managed to get a few hours to go out on the bike yesterday…boy did i pick the right weather!!
howling wind and rain and a wind chill factor of less than zero!!
one of the group commented that he didnt enjoy the ride and preferred llandegla and gisburn.
while i enjoy a man made trail centre i really love the sense of adventure you get from going out into the sticks and just navigating the open countryside.
it was a pure mudfest yesterday…wheels dipping into hub deep puddles and boggy mud.
you had to pick your lines and then carry enough speed to be able to get through it especially when avoiding the really big puddles and mud pits. plenty of deep ruts too so it was a test of balance in trying to stay upright while battling the high winds.
personally i think he didnt enjoy it because his shiny new Mondraker Dune got covered in shit…but everyone else in the group had a fantastic ride.

what’s everyone else’s opinions on this?

man made or natural trails?

Out in the open for me, I rarely go to trail centres I think I did three days at TCs last year over one long weekend. Gisburn is the nearest TC to me and the last time I went there was nearly two years ago for a Great Rock skills session.

STW snobbery dictates that one will only ride natural trails, and turns ones nose up at the plebs riding trail centres.

Not snobbery from me, it’s all biking and folk getting out.

oh dear god did you really just ask that ?! 😯

this thread won’t end well….

My ‘favourite’ are natural trails. However, I do like both, and trail centres are especially good in sh1tty winter weather if you fancy a good fast blast.

Depends deosn’t it?

Foul weather I take my heavy as you like trailstar to rag around Glentress.

Anything else out in the open although sometime I cut through trail centres on a much longer route.

it’s 50-50 in Summer, but 100% trail centres in Winter.

I could try and justify it, but I don’t want to. I don’t have a lot of spare time at the moment so being able to turn up, follow a couple of signs and ride lots of fast, fun manmande obstcles suits me perfectly, I don’t have to worry about Farm Giles giving me “get orrrf moi land” ramblers complaining about my very existence or spending 8 hours roaming over hill and dale looking for a decent bit of “natural trail” that someone built, or was formed by years of people walking it.

I really don’t get the snobbery about it, I do sometimes head out in the ‘great outdoors’ with a map and it’s lovely when I’ve got the time to spend a few hours crossing the hills, a nice pub for lunch and ride back, but most people seem to that with riding shady berms made out of twigs and ill thought out jumps that have been knocked up on private land or in a quiet bit of FC land.

right now? seriously tempted to get a BMX and hit the indoor parks. really fed up of swampy trails be they natural or trail centre.

The best natural rides are better than any trail centre.

The worst natural rides are worse than any trail centre.

“natural” trails are surely man made too? except for the ones made by sheep and goats.

I bought a mountain bike, not a trailcentre bike, so “natural”, even if it was put there by man.

all riding is good, so long as pedals are used to pedal at some point.

I like both but if push came to shove it’d be trail centres or certainly manufactured (for bikes) trails. I grew up on BMX’s and mountain biking always has been an extension of that,berms, jumps and weatherproof trails will win the day and hike a bike and slogging can sing.

Take either if they have some trees – bit of shelter is nice when the weather is bad, and a nice environment to ride in.

Trees are banned in the Peak district, though, according to ancient edicts. And there are no good trail centres near by, so it’s the up on’t moor for me.

kennyp – Member
The best natural rides are better than any trail centre.

The worst natural rides are worse than any trail centre.

This puts it pretty nicely for me. However, it also depends on mood, last weekend I really fancied some fast, swoopy fun so headed to Degla.

Natural Trails always … .never been a fan of trail centres and never will be

Since I CBA to dig out one of the many threads just like this so i can copy and paste my answer, I shall +1 the great answer from kennyp above.

What I do miss about “natural” riding is the sense of adventure. It’s so incredibly rare that I get to ride somewhere genuinely new, so those moments of following maps to fabulous new trails often have months if not years between them. I miss the days when every weekend was a new ride in a new place that involved guidebooks and maps to navigate. All my riding these days seems to be either following trail markers or over-familiar routes and this is largely due to not having the luxury of time to explore new places.

I only ride indoor mtb parks these days.

You do know that it is possible to enjoy both? There is nothing to say that you can’t like both…

Im not fussed, I’ll ride either. I’m just happy to get out for a few hours be it Cannock, CYB, the Peak District or the Dales. Rid a lot of trail centres because the midlands isn’t blessed with great natural trails, whereas when I lived in Sheffield the nearest I came to a trail centre was the Wharncliffe DH runs and Greno.

Both!

I don’t work all week to go out at the weekend and do a 30 mile slog with no guarantee of a decent ride. Coming from DH I want to know I am going to get a good session in.

I’m not adverse to natural but give me a centre any day!!

ZWIFT!!!!! 😆

Natural for me. I hate trail centres. I hate being directed round by sign posts knowing there will be nothing challenging. Most centres promise a challenge with a black route or two but they are always disappointing. I don’t think I would bother riding if I only had trail centres to go to. I can see the bad weather appeal but its not for me.
I usually only go to a couple per year for a day out with friends and that’s enough.

