I’ve just moved to a new place in Hampton Hill.

What I’m wondering is; is there any decent riding (of an off-road variety) available close by that would make it worth bringing a mountain bike down during the week?

Also whatever is out there is it rideable on a single speed?

I live in Surrey not familiar with Hampton Hill? I ride North Downs Way, Boxhill and Dorking area. Don’t do SS.

Contrary to what many will have you believe, Surrey is pretty shite for riding really.

rewski: It’s near Kingston upon Thames kinda region.
Try this, I think it’s Surrey

Surrey is pretty shite for riding really.

Well it’s not the Peak District but it’s not Norfolk either 🙂

I live/ride in Surrey and there’s lots of great riding. Sure you won’t get epic climbs/descents but there’s loads of great trails out there. It’s the most densely wooded county in England so lots of twisty forest singletrack to be had.

</should not rise to the trolls>

Any regular week day night/evening rides?

Definetly head over Boxhill, Ranmore and Dorking (Leith Hill, Holmbury and Pitch) area is pretty close. There’s a bit of riding at Richmond Park.

Nirvana cycles do a Tuesday evening ride.

Where’s that then?

Check out http://www.redhillcc.co.uk Their offroad crew do a regular wednesday jaunt. You will learn a few or the routes around the north downs too.

Thanks guys,

http://www.nirvanacycles.com/

I’m 5 mins from Hampton Hill. In 20 mins by car you can be in Swinley forest 30 mins Surrey hills and we have a little off road loop around Esher and Cobham that stretches the legs of a weeknight and is 10 mins ride from HH.

Don’t listen to Loddrik I think his medication has run out. Surrey has plenty to keep a decent rider busy.

I saw signs for Esher on the way here today, I think it’s only abotu 5 miles away

If you’re looking for an “out the back door” quick blast; Richmond Park is fairly nice, or Esher Common has some more technical options with a few jumps too.

Swinley is about 25 minutes away by car and very SS friendly, as above Surrey Hills, Ranmore, Box Hill etc etc, all good. I only had the SS for the last few months and managed all of them on the SS OK and Im fat, old and not at my strongest or fittest at the mo.

I used to night ride in a cheeky manner round Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common on the SS, good for keeping the fitness up and about 20 minutes on the bike from Hampton Hill.

You can easily ride out to Ranmore from there, through Bushy and out toward Esher and up through the commons.

There are some nice pootles along the Thames and the Wey for gentle pub type rides too, I often head off on me Pashley when I get home from work and Im short of time or just fancy a dossy day cruising along the river or round Bushy Park.

I heard riding was pretty poor anywhere south of the peaks. And re beer is expensive and watered down!

try posting here
http://www.diaryofamountainbiker.co.uk/index.php

or here
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12669705&start=4240

🙂

From Hampton you can easily ride out to the Surrey Hills quite easily, we’ve worked out a route that’s about 75% off road out there coming back into Kingston mostly off road too.
We’ll probably be doing this over Easter at some point as we’re mostly road riding at the moment as we’re building up mileage and also leading the Sunday morning club run.

I am only going to say this once. steve_b77, welcome to heaven

Well it’s not the Peak District

You’re right about that, but then while the Surrey Hills don’t tend to have much in the way of rocks, the Peak District doesn’t tend to have much in the way of steep, rooty, loamy singletrack, of which there is plenty of in the Surrey Hills. Oh and the trails down here tend to have more built jumps and features as well; something you won’t EVER see on the classic Peak routes.

Look, it’s dead simple. There are different types of terrain and the ideal situation is that you’re good riding on all of it.

Poeple who live down here tend not to be able to ride rocks and my experience of people coming from the Peak is that they can’t ride roots and loamy steep turns.

So the ‘gung ho’, macho ‘it ‘aint real riding unless it’s full of gnarr factored rocks’ is a bit misplaced when those spouting it then fall off at the first sign of a muddy root 😀

The Surrey Hills will see your riding skills jump a whole order of magnitude. Your main riding areas are Leith Hill, Holmburry Hill and Pitch Hill. Either side of that you have the areas of Ranmore (‘tother side of Leith) and Winterfol (‘tother side of Pitch).

Your best place to ‘rock up’ is Peaslake of a weekend and just follow the crowds to begin with.

Nirvana are based in Westcot and are very well organised with their rides, but you need to be careful which ride you go on because there are some tasty guys riding with them and their freeride sessions can have you heading into some steep trails with some fairly decent gaps.

They have less ‘gnarr factored’ rides as well of course.

Other than that, there are lots of people around who will happily show you the way.

Howard at Pedal & Spoke in Peaslake is a top chap and also leads shop rides. He’s about as good a rider as you’d hope to meet and so while he will happily ride anything the area has to offer, if you say you’re not into that he won’t try to sandbag you into doing stuff you don’t want to do.

It’s a fantastic microcosm of riding, it’s all very accessible but unfortunately there’s very little ‘order’ to the trails and you’re not going to find anything on a map.

Drop me an email if you want any more help.

Well it’s not the Peak District

Peaks is great. However I’d take Surrey Hills/NDowns over it every single day of the week.

