Best Trail Centre?

sheppy77

What is the best trail centre? Is it because the trails? The facilities? Ease of getting there? Going to do a bit of a road trip only have a few days and want to hit the best spots!

rockmonkeysc

Bike Park Wales. Best trails at any trail centre by far. Enter The Dragon is my favourite trail, huge jumps, huge speed and lots of rocks.

cooldad

Wales?
Scotland?
Canada?
Surrey?
Etc?

lawman

Hmmm difficult to say. Coed y Brenin has a great mix of trails, whinlatter is pretty awesome yet for pure technical flat out trails the final descent on the climachX takes some beating. BPW is great for uplift assisted riding but I also enjoy riding up sometimes and techy singletrack climbs form a big part of a centres appeal IMO.

The Northern Monkey

BPW is boring as fook after a few runs... not worth the petrol/parking fee imo and I'm only 20 mins away... tis ok for a one off every now and then.

Whinlatter is brilliant and I need to try Llandegla again as it was awesome even before they made all the changes.

Lucky down here South Wales as there is more stuff knocking about in local woods than tral centres.
Although its hard to go wrong with Cwmcarn and Afan!

Angus Young

Probably depends on what grade you ride, too.

rockmonkeysc

The Northern Monkey wrote:

BPW is boring as fook after a few runs... not worth the petrol/parking fee imo and I'm only 20 mins away... tis ok for a one off every now and then./quote]

What is it you find boring about BPW? I generally find trail centres boring but find BPW quite entertaining. I would like more black trails there but thats coming in the future. Even the blue trails are fun when ridden fast with a few mates.

ej2320

pretty much anywhere in Wales

For an all day epic I'd recommend the Syfydrin trail at Nant yr Arian
Good car park with a cafe so facilities are decent and the trail is long and very 'Out there' with rocky doubletrack and some good pieces of singletrack too

The Northern Monkey

RockmonkeySC wrote:

The Northern Monkey wrote:

BPW is boring as fook after a few runs... not worth the petrol/parking fee imo and I'm only 20 mins away... tis ok for a one off every now and then./quote]

What is it you find boring about BPW? I generally find trail centres boring but find BPW quite entertaining. I would like more black trails there but thats coming in the future. Even the blue trails are fun when ridden fast with a few mates.

Too manicured and without having an uplift pass the climb just isnt worth it... there is better stuff in the area (being local has us spoilt I guess).

Entertaining I agree if you want to ride something with as little effort as possible, but I lose interest pretty quick!

cooldad

Brechfa for me. A couple of car parks and portaloos. No facilities. I prefer to get away from it all.

Although the local pub has good food.

Angus Young

Just looked at the BPW site and the uplift is completely booked for the whole of June and most of July! Mmm... me thinks they might need another minibus.

mcnultycop

Thetford?

poah

sheppy77 wrote:

What is the best trail centre? Is it because the trails? The facilities? Ease of getting there? Going to do a bit of a road trip only have a few days and want to hit the best spots!

all depends on what you actually like to ride - no point going to bike park wales if you don't do downhill or want do a 30km ride. my personal favourite at the moment is glentress because it offers a varied amount of trails that are easy to get to from the buzzards nest car park which is important because I have next to no fitness level lol. My son can also do most of these trails as a beginner and the freeride park is there too.

This is similar to Llandegla but it doesn't have the short single track routes close by the skill track, freeride park or pump track.

ilovedirt

I really like Coed Y Brenin. I've not visited enough centres to say which one is the best though! They all have their merits, and I've enjoyed most that I've been to, with the exceptions of Sherwood Pines and Cannock. They were just shit.

Twelly

Bike Park Wales has given me the biggest adrenalin buzz. The speed and flowyness of the blue run we did was incredible. Coed Y Brenin was completely different, more technically challenging and harder on the body, felt like I had earned my curry after doing a big chunk of The Beast. I still love my local spot, QE Country Park. It's less predictable because there is never any grip and it usually catches me out, lots of spills and diversions into bushes. I still haven't explored all of the brilliant twisty singletrack out the back of QE, I could spend hours up there messing around.

All different but all good, can't pick a fave. Need to visit more really.

marcus'73

I really liked Glentress the trails are good and you can mix them up as they meet up at different points. The whole area is geared up for mountain bikers. I rented a small house in Peebles that came with a heated (!) bike storage basement. Hardly used the car once I got there as you can ride to the trails from the town.

rockmonkeysc

[quote="POAH"

all depends on what you actually like to ride - no point going to bike park wales if you don't do downhill [/quote]

There's only two downhill tracks at bike park wales, the reds and blues are too flat to be any fun on a dh bike. Even then, the black trails are only fun if you enjoy 30 foot jumps.
The blues and reds are great fun on a trail bike, the climb is steady and only 20-30 minutes, if you don't fancy pedalling up the uplift is good.

