A Mixed Bag - Dalby Forest's Red trails

Dalby's impressive visitor centre sat under a full blue sky as I parked up.  Not being one to carry nearly a tenner in loose change meant I had to decline paying the eyebrow-raising £7 parking charge and because it was a week day in the spring there was no one working on the gate to enforce the payment or help with change.

I'd decided to drive up to Dalby Forest Park near the North Yorkshire Moors to ride their red route. The route is split up in a needless and slightly confusing way. There are 4 red routes, which all form one long red graded trail.  The trail is marked on the map with posts labelled 1-38. In all, it's between 34.3km and 38km; different places on line and in guide books seem to disagree.  Bottom line: it's long.

Target acquired: sandy trails made it feel coastal!
Starting the ride at the main visitor's centre, after devouring a bacon, brie and cranberry sandwich from the cafe, the first section of trail you hit is called the Newclose Rigg trail and covers posts 1 -14 and is 9.4km (6miles) long ending at Dixons Hollow play area and the nearby car park.  Initially the trail gains height quickly through a series of switchbacks and you are soon riding swooping singletrack through the forest.

This section includes some sandy trails and interesting singletrack.  Like the majority of the riding on the red trails, there are no real killer steep climbs, and the descents are fairly limited too; the majority of the height is lost either on reasonably untechnical single track, or downhill sections with gently bermed corners.  

Strangely, when following the red, the first thing that might hint at the presence of Dixons Hollow play area is a sign for a black graded diversion.  Out of curiosity I followed this and found an orange graded section of north shore which turned out to start at the lower end of the play area and end at the top, near a small pump track and the start of a couple of runs of jumps and a 4x track.  

Such swoopyness on Newclose Rigg.
If you've ridden from the visitor's centre, you're not likely to be on a bike that will make the most of the 4x track or the jumps, but the 'shore is worth the diversion and the pump track will keep you entertained for a couple of laps.

The Dixons Hollow car park is the start of another section of the red trail, the 5.3km Adderstone Trail (posts 14-21), as well as a separate black loop, listed as taking ~1.5hr although this is not shown on the official pdf map available on line which, again, is weird.

The trail became less sandy, but carried on in much the same way as before.  The forest is a lovely place and occasionally you can catch glimpses of the countryside outside of the forest. There was one downhill section during this stretch which I believe is shared with the black trail and consisted of many switchbacks leading you down a pretty steep hill.  Remember to drop your seat otherwise this will seem more difficult than it really is!
Dixons Hollow play area.
Depressingly, this section ended with a long stretch of gradually climbing fire road, not the first encountered, which, was a bit of a drag as I was approaching half way round and nearly 2 hours in.

According to the map, I was near the Crosscliffe car park and the trail transitioned into the Jerry Noddle Trail (who names this stuff?) which stretches from about post 21 to post 26 over 5.8km. I never saw the car park, but the trail turned into some pretty dense woods and the trail surface itself became raised, like a dirt ridgeline in places, clearly to help with drainage.  To me, this was ok to ride; there was a lot of speed to be gained and carried in some sections, but the trail was mostly flat.  I knew I had a long way left to go.  The bacon sandwich was now repeating on me something rotten.  The trailside Christmas Tree was a quality touch.

The second leg of Jerry Noddle is on road / fire road and is as dull as it sounds.  At this point the sky had ominously clouded over and there were rumblings of thunder far off in the distance.  I redoubled my efforts and crossed my fingers that I wouldn't be needing the waterproof jacket I had stowed away in my hydration pack!
Jerry Noddle's sparkly goodness.
At post 26 the trail becomes the Riggs and Dales Trail which goes all the way to post 38, which is a stone's throw from the Low Dalby visitor centre.  Only 13.8km to go. There was one notable downhill with bermed corners that were well constructed, however I was carrying way too much speed into the final one and nearly went careening over the top.  Personally, I like to think the berm should have been bigger but honestly the section of trail was pretty underwhelming despite the effort that had gone into it so I'm unsure that more effort would equal a better experience in this case (sorry!).  

The trail meandered across fire roads, taking in one descent which was literally a straight smooth utterly featureless piece of gently descending singletrack, which crossed a fire road, only to then climb up a similarly straight, relatively smooth piece of single track (posts 32-34 perhaps?). As I was climbing I looked back on the missed opportunity that was the previous descent.  Why were there no little kickers or tables on that section, or features to pump?  I'm certainly not asking for an XC route to be turned into A-line and I know charging down a smooth path has its own feel-good feeling, but I was left wanting something more involving to ride.

The trail gently climbed through woods featuring a lot of leaf litter.  I was thoroughly bored by this point (post 36?) and luckily the trail was nearly over.

Was I expecting too much from a red graded trail?  Is this a blue in terms of technical difficulty and only graded as red due to its length? I think it's possible.  The black options off Newclose Rigg were not what I would call fun to ride featuring chainset scraping rocks and small sets of consecutive drops with barely a bike length between them - the sort of black section that is hard to clean and unsatisfying when you do.

In my view, the trail is great if you like long rides of overall low technicality.  From my own riding experience, I would prefer to tackle the trails offered up by Llandegla or Cannock instead.  For me, having significant climbs, followed by significant downhills is a good thing.  Dalby seems to disagree and each to their own.  However, I'd be keen to return to try out the black loop.