I am staying at Salford quays for a week soon and am training for a week long mtb race so need to get out in evenings – any suggestions please Manchester urban or where ever nearby hills – any suggestions please.

You could ride into Manchester Picaddily station (15-20mins from Salford Quays) and get a train to Marple (20 mins) or New Mills (30mins). Plenty of good hilly mtb rides from both those locations. You'll need a map and/or a guidebook (like the vertibrate graphics one) to the Dark Peak if you don't know the area.

If you go to New Mills and ride the 3 miles to Hayfield there is a Wednesday night group ride from there – have a look at the Hayfield Hub website.

There is some urban riding nearer to you, but you'd def need some locals to show you that.

Get hora to bring you out to the peaks.

Or get the train from Salford Crescent to Blackrod / Adlington / Chorley and ride around Rivington Pike / Healey Nab.

peaks, calderdale, rivi (roughly in that order for quality of riding) plenty of places 20-30mins away. You could even get offroad at eccles nearby and ride the old train line to hindley then curve up round haigh and blackrod to get to rivi. It's a long flat not very interesting approach to rivi but it gets the miles in.

+1 New Mills to Edale (and beyond) via Hayfield/Jacob's Ladder.

+1 re train to Horwich Parkway or Blackrod – Winter Hill, Rvington -loads of trails – the commonwealth games were here.

There's quite a few STW folk around Marple/New Mills/Hayfield, post up on here nearer the time and I'm sure someone will be up for an evening ride.

I'm in New Mills; train from Manc Piccadilly takes about 35 mins, can ride from the station and be off-road almost immediately. Everything here from 1hr loops to all day rides.

Ok cheers for tips, I think I'll head to Rivington