Will be in the Philadelphia area end of May and am looking for suggestions of where to ride. Last year rode from Baltimore to York and Baltimore to Annapolis. Also went on a “Bike Party” (think critical mass with sound systems on bikes). Any pointers/experience (Amish country?) gratefully received.

I learned to ride in Philly – you’ve prob got some of the best mountain biking within any US city in terms of the Wissahickon state park, about 5 or 6 miles out of centre city. Lovely ride out through Fairmont park (back of the art museum that Rocky ran up to) on the road; the wiss is then a steep sided valley that follows a creek.
It’s not massive, something like 5 miles or so, but there’s hard, technical riding there. Wooded, rocky singletrack – some of the climbs were brutal. There was a bit of access aggro when I was there (10 + years back), which is unlikely to have improved – just the usual tensions between a lot of user groups in an urban area. So you could check on what the score is there.

Another place we rode was Belmont plateau in Fairmont park – this was nowt special but did have local ‘races’ every weds in the spring/summer, off the cuff stuff where someone laid out a trail in the woods, great fun.

Further afield people rode in French creek, but only ever went once as I wasn’t driving at the time and it’s a stretch out of the city.

Cheers Mr Lager. Had seen info about Wissahickon – so good to know it’s worth it. Had completely passed me by that Rocky was filmed in Philadelphia, good reason to head to the art museum. Will have a car and have noted French Creek as a possibility. Am I correct in thinking that in some of the state parks you need a permit to ride off of the main trail/gravel (and on the single track)?

Cheers Mr Lager. Had seen info about Wissahickon – so good to know it’s worth it. Had completely passed me by that Rocky was filmed in Philadelphia, good reason to head to the art museum. Will have a car and have noted French Creek as a possibility. Am I correct in thinking that in some of the state parks you need a permit to ride off of the main trail/gravel (and on the single track)?

I think that’s likely to be the case, yes – you needed a tag around your seatpost to officially ride the Wiss when I was there. Highly unlikely that you would arrange this just for a one-off visit, and it’s equally unlikely that a ranger would stop you out on the trail.
Prob best to ask on the Pennsylvania forum on mtbreview – not sure how busy that forum is these days but I am sure you’d get an answer on how things are.

The art museum is superb – defo worth a visit (and a run up the steps 🙂 )

Not got any great riding tips, but be sure to fuel up in Reading terminal while you are there, the Dutch oven was the name of the Amish place we ate at, it was great food. Also, there is a cycling based Mural tour of the city which is worth a look up, if you want details I can email my friend to find out the details of it?

Thanks for the advice Garry and Toby and apologies for not acknowledging it sooner. Looking forward to the trip and will deffo look up the dutch oven. The art gallery is top of my list.

Wissahickon + 1 http://www.fow.org/about-park

Its a Philly City park, with some special riding permit required I think. You’re off to Guantanimo if you are a foriegner and you don’t have one! 😉

Pennsylvania State Parks don’t require ant sort of paid bike permit. The have a pretty good Park FinderWebsite and pdf park maps can be downloaded online.

If you’re willing to drive a couple of hours, look at:

Raystown Lake (Allegrippis Triails)

Rothrock

Lived and worked in Bethlehem for 2 years (an hour-ish north of Philly), loads of rocky wooded riding in Pa and NJ. Our campus (Lehigh Uni) had loads of cheeky awesome techy singletrack. If you are driving, French Creek was a regular haunt, also Blue Marsh in Reading.

MTBR is a great resource of trails

http://trails.mtbr.com/cat/united-states-trails/trails-pennsylvania/pls_4573crx.aspx

Cheers Joe. That raystone lake looks good. Found some pdfs – french creek state park looks promising. Will try try not to end up in gitmo by looking funny.