looking for inspiration.

herny80

Hi guys, i am new to this forum in the hope of finding new local routes or methods of finding some. i have ridden road bikes for a few years but fancied a change over the winter months as fed up of the poor road conditions this time of year and turbo trainers kills me mentally! I live in weston super mare North Somerset and have bought on a budget a boardman HT 650B just to see how i get on with it. I have ridden a couple of times in cwmcarn and ashton court in bristol but have started to get fed up with having to keep travelling in the car to ride anywhere decent as I have realised that living in this area is not ideal for mtb but perfect for road bikes as its so flat. I was hoping that if anybody has local knowledge of any routes that are accessable without using the car would be great or are there any websites than you can get mtb routes from? I have looked on mapmyride but struggle to find mtb routes seems to be mainly road routes unless I am doing something wrong!

Many thanks in advance.

YellaBelly

Best thing to do is buy yourself the OS map covering your local area, pack a camelback and go exploring for a day. You'll very quickly piece together bridleways and bits of woods etc you can ride to build some routes up. And it's good fun too.

There are routes uploaded on Endomondo etc but like you say mostly road routes. I'm not from anywhere near you, so I have no idea what riding is available of your doorstep, but I'd be amazed if there wasn't anything close by.

herny80

thank you very much for your sound advise, thats exactly what i will do failing that i am sure there must be some clubs that get together on weekends and try and pick their brains. its a shame that there isn't any websites that specialize in mtb routes or that you have the facility to filter between the type of bike your riding! thanks again.

eddiefiola

not sure how popular this site is in the UK but in Germany I use http://www.gpsies.com/trackList.do you can specify how far away from your post code to search maximum length of ride, what type of riding, MTB or Road etc, then I download to Garmin as a course and follow, found some great new places.

herny80

Thank you eddiefiola i will give this website a try. if anybody know of any others it would be greatly appreciated. thanks

The Rookie

Register on Strava (http://www.strava.com) and look for segments local to you that are offroad, open the segment page and then open peoples rides that show in that segment to see how they got to it and where they went to after it.

Kowalski675

Does one of this series cover your area? :

http://www.v-publishing.co.uk/books/cat ... in-biking/

I've got the West Yorkshire one, and they're great little books and a good source of info and inspiration re where you can ride in your area.

paulbox

Although not as good as an OS map, it's worth having a quick squint at www.streetmap.co.uk, although it seems a bit outdated compared to google maps it does show all footpaths, bridleways etc. The maps actually look like they might be OS maps.

I've planned a few rides using it, but it's not easy to print off

RockmonkeySC

There's loads of good stuff near you.
There's Crooks Peak and Rowberrow on the Mendips as well as miles of bridleways all over north Somerset. The Quantock hills are just off the M4, just past Bridgwater. Quantocks is my favourite place to ride, all natural but great technical trails.
A but further than the Quantocks is Exmoor.

paul.skibum

What Rockmonkey said - tonnes of local trails and bridleways a short distance from you and probably ways to make epic rides from your neck of the woods too - get your local OS maps and plan some loops - try out the trails and work out which are good in which direction and tie some interesting bits together.

You are slightly limited in that riding out of Weston is limited to slightly under 180 degrees from the town centre due to the sea but there should be local bridleways none the less - car to the other hot spots is the only option but definitely worth exploring vs the longer drive to trail centres in wales.