Boys and I loved the uplift and what seemed a great variety of blues and a little bit of reds.
Most of all the uplift ….and easily rideable trails.

Where should be try next or will we be disappointed?

Thanks

Antur stiniog. The reds are a bit more challenging but it’s awesome!

Revolution is much better than bike park Wales.

Not sure I’d be suggesting Revolution or Antur Stiniog for

blues and a little bit of reds….easily rideable trails.

Of the two, as wrecker rightly points out, Antur is more of a challenge, but excellent. BPW has a lot more that feel like trail centre grade trails with an uplift than the others.

The blue at antur isn’t scary and it does have a few options now. Probably wait for better weather though.

The blue is indeed good, Wrecker. I would, however, suggest that someone coming from the variety and volume of BPW to one blue at Antur might be a little disappointed! The reds at Antur are a fair step up from the reds at BPW as well.

This isn’t to dismiss Antur. I love the place!

Plenty of variety at the Forest of Dean. If you use the uplift there is nothing to stop you doing the normal blue and red runs back to the bottom as well as some of the DH tracks. Some are pretty easy to the middle track which gives you options to do tops of some trails and the bottoms of others. However, it is not as intuitive as BPW and without some degree of local knowledge you could waste a lot of time trying to find the best runs to suit your abilities.

Fair points CFH. It’s hard not to recommend somewhere as awesome as antur!

Portes du Soleil… It’s like BPW x100

Portes du Soleil… It’s like BPW x100

That’s what I was going to say.

Definitely FOD though as above it’d be good to have some local knowledge or someone who’s at least been there before- the trails are mint but the waymarking/mapping is awful and it’s a warren of trails. Fine if you’re a confident rider and up for riding all of it, so if you’ve got someone that can scout it out first that’d help a lot.

(and the un-uplifted red is ace btw, don’t miss it just because it’s not got a bus ride)

I went with a big mixed group to antur, I loved it but the reds are harder than BPW reds (well, like everything, depends on the rider but they’re rocky and more committing and I suppose a bit more intimidating). Some of our group had been round cyb beast with us the day before but just didn’t like antur at all, one dude did one run of the blue. Though that was early on at antur, they’ve added to it and tuned it since then

When did you ride FoD Northwind? Signage was much improved when I was last there.

Great venue for trail bike uplift. Gets grottier in wet weather than other more rock-based venues though.

BPW is a bike park, and still relatively unique in the UK (they’re all over the place in Europe). Stiniog is more of a DH venue. Whereas BPW needs some pedalling at times and longer trails, Stiniog is all fast down (though you can crank the pedals a bit to pick up speed). As DH it’s more challenging and carries greater risk. Blue is more technical than a blue at BPW and does have rocks to deal with.

And yeah, if you’ve got a group used to reds or blacks at regular trail centres, they can still be freaked out by just the blue at Stiniog. It’s not that bad really, but it’s not trail centre stuff.

chakaping – Member

When did you ride FoD Northwind? Signage was much improved when I was last there.

July I think.

Touches on something I’ve been wanting to ask. Last time I rode a Trail Centre was 10 years ago (CyB, 7Stanes, etc). I stopped for a number of reasons, but mainly because the riding bored me. Easy climbs, descents that were decent enough, but designed to be ridden on a bike. They weren’t a challenge.

How does the current crop of Trail Centre tracks and grading compare to a decade ago? How hard does it really get? I read threads titled along the lines of ‘BPW on a hardtail – will I die?’ and wonder. I’ve recently been riding the gnadgery stuff into Cockercombe in the Quantocks – is it like that? Harder? In what way?

Just askin,’ like.

Trail centres are what they are. Groomed and generally all weather, and places you can kind of trust.

All the regular ones are still what they were, and generally with British trail centres a black grade seems to be more about length and technicality of the climbs or descents, but not about some big scary features.

BPW is different. It’s not a regular trail centre. It’s half way between one and a DH venue. It does have “features”. Descents on the blacks can be challenging and certainly beyond and risky for some riders which is why they’ve added qualifiers on them now. The blues and reds though you can certainly ride on a hard tail. Not comfortable, but you can do. Some people though rock up on big DH rigs but then regret it as the place isn’t full on DH and requires pedalling in places.

Compared to “natural” stuff (it’s never natural really, someone’s done some work on the trails or paths, bridleways, it’s just not groomed), it’s still very different. My local is Surrey Hills and it’s riddled with all kinds of trails, many rough and raw, and a lot of constant change. Conditions change the trails a lot and local trail builders do likewise. You can’t exactly trust a trail to be the same each week.

Having done a little raw out in the wild stuff in the Lakes and stuff around Brecon, bits in Devon, again trail centres and bike parks are nothing really like it. Except maybe BPW has Rim Dinger which does remind me of the crazy loose as hell rocky bridleways in some places.

I read threads titled along the lines of ‘BPW on a hardtail – will I die?’ and wonder. I’ve recently been riding the gnadgery stuff into Cockercombe in the Quantocks – is it like that? Harder? In what way?

If you’ve been riding those d/h’s on the Quantocks ok you’ll be fine on all the blacks at bike park Wales. 50 shades of black wasn’t open last time I went there though so can’t comment on that one.