I was expecting.  The initial climb (all the way up to the end of Giant's Finger) was tech but, I felt, lacked flow. It made me feel that the climb was an afterthought to add some XC-capability to a DH bike-oriented centre.

Bottom line - This place is a solid ride for sure but to an experienced rider the actual experience does not match the hype.  One of "Wales' hidden gems"? This is marketing gone mad.  

Next time I go it will be with my DH bike I'll make full use of the uplift service to sample the DH tracks with none of the climbing-induced pain!

By the book - Grizedale

Grizedale is in the south of the Lake District and is reached via some fairly narrow and twisty lanes.  The site has a very impressive looking visitor centre, including a cafe and bike shop and prominent signs show you how to reach the trails from the fairly pricey car park.

Two large trail maps mark the start of the mountain bike routes - one for the red graded North Face trail and another for the other trails that criss-cross the woodland.  The red starts with a short fire road climb which, just as you think it's going to go on for ages, neatly turns into a rather excellent long section of singletrack.  The twist here is that while the trail steadily gains height the rider is more or less oblivious as the rocky and rooty trail surface demands careful attention to select a good line. 

Great views to the north - shot from a well placed bench.

Following this is a relatively long fire road climb, which does not outstay its welcome thanks to the great views to the south as you near its climax.  The Met Office had forecast 80% chance of rain. It had rained hard the day before and despite the sun shining through the light cloud I was expecting to get soaked, but by this point I took off my waterproof jacket and stowed it in my back pack where it stayed for the rest of the ride.

There are some short purpose built sections of trail that allow you to get some speed up along the way, but there is an awful lot of fireroad in the North Face route.  This fact was not helped by the closure of one such section, which was replaced by a fireroad descent.  It was disappointing to loose so much height in this way but after being stung by not respecting trail closures in the past I played along this time and was left to wonder what I was missing out on.

Sunlight - oh yeah!

The closure was due to ongoing work that would see boardwalk sections of trail being replace with boulders.  I hesitate to call this woodwork "north shore" as it was barely a few inches above the ground but where it was present, and clad with a grippy, sandpaper-like substance, it was awesome to ride on!  I'll never understand the drive to include 4 inch drops/steps every few tens of meters along the woodwork sections though; are they meant to be dropped or rolled?  Hardly seems worth pulling up for them and I generally just steam through.

The boulders that have replaced the woodwork were a chore to ride.  There were 4-5" gaps between the boulders and similar sized height differences between a couple of them so, while rideable, these new sections favour large-wheeled bikes and those running full suspension.  I would definitely be in favour of keeping the woodwork.

It's fair to say that the trails were pretty free of braking bumps and mud but had not drained very well following the previous day's downpours; there were large puddles all over the place.  Instead of a profile that would see water shed to the sides of the trail, much of the route has a profile akin to a walking trail, one which tended to retain water in the bottom, like a gulley.  This was clear in what turned out to be the final downhill section - a wooded, natural-feeling and long section of trail which winds down the hill to the visitors' centre.  It stuck me that this felt very natural indeed - to the point where it wouldn't surprise me if this was an old walking trail and not something specifically made for inclusion in the North Face route.  In a couple of places, wooden gates either side of the trail prevent walkers from rushing into the path of an oncoming rider, which was welcome, but on this final downhill stretch the path crosses a farm track and the rider has to pass through two gates, both of which are latched.  I understand the need, but breaking up the final section of trail was a bit of a let down.

Grrr....

There is a black section of trail at Grizedale, which was opened in 2012.  This is not shown on the trail maps and it was not clear, as I was completing the loop, whether I could do the black then come back to finish the red, or if the black would lead me back to the car park.  Unsure, and not wanting to only do half of the red, I didn't take the black option and regret it now as video footage of it online seems to show a very well made track which would have been fun to ride.

Overall the trail was pretty short, clocking in at 1hr 50m with plenty of stops to take photos and admire the view, and, apart from the first singletrack section, didn't have great flow.  In my opinion it suffers from the newly installed boulder sections that have replaced some of the boardwalk, the generally uninspired singletrack and the fireroad descents.  Go for the views, if you are in the area, and if you have the time check out the black option!