Benji and Matt took full advantage of the last week’s lovely weather and went for a sneak preview of the FlyUp Downhill uplift service running in the Forest of Dean. Work experience boy Dom John was on hand to film..
[stvideo src=”2010/05/FOD_uplift_Video_Large.m4v”]
FlyUp Downhill is going to be opening to the public on the 29th of May and will be run from the Cannop Cycle Centre in the Forest of Dean, so there’s easy access to cake, spares and repairs too. The service uses a modern minibus and purpose built trailer to take you to the top of the numerous fast, flowy woodland downhill runs without you having to sweat too much. The service will be open five days a week and to find out dates, prices or to book a place on the uplift go to www.flyupdownhill.co.uk
Thanks to Simon from FlyUp Downhill for the uplift and Dom John for the camera wielding.
Comments (19)
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how long are the runs
compared to cwmcarn or somewhere similar?
If your typical run down Cwmcarn is say 4-5 minutes then the runs down FOD will be around 2-3 minutes tops.
It’s a completely different type of venue to Cwmcarn. There are many more lines down and more options for mixing those up. The feel is mostly smooth and mellow, the surface is mostly natural, loamy soil, rooty singletrack, some techy rooty sections, a few rock gardens but nothing you couldn’t ride fast on a HT.
It’s the perfect beginners DH venue or the perfect, ‘messing about in the woods with mates in a chilled fun atmosphere here you’re never likely to really hurt yourself unless you get really lairy’ venue.
I love FOD for that reason. You can ride a DH bike, trail bike, HT, **** in a unicyle. You can go explore some seriously steep sections, or just keep it pinned on the lovely bermed and swoopy jumpy top sections.
Now is DEFINITELY the time to go; i.e. when it’s dry, dusty smooth and fast. In the wet and mud, it gets a little less fun.
On a typical push to the top day, you could happily do 10 complete runs and some small change messing on the jumpy bits