I’m being dragged along to Chopwell tomorrow. Someone is trying to get me out of bike retirement. We’ve never been before.

We’re both DH riders with a preference for hairy trails but we’re taking steel hardtails. What should we be looking for? Anything we must ride? Anything to avoid?

For what you want, Park at the car park and follow the pylons – they’ve just done a load of new berms and surfacing etc, so a good time to pick.

Its rained a lot this week, so mostly it will be muddy.

You can do Powerline as ninfan says, there are lots of other XC type stuff too. I got taken to the steep trails last week though, way better than powerline.

Try these.
starting from the carpark aim for this one…
https://www.strava.com/segments/11735878

then this…
https://www.strava.com/segments/8056468

and this…
https://www.strava.com/segments/3810827

Finish on this…
https://www.strava.com/segments/9283748

I was there on Saturday, but am much more of an XC mincer. This is my regular loop anyway: https://www.strava.com/activities/583436176 . It takes in lots of the usual segments, but not the super-steep stuff. The new Powerline stuff is still a bit loose as it’s literally only a week old.

It was bone dry at the weekend so hopefully it shouldn’t be its usual knee-deep mud bogfest even with the recent rain. I’m hoping to head up there for a quick blast tomorrow at some point so give me a wave if you see a girl on a small FS Canyon.

All the singletrack bits are pretty short – you won’t go wrong with just picking a track heading into the forest. They all pop you out on a fireroad soon enough, then just cycle uphill and pick another trail to explore.

Good dogging after dark

Ooo I didn’t realise there was “super steep stuff”. Sounds interesting. I know the Powerline stuff is obvious so we’ll definitely hit that but I wouldn’t mind some natural stuff. Not scared of mud and roots.

It looks like a pretty small area, can we just shoot down anything that looks good without ending up lost?

“Super-steep” is all relative… I really am a bit of a mincer!

Yep, you can pretty much go down anything that looks promising. Occasionally tracks peter out, but most are fairly well worn. If you hit the river, just turn around and come back uphill. The golf course is the boundary of the wood at the top of the hill.

Chopwell was achieved today. We were both pleasantly surprised. The main powerline trail is a bit cack but the natural stuff was very enjoyable. I love all the slimy, rooty, steep stuff. Especially since we were both on matching old school bikes. We just shot off down everything that looked promising and found loads of cool trails. Really easy to get your bearings and navigate around as well.

We’re going back on Wednesday I’m sure we’ll uncover more stuff. I’ve been on a total bummer with bikes recently so it was nice to have a change of scenery and actually enjoy just arsing around in the woods. My fitness is shocking though. Can’t manage many laps.

There is some good fast stuff down in the southern end

Linky

That stuff looks like where we were riding. We found the gully with the berms up the sides. We rode the steep stuff that ends at the river. My mate walked away from a big crash there!

Its great flying down Ted’s ridge to the river, just got to hope theres no poor bugger heading up.. some nice stuff around there