Had an evening pootle after work and started on the blue but where it would normally give the option of linking up with the red at section 11 (I think?) there was a diversion for ground nesting birds and I couldn’t find the red route, ended up doing the rest of the blue which was ok but I couldn’t help thinking there must be a way of cycling straight from the look-out to the red stuff and bypassing the blue bits?….anybody shed any light on this?

Go out of the Go Ape gate, follow the fireroad all the way to the end where the massive wide pipeline track is. Turn right on that and follow and you end up at the bottom of Surrey Hill, pick up red there.

Go to start of blue…. Run the fire Road just to left. Follow it.

Head for the star labelled 6 in map below. Pick up red and away you go

http://www.calcot.plus.com/SwinleySmall5.jpg

All revolves nicely around the Lower Star Post (Point 5 on the handy map above).

Do the first half of Blue and then instead of heading straight over from Stickler (Blue 10?) into Tank Traps turn right and head for the clearing at the post and then turn right and pick up Red again – there’ll be a bit of fireroad amongst the pipe works (heading to point 6 on the map) but you’ll soon pick up Red 5.

It’s only Tank Traps that’s missing at the moment and the rest is just the same.

Cheers guys, doncorleoni that map is great and I’ve screen shot it to my phone for future reference.

What others said, but I’d add that it doesn’t really save that much time (10-15 minutes?) going up the fire road. And the red isn’t really long enough on it’s own to make a worthwhile ride. Even at a bumbling fat-bike pace I can do blue and red and get a grossly overpriced cup of tea at the cafe before a 2 hour ticket runs out.

If you just want maximum fun, minimum effort (or rather, most hills least filler) start the blue, then skip the stickler and ride straight to lower star post, then skip the out and back to seagull and head straight for red 15. From then on the red and blue is far more jumpy/bermy BMX track style stuff.

Nothing wrong with the rest of the stickler and the rest of the red, but if I had <1hour and wanted to do the best bits, those are the bits I’d skip.