i’m looking to take my 14yr old to wales for an uplift day in early spring and wondered if anyone had any recommendations where i should head for, bikepark wales being the one i seem to see the most.

i’m coming up from cornwall so really needs to be south to mid wales not the north.

i’ve only ever ridden afan and cwn carn myself and i’m a firm wheels on the ground, love riding up hills, type of chap so this lifts up the top thing is all new to me!!

BMCC and Cwmcarn uplifts are a bit more DH / jumpy oriented.

417 would fit the bill with blue/red(x2)/black trails, but it’s not a patch on BPW for number or variety of trails.

FOD is also worth a look. The DH runs are not very full on and are all doable wheels on the ground. Can only think of two non-rollable features (on GBU) and they have chicken lines. Lines are predominantly natural muddy rooty rather than surfaced motorway.

If that was me I’d go to BPW. Good variety of trails both in grades and nature, smooth fast surfaced flowy to more technical rooty. Only drawback is you’ll need to book it 3 months in advance when the ticket become available.

If you’re coming all the way from Cornwall make a weekend of it with BPW and FOD.

If I were travelling that far I wouldn’t look anywhere other than BPW. Especially with a youn lad and with you not being big into jumps. Plenty of blue and red runs at BPW for you both to enjoy.

Other options are really Black Mountain cycle Centre which I’ve not been to (was booked to go last weekend but it got snowed off – so need to rebook). I think it’s more likely to be muddy than BPW but I fancy trying it out.

There is Flyup 417 at cheltenham which is ok – similar idea to BPW but nowhere near as big / nowhere near the same variety of trails.

You can uplift at the Forest of Dean, but again, that’s not a patch on BPW for a full days uplift fun.

Cwmcarn has an uplift but I don’t think there’s enough variety of trails uplifted for – some of the downhills can be quite hard there from what I’ve heard (I’ve only ridden Pedalhounds and hats not too difficult).

Bpw will be perfect. Trails are nicely graded so you can build up or stick to the easy ones.