Hi

I ride downhill and am going riding with a mate to swinley. Were interested in downhill mainly and was wondering if anyone could give us a hand of finding the good bits, and more importantly does anyone have a map?

Thanks

I don’t think any map of Swinley lists all the bits – there’s an incredible network of trails there, some of which may be off limits due to logging, a race in progress or just too waterlogged to bother with, others which will be fantastic.

There’s two main man made bits: The Gully (short jumpy section) and another section (don’t know the name sorry) which has a really nice flowy downhill/jumpy section and some tight twisting singletrack.

Map here:
http://www.gorrick.com/downloads/swinleyforestmap.pdf but neither area is specifically named other than the “expert mtb area”. The Gully by the way is somewhere in the region of point 3 or 4 on that map.

Swinley is pretty flat, I wouldn’t describe any of it as downhill. That’s one of the reasons it’s hard to find your way around, there is no obvious hill to ride to the top of.

If you’re going at the weekend there’ll be loads of people there to ask…. pick somebody with a full face helmet: they will probably be going to the bits you’re interested in

Strava!

Ex-Swinley local here. Not really a good choice for downhill! If you can get to the top of The Wall, ie before Deer Stalker, there is some steeper stuff. Also just before the entrance to Deer Stalker there are some trails that descend rapidly rather than contour.

Would Aston Hill not be better for your requirements?

I ride there allot and found this map very useful when learning where everything is. Most of the main good stuff is marked here in red. The area you want where all the full face helmet guys hang out is bottom right, the clubhouse, the start of Deer Stalker and a couple more downhills already mentioned. I put this as a custom map on my Garmin and found it invaluable: http://www.buckledwheel.com/file/n1240065/swinleysingletrack2.jpg

Virtually all of the more steep stuff is right at the bottom of that map where there is a lot of red squiggles. Deerstalker (or left-left) is there along with another 3 or 4 runs that all start within a couple of metres of each other. Some of them merge into the Labyrinth for a longer singletrack run which is good as none last very long.

+1 for there being no downhill, there are a handfull of big ish jumps and drops you could session in the expert area, but even deerstalker and babymaker are probably quickest on a hardtail, especialy if you extend them into the labrynth which has uphills (and they’re very short tracks if you dont).

Yep, my 100mm hardtail copes fine with them