Being local to cwmcarn I ride it when the weather is bad or add it to a local loop but after yesterday I can’t see it happening for a while.

It was getting like a natural trail, rocky, rooty, bumpy etc now it’s just awful.

What’s your thoughts on it

Good! Go to FOD when you fancy the full BMX experience

EDIT: I misread. What a shame ad it was a scream last I was there.

So is it even rougher or have they tarmacced it? Not clear in the OP. Natural is meant to be good, right?

That’s the point with the new trail maintenance, read what I wrote buzz

They have burned Odin and made a hash of the rest of it I can’t understand why they needed to do anything

read what I wrote buzz

The point was, what you wrote can be read two ways, for a non-local we don’t know if its just been turned into perfectly graded trail, or if the maintenance is so lacking that its been destroyed 🙄

Ok sorry for not being clear.

It was more of a question to people who have ridden it lately.

But IMO I think they have ruined the trail by adding burms and pulling it about in places

I’m guessing that op ment it was just nice the way it was and now its been groomed to canal path smoothness so people don’t complain about hard bits on the climb or bumps on the downs

Yes bud,

Sssshhhhh. I’m going Friday.

It won’t take long to be full of bumpy, lumpy goodness again.

I rode it for the first time the other week, on a freezing cold day with snow on all but the first 10 mins or so worth of trail. I thought it was great, holding up really well in the conditions, right the way through. I guess that makes me the mountain bike equivalent of a music fan who only starts liking a band once they’ve sold out and gone commercial.

Started this a few months back,

I happened to include CC in a local loop last weekend and the car park was empty! Has the new changes killed it or parking fees

Dunno, has always been pretty busy if gone over ther at the weekend, all sections seem ok on the heavily adjusted downhil section after the climb by carpark 3 may not wear too well as braking bumps and holes are starting to appear it’ll either fall to bits or return back closer to it’s original rockyness, a bit sketchy for beginners at the moment though if a bit wet.

we had a group ride there the other week and was amazed how quiet it was on the Sunday we went, remember the weekend with the dry trails that was it, if we hadn’t been there I guess there would be less than 10 cars parked up

i think the re-done sections have killed it there at the moment

FoD has pulled a lot of people away, Cwmcarn used to be my away ride destination 75% of the time, now it’s more like 10% with FoD 75%

Have they messed with the dh track?

Have they messed with the dh track?

Nope, same old boring carp it’s been for the last god knows how long.

Was there not too long ago, and thought I saw some bits smoothed out. But this isn’t a bridleway, they’re gonna maintain it with an eye to controlled degradation. It’ll be rough again soon. Sooner if it’s ridden!

the dh track is pretty rough now which is good imo, smoothing out trails shouldnt be done when theres other things they could be doing

have you ever been involved in maintaining a trail of that type, out of interest?

Please tell me they haven’t touched the section just before the last fireroad (i.e. where you meet up with the DH road dropp off)??!!

The straight rough rocky bit before the steep concrete up? If so, I’m afraid to say they have sammy. Smoothed it out a fair bit.

The bit after the tree ‘bus stop’ seems to have had a load of earth dumped over it and as mentioned above appears to be getting holes blown in it, waiting to see how it beds in, it’s smoother but still fairly challenging for beginners if going fairly quick, I have a feeling it’s going to catch someone out soon.
Lower straight section a bit smoother, but with a larger little ‘drop’ onto it.
No huge differences and still fun to ride overall ( 120mm hardtail )

@Del, iv have not maintained any trail center but i have built trail very near to Cwmcarn.
all the trail needed was a bit of maintenance in the way of cutting bushes back etc

i’ve worked on both ‘wild’ trails and ‘trail centre’ trails. there are very different demands placed on them.
it’s interesting to see people complain about maintenance of trails, both at trail centres and where it concerns other paths, BW etc. usually it’s completely well meaning, both the complaining and the maintenance! one man’s sanitisation is another man’s management. work is usually carried out to manage water, in one aspect or another, usually beds in and roughs again after a period of time, and evolves again. it’s difficult to strike a balance between having to completely rebuild a section because it’s been allowed to go too far, possibly closing that section while it gets sorted, and catching it at the right time i reckon. particularly true of trail centres where there is a lot of traffic. also factor in that the trail is supposed to be a certain ‘grade’ ( not that there’s much consistency with that, but that’s a different topic…. ), so you have to be somewhere within a vague band of difficulty.
you can’t please everyone. best you can do is try and manage the decline and the resurfacing sensibly. the one thing you can’t do is ‘keep it the same’, because it’s always changing. 😀
you’ll get used to it, the trail will degrade or improve, depending upon how you look at it, and in a while we’ll all forget about it.

– Thread Hijack-

If I caught the Uplift to the top of Cwmcarn, How many of the good sections of the Twrch trail am I missing and how much down from the uplift drop off?

I dont mind the cwmcarn trail, but I wonder why people always ride that same loop when its surronded by so many other quality trails.

I’m also a local and ride there every week, when the maintenance was first done i didn’t like it but its starting to bed in nicely now and will soon be back as it was before . Spoke to the ranger about it when it was being done and he told me it was necessary as some parts were attached to common land and was starting to erode . I just feel lucky to have it as my local . Also heard today that if planning is passed we will have a new Xc trail by December at cwmcarn 🙂

Where abouts are all thise other good trails which surround it?

i too am quite local, but boringly only seem to ride round the official trail. would love to know where the other stuff is….

I wonder why people always ride that same loop when its surronded by so many other quality trails.

probably for the same reasons people do he same thing at our local centre. they don’t know other stuff is there, or if they do, don’t know how to link it up in to a decent ride.

There’s a trail lifecycle which is very poorly understood tbh. New manmade trail is usually smooth and shiny. That doesn’t mean the trailbuilders want it to be that way or stay that way, it’s just what happens when you compact dirt/rock/gravel, whatever you may be building with. Essentially the trailbuilders have made a trailbaby, which will grow in interesting ways

So, what tends to happen is- a bit gets a bit worn out (this might not be that obvious, it might be that it’s draining poorly and so wear is accelerated, it’s not necessarily a riding experience thing). So it gets resurfaced, and everyone spits the dummy and says “why have they built a bmx track!!2oNez!”. Then over the next year or so it roughs up again and gets back to pretty much what it’s supposed to be like. Then there’s a long, happy midlife, until it gets a bit worn out and it all repeats.

Often trails ride best when they’re right on the edge of falling apart, and worst when they’re brand new but if you want a durable, longlived trail you can’t have one without the other.