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!
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