A mate has suggested a trip to Bedgebury. I up for trying anything new but we will be driving past the Surrey Hills and travelling twice as long to get there.
Worth it – or should we be hitting Surrey instead?
Anyone who’s done both?

Not whilst the conditions are this good on the natural trails of the SE. It’s rather flat.

Where are you coming from? The are many, many great places for riding in the SE.

If you’re driving past Surrey Hills (or therefor Swinley) I’d say no.

Si

It’s probably also just as quick to get to Friston, which is hugely underrated imho. If a little slippy at times…

For an XC whippet you can knock out an entire lap in 35 minutes and even a fat git like me can do it in 42 minutes. Not worth travelling past the aforementioned places at the moment whilst it’s still dry-ish. However in the middle of winter when the ‘natural trails’ are muddy it’s worth a drive. Mostly flat with a few decent technical sections (think swoopy and niggly rather than rock gardens and drop offs) it’s a nice ride. A hard tail will cope with all that’s on offer.
Good facilities; cafe with good food, showers, Go Ape, forest walks in the Pinetum (for the rest of the family) it’s a nice place place to visit. £7.50 to park puts some people off.

I come from an hour to the East, (as close to France as you could get), so for me it’s the nearest place to go and get a trail centre fix. Fowlmead (Betteshanger Park) is the only other place to go in deepest darkest Kent but it lacks appeal in my opinion. Also, as a former colliery, I always imagine the coal dust you ride on is grinding my transmission away at an alarming rate!

£7.50 to park puts some people off.

Not been for a while?

Good facilities; cafe with good food, showers, Go Ape, forest walks in the Pinetum (for the rest of the family) it’s a nice place place to visit. £7.50 to park puts some people off.

I think it’s £10 to park now and £12 at weekends.

Bedgebury is our usual riding place (only a few times a year) and It’s pretty good. Most of the lap is singletrack with a few fire road links. I’ve never done a lap in under an hour so perhaps feel like it’s a better deal than some quicker people 🙂

I wouldn’t drive past Surrey Hills to get there. I’m equidistant and Surrey Hills wins especially as I don’t have to pay £12 to park.

I think its worth up to an hours drive to get to. I go a few times a year and take a lunch with me and get there for about 9 ish before it gets busy, especially on weekends. Usually do between 4 and 6 laps to make it worth the parking cost.

Its a good ride but not amazing. I have some good trails on my doorstep but its nice to go somewhere and just ride non stop for a few hours without dog walkers getting in the way.

It would only occupy you for an hour at most. And then it is pretty tame XC. The cafe and parking are not cheap, although you could cycle in easily enough. On the plus side you can’t get lost in there. It’s a nice enough place if you are in the area and have an hour to spare, but I’d not travel to it. South Downs near Seaford/Brighton/Arundel much more fun, as is any spot on the North Downs between Reigate/Dorking/Guildford. Or you could just go to Peaslake and follow Trailforks all day. Not sure where you are coming from, but Cannock is way better than Bedge.

Sorry I thought it was £7:50! I bought an annual pass this year for £63, so haven’t been paying attention!

I went during the summer holidays, as I was in the area, I thought it was going to be £10 but it’s £12 during school holidays as well as weekends. It’s a nice trail if in the area but expensive if you are only going to do one circuit. There really should be a two hour parking option for half the price.

There are a couple of rock gardens, one of which is fairly challenging but most folks ride past it then say there is nothing interesting there 😉 Do a Google image search for bedgebury rock garden and you’ll see some stuff.

There is also a load of off piste stuff which is pretty good – I could easily do a 40km ride there without much fire road or repeats. Having said that I haven’t been there since I moved to Scotland 3 years ago.

I went there for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it exceeded my expectations, but like Sparkyspice, I had to travel an hour and a half to get there, plus a tenner parking…..fun, but for me I wouldn’t drive past Barham or Kings wood unless it was really boggy.

Just go and find out. If you don’t like it don’t go again.

I am sure they advertised a few months ago an early entry fee for parking, to encourage more mtbers to head on in. Worth giving a call and asking, Quench cycles there should know, I think the parking was before 8:30 and you had a couple of hours.

You can park in the lay-by on the A21, and peddle in around the back.

But really not worth driving past SHs to get to Bedgebury.

They ruined it when they made the old last run in to the penultimate one.

They ruined it when they made the old last run in to the penultimate one.

Unless I’m missing something the last section is Cake Run? It’s one of the better sections for me.

Kind of out of the way though as you end up going down a load of fire road to get to it and back up for another lap.

I am sure they advertised a few months ago an early entry fee for parking, to encourage more mtbers to head on in. Worth giving a call and asking, Quench cycles there should know, I think the parking was before 8:30 and you had a couple of hours.

Yeah I’m fairly sure they’re doing that, 8am-10:30am and it’s £3 – seem to remember signs when I visited a few weeks ago:

*A reduced vehicle admission fee of £3 will also be offered to any cars entering and leaving the car park between the hours of 8am and 10.30 am every Saturday morning. Any car leaving after 10.30am will be subject to the standard £12 fee.

As for whether it’s worth the trip, it’s OK, I had my first ride on a MTB for 15 years here a few weeks back and I didn’t die… It’s VERY pedally, and to be having decent fun you’ll need to be going pretty quick. There’s a few trail ‘features’ like rock gardens, pumpable bumps ad some small drop offs, but apart from the one about 200m after the start they’re all torwards the end. In fact the best section for me was the cake run, which is the very last section before a short fireroad ride back to the car park. it’s 10 miles for the complete loop.

I’d say swinley has better/more fun sections and more height variation, but bedgebury is OK if you just want some fast swoopy bermy singletrack without much gnar.

Yep its tame but gets interesting when ridin flat out on heartrate limit under 35 min laps when fit. 4 laps hard good for training as a change. Surrey hills more fun for sure. Wifey likes bedgebury man reason we go. Did insomnia night race few years back , that was right fun

Bedgebury is my closest trail centre, Swinley is about 30 minutes further.

I find Swinley more fun when it does go downhill but it has more flat filler sections with nothing to do except pedal. Bedgebury seems to keep a better flow through the whole loop, though you do have to keep the speed up to make the most of it.

Cake run is one of the newer editions a few years ago.

The previous last run used to be that penultimate trail. You would end up at the opposite end of the cafe.

Yeah the reason the old last trail (Starve goose) was turned around was you ended up having to ride back to the car park via the playground and go-ape areas which caused a lot of conflict. We were originally going to lose that bit completely, it was going to be fire road all the way back from “pointless” so we built the cake run to have a final “grin” section.

I’m not sure of the latest plans but it was on the long term plan to link the bottom of starve goose with the top of the cake run with a new trail, and reopen starve goose as a more gnarly decent. Probably no resources available to do that now though.