Sorry. You’d struggle to find swooping and flowing singletrack in the Peaks

Sitting in my office, sun is shining in on my back. Just read those last two posts and am trying to work out a way of leaving here and going for a ride instead. It’s a beautiful day to be dicking about in the woods on bicycles.

Thanks a bloody lot geetee.

Jools, do it. For me. Please. If you have a camera please take a couple of pics and post.

I miss it. Like a Brother, a sister or a lover 🙁

Jools, I guess then you don’t want to hear about how well the trails are riding right now? How they are drying out quite nicely and it’s almost time to start adjusting your mental settings to ‘dry and loose’ rather than ‘wet and slippy’?
Was out last night on Redlands and the trails there were just sooooo fast. Yes there are some areas that are still thick, but by and large, the trails have that dry, fast, swoopy feel. The surface texture is like crumbled brownies, so just tacky enough in places to give a little extra grip and make the drifts more predictable.
They’re filming up on Redlands so you can’t access 100% of the trails, but the majority are all still accessible (OK I mean accessible in so far as there aren’t security guards up there saying please don’t ride that trail).
The Redlands trails are super sweet right now; steep as most places you’ll find with some of the trails having really well built berms that you can almost ‘fall into’ at any speed and having enough mass to support your weight.
Oh and the way they’ve been built means you can ‘flick flack’ around them; get the back end into play the opposite way to the next turn then use that loosness to flip it around the opposite way to make the turn.
It’s spring and it’s all super fast rolling, drifty, foot down, side slipping, shit spitting fun!

It’s going to be another awesome year on the Surrey Hills!

I used to live in the Peaks, it was hugely overated.

Surrey/Berkshire/Oxfordshire on the other hand is hugely underated.

My favourite rides at the moment:

Saturday – Mountain high in Pangbourne, 8:45 start for ~ 3 hours or natural stuff.

Sunday (as early am as possible to get a parking space) – weekly pilgrimage to Swinley

Tuesday – tunnel hill trolls ‘slow’ ride, which is usualy pretty brisk

A.N.Other day – any trolls ride that isn’t the Tuesday ride, usualy quick enough to struggle.

That’s about 80 off road miles a week, 75%+ on singletrack, and most of it not ridden twice, contrast that to riding in the Peaks, grinding out the same ~40mile loop, of which half or its on the road and the other half broken farm tracks.

Darnit. I need a trip to Brighton via the Surrey hills asap

What’s the attraction with Brighton Hora?

Downing Tools at 1200hrs or sooner and going for ride out my back door to those lovely Trolls Trails. 😀

Everyone I know has bomb-bursted out of London now so its two-birds-one-stone to also stay with some friends in Brighton/make a weekend of it.

Had my bike stolen the other day, so no riding for ages. W A B.

Geetee – You sir are a bastard. There’s no way out of here for me today.

I was up there on Sunday so I know it’s riding well. Haven’t been over to Redlands/Leith for a few weeks so I expect I’ll have a pop on Sunday. What are they filming?

You’re right though it’s looking like it’s going to be the nuts this year.

They are filming a small part of ‘Class of the Titans’ something like a 15 minute scene so I was told

Sounds like a porno film.

well said Geetee

Loddrick I seem to remember is from liverpool – I know where I would rather live and ride 😆

I wondered what the strange skulls and those frames were – gave me a real spook walking the dog up there sunday night!! 😯

they are also doing alot of felling so watch out.

Oops, that should have read ‘Clash of the Titans’

I think the sequel is called “Wrath of the Titans” and if Gemma Arterton is in again it I am going to go and hide on Foot and Mouth – its right behind the portcabin – might get a glimpse of nekkedness

I wondered what the strange skulls and those frames were – gave me a real spook walking the dog up there sunday night!

I think we saw you! Mate and I were up there on Sunday evening and saw a chap walking his dog. Might well have been you. Would have been around 7pm.

We rode Foot & Mouth last night but on the way back up, we got stopped by one of the security guards. At first we were hoping he was going to ask us to be extras in a ‘penetration scene involving Gemma Arterton’ but turns out he just wanted to askus to stay off the areas that were taped off.

He said that the scenes they were doing were using pyrotechnics etc and that this was why they needed to keep us off. He also said he had no interest in policing the other areas of trail.

I have to say, he was really good about it, a very friendly guy and very reasonable in the way he put it. I genuinely wanted to respect what he asked.

Might well have been me! was having a wander round seeing which trails had been affected.

When I walked past the security guard has his feet up in his campervan watching TV!!!

“extras in a penetration scence” LOL

Loddrick I seem to remember is from liverpool – I know where I would rather live and ride

yes, but the drugs trade is much better in Liverpool…

Certainly is. And I’m off to CyB in a day or two, now let me see, Surrey hills or north Wales…

Hmmm..

There isn’t a day goes by where I am not glad I’m no longer in Surrey. Believe me, you are all welcome to it.

Never, ever again!

If you mostly ride in the Surrey hills it probably seems like the best place in the world, besides swinley of course. 😆