Evening all, just looking for some advice on routes in the Dales if I can 🙂

Looks like I’ll be around there for a few weeks with work in June and will have time to kill at weekends. I’m told the Dales Bike Centre at Swaledale is a good starting point for natural rides, but have no other idea of where to ride. Looking for challenging, technical but fun routes please. All day epics or just loops to kill a few hours 🙂

Thanks in advance!

Dales are pretty big, whereabouts are you going to be based?

If you’re in the north east speak to dales bike centre.
If you’re in the north west it’s the calf
If you’re in the south speak to Stu at riders cycles in skipton.
Worth digging out the gpx file for stu’s dales 300k too as there’s some great tracks on there.

Fair point, I should have been more specific haha! I’ll be in the north east.

Can’t really go wrong with Dales Bike Centre. There are a couple of routes on here in Swaledale to give you an idea.

http://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/visit-the-dales/get-outdoors-dales/mountain-biking/mountain-biking-routes

‘The Edge’ merged with ‘Booze and Crackpot’ would make a good day out.

I asked a couple of weeks ago (not for techy routes, though).

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/swaledale-route-suggestions-for-mixed-ability-group

We ended up doing a shortened version of “The Edge”, missing out Gunnerside Gill, but I did ride that separately. Having seen the route into the gill from below, I can’t imagine anything much more techy, while still being rideable by mortals.

It’s a very pretty area – I was impressed (and that doesn’t happen often!)

For a quick blast: up Fremington edge to Hurst, down to Langthwaite, up towards Surrender Bridge but before getting to the road cut left and drop down The Angry Man. At the bottom go up the dale for about a mile, cross the river and head up on to Harkerside then do the pipeline descent and work your way back along the moor to Grinton and the DBC.

Ask in DBC and they’ll point things out on a map for you, getting to the top of some of the descents can be a bit hit and miss if you aren’t familiar with the area.