Briggo

It's a close one between several welsh trail centres but Coed Y Brenin pips it, Whinlatter is the best English centre.

My experience excludes the Scottish ones though.

FishFish

mcnultycop wrote:

Thetford?

The awesome Thetford - the black run has been closed.

welshkev

I don't get the hype about BPW, yes it's fun but there's much better riding in the area.

WindyG

FishFish wrote:

mcnultycop wrote:

Thetford?

The awesome Thetford - the black run has been closed.

No it hasn't, it has been downgraded to red, there are now 2 reds, 1 blue and 1 green.

lawman

WindyG wrote:

FishFish wrote:

mcnultycop wrote:

Thetford?

The awesome Thetford - the black run has been closed.

No it hasn't, it has been downgraded to red, there are now 2 reds, 1 blue and 1 green.

Tbf even the reds should be downgraded to blue, the flattest most boring place I've ever ridden.

stubs

I am not really a fan of trail centres they tend to be a fall back when the weathers bad. I mean you go to Wales for example with some of the best scenery in the world and you pedal round in circles inside a Pine forest. Try actually riding up and then down a mountain for a change.

Cader Idris descent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwMNHlM2fbI

ilovedirt

I need to give cadair idris a go! I've got some big mountain routes planned for the next few months while the weather is good. I've lived in north wales for almost four years now and have never really bothered going up anything REALLY big (except snowdon). Time to change that!

welshkev

stubs wrote:

I am not really a fan of trail centres they tend to be a fall back when the weathers bad. I mean you go to Wales for example with some of the best scenery in the world and you pedal round in circles inside a Pine forest. Try actually riding up and then down a mountain for a change.

Cader Idris descent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwMNHlM2fbI

yes! after doing Snowdon last month this is next on my list

rockmonkeysc

welshkev wrote:

I don't get the hype about BPW, yes it's fun but there's much better riding in the area.

Probably true but no one except the locals know where the other good stuff is.
I have done Taff Buggy and some other DH track near there and they weren't bad.
Brecons are on my list for this year.

Maro

I rode BPW (blues & reds) a few weeks after opening and really enjoyed it, I like fast flowy stuff, you could chuck the bike into a burm and be confident it would spit you out in roughly the right direction. I rode there last week and was a bit dissapointed by the amount of braking bumps, loose gravelly corners, and the state that some of the burms have got into. I think there's quite a cool vibe around the place too.

I like Afan, the new xc trail at Cwmcarn is a lot of fun if you don't mind a steep climb, I'm fond of FoD for the same reason I like BPW, and it's fairly close. I loved the summit trail at Nant y Arian when I was there a few years back.

On my list are Hopton, Coed y Brenin, Nant y Arian again, Brechfa. Hoping to do a bit of a road trip later in the year.

Briggo

lawman wrote:

WindyG wrote:

FishFish wrote:

mcnultycop wrote:

Thetford?

The awesome Thetford - the black run has been closed.

No it hasn't, it has been downgraded to red, there are now 2 reds, 1 blue and 1 green.

Tbf even the reds should be downgraded to blue, the flattest most boring place I've ever ridden.

What on earth are you on about, it has bombholes, boooom rad stuff.

To be fair they haven't done a too bad job considering they have only hints of elevation to play with. But yeah, it's boring once you're spoilt with a hill to play on.

paul.skibum

Trail Centres are alright for what they are - fun places to go where you dont have to think about route finding or thinking about anything other than riding. The best trail centre is the open countryside and an OS map. Peaks, Breacons, Exmoor, Quantocks, where ever you haven''t been before.

Maro

RockmonkeySC wrote:

Brecons are on my list for this year.

I can see the Brecons from my house, never ridden there. I keep threatening to do the gap.

rockmonkeysc

Maro wrote:

RockmonkeySC wrote:

Brecons are on my list for this year.

I can see the Brecons from my house, never ridden there. I keep threatening to do the gap.

I'm planning on doing the gap this year and I have a plan to extend the ride with a traverse across the east face of Fan-Y-Big along a narrow track I have walked before, it should be a bit airy with a steep 600 foot drop to the side!