I’d be happy for either from my front door!

People are confusing “prefer” with “enjoy”

Where I live it’s 45 minutes drive to Cannock or 45 minutes drive to somewhere like the Derwent Valley honey pot. 9 times out of 10 I choose Cannock and this is largely because I know I will have a couple of hours of start to finish fun. To get that much riding fun out of a “natural” ride I’d probably need to be riding for 3 or 4 hours. All riding is good riding, but I just find myself craving the most “value for money” from my rides.

Great practical example was a couple of weeks ago where I went on a local loop. There was some fab off-road riding on it – technical, rocky, fast – but there was also a huge long road slog to get back home at the end. I like road riding, but on my road bike please 🙂

And if it’s an open mountain side trail helped along by locals…?

Anyhow, love trail centres and love big mountains. I don’t like muddy boggy stuff.

My ‘favourite’ are natural trails. However, I do like both, and trail centres are especially good in sh1tty winter weather if you fancy a good fast blast.

+1

It’s a mood/weather thing with me and the nearset centre is at least an hours drive away, which may have some bearing on my opinion.

S’all just riding and that’s always better than not riding.

STW snobbery

i dont think its a case of snobbery TBH…both have their merits
i do like trail centres. theyre usually well maintained and you can get good speed on them and many are flowy and well put together
but i just think the real fun lies in the natural stuff. for me its about that sense of adventure you get from going out on a non TC route
i mean what did everyone ride before trail centres came about?

as long i’m out having fun on the bike i dont care if its natural or man made…but if push comes to shove it the natural stuff for me

Nothing beats a big day out up the fells. But she doesn’t let me out for many of them so an hour round grizedale, with a bit of TC and a bit of b’ways scratches the itch nicley

I hate trail centres. I hate being directed round by sign posts knowing there will be nothing challenging. Most centres promise a challenge with a black route or two but they are always disappointing. I don’t think I would bother riding if I only had trail centres to go to. I can see the bad weather appeal but its not for me.

go a bit faster or try and find new lines then… there’s always going to be a limit to your skill.

im not good enough to ride trail centres – scare the living daylights out of me

i mean what did everyone ride before trail centres came about?

Wade through muddy fields, hike-a-bike, dull linking road sections 😆

I’m being facetious of course, but no doubt I enjoy riding more on modern bikes and modern trails than I did 25 years ago, be it on trail centres or “natural”.

Cannock is literally 10 mins ride along a country lane so I ride there a lot.

In the 90s before there were any official trails there I very rarely used to go I only rode natrual stuff Peaks Wales Lakes Scotland etc. After a while though the numnber of shit rides started to outweigh the great rides and driving hours to somewhere I knew was going to be good seemed pointless when I could ride from my front door and be guaranteed a good time

Cannock is pretty good really in that it has official trails in the middle of loads of off piste. It’s easy to put any kind of route together

90% of my riding is natural stuff from my doorstep. I do enjoy a good blast at a trail centre for a bit of variation though.

Why drive my bike to a bit of “flowtrail”, when I can ride 7.5 minutes from home to be in a Unesco Geo-nature park?
Although I hear they’re building another newer “flowtrail” nearer to here.

go a bit faster or try and find new lines then… there’s always going to be a limit to your skill.

My skill isn’t the problem I just cant be bothered when I get there. My brain literally switches off. I find them mindless boring pedalling amd I don’t find a rocky 10m black diversion does anything to get the adrenaline pumping.

Nothing to do with snobbery I just prefer to choose my own routes which normally involve jumps, gaps, drops and the steepest bits of trail I can find. The rest of my riding is normally just linking together the above.

I just prefer to choose my own routes which normally involve jumps, gaps, drops and the steepest bits of trail I can find

Your typical bridleway across the moors isn’t going to be over-run with that many jumps, gaps and drops nor will it be that steep. Certainly in my experience of Peak District riding, if I want jumps and drops I’m better served at a dedicated facility like a trail centre or DH trail; I’m not going to get that fix following green dashed lines on an OS map. It’d be interesting to know where you ride Andy.

Ta

I spend a lot of time riding over Kinver which has a freeride park or Ribbersford DH. Other than that its places like Wyre forest, Clent which have no jumps but I like the riding. I also enjoy revo bike park.

I don’t really see much difference up here to be honest. They both involve riding along man made tracks, often on forestry commission land. They both involve hills of various steepness up and down and bits that may be rocky or rooty. Trailcentres tend to have more corners that are banked and jumps although I tend to just treat these as humps in the trail (never having learned to jump). They also tend to assign an arbitrary colour to routes.

At the end of the day there are a lot more places where you can ride a bike (pretty much anywhere you like up here) that aren’t called trailcentres, so they make up the bulk of my riding. But if somebody decided to call one of my favoured routes a trailcentre I wouldn’t stop riding it.

These are both trailcentres, by the way:

hula hoop anyone?