I’m there next saturday with a big group (13 – 3 experienced, 10 absolute novice). I’m guessing there is an order in which trails the novices should ride to get aclimatised? I’m planning on doing the big blue, but would appreciate a ‘best of’ list if there is one.

We’ll be spending the morning together and then after lunch the 3 of us that ride will be pealing off to ride the blacks. Which trail is most like the Aline? We’ll be on hire bikes so i’ll not be sending the pro lines, I don’t want to have to pay for anything that breaks.

Also, apologies if you’re there next weekend and you get held up by a big bunch of tourists on hire bikes.

Novice novice? Like zero mtb experience?

Sixtapod to willy waver repeatedly.

Out of the 10 ‘novices’, 7 are road cyclists with limited/no experience riding MTB in adulthood (we’re all 30ish), 3 are absolute cycling novices.

Thanks for the advice, i’ll see if there are some vids on youtube.

10 novices at BPW? Whats the over/under on A&E casualties? 3?

Hopefully none if they stick to appropriate trails, there aren’t many heroes in the bunch so i’m pretty confident they’ll be ok.

Definitely the 3 total novices… get them to do the green trail first.

You’ll have a blast, just space yourselves out and don’t stop on the trail… Nothing worse than being on a run and finding a group having a natter halfway down

Also, Terry’s Belly is a long trail for a novice – very tiring if you’re going to panic brake all the way.

Thanks guys. Must do reds, blacks for the afternoon?

Only asking for recommendations as I presume we’ll not get through them all in one day?

I’m not sure I’d send novices down any of the blacks. Or some of the reds.

They all have qualifiers at the top so don’t just walk over them and start on the trail

Yeah of course, Reds/Black are just for 3 of us in the afternoon.

I was there with a novice a few weeks back. They stacked it on the swoopy trail from the centre to the uplift 🙂

Are you used to shepherding novices? Roadies – don’t let them sit down, demo how to squash/absorb jumps so they don’t pogo! Tell them when/when not to brake.

It may be a bit dull for the experienced guys but the novices will benefit from a few runs of the same trail. You can split up easily as most trails meet and the mid point then again at the bottom so you don’t need to ride as a group all the time. Sixtapod to start for sure.

There’s a good guide at the uplift (and again at the top I think) which splits the trails into flow and tech ones. The flow blue trails are best for beginners, then try the tech blue trails, then try the tech red trails if comfy with tech blue (bearing in mind mounting rider fatigue). The flow red trails are wasted/dangerous for beginners as they’re jumpy and if you ride them as fast as the flow blue trails without jumping skills you will have a massive crash.

The risk you have with this group is that the 7 roadies are likely to do everything wrong. The 3 absolute beginners won’t have ingrained unsuitable behaviour from riding road bikes. If anyone in your group has skiing, snowboarding, kite surfing, skateboarding, etc experience they will have far better core skills than the others. Don’t let someone who has no experience of gravity/’extreme’ sports follow their snowboarding mate down a blue run or they will come horribly unstuck! Someone used to pumping and jumping a board will intuitively transfer those skills into wheels and ride so much better than another beginner who may be a much faster roadie.

will look forward to a full write up next weekend.

I did something similar with a mixed group. From the top start with the blue on the left ‘Melted Welly’ I think and keep blue left all the way to the bottom. Next run from the top was the blue on the right, Sixtapod I think and keep blue right all the way to the bottom. If they’re feeling confident they could then try Terry’s Belly which is the hardest of blues and a definite step up.

We had a couple of small falls, mostly due to old bikes/dodgy brakes, but all in all everybody loved it.

I’ve noticed that whenever I crash, I’m on the brakes, therefore my advice is not to brake.

You only crash when you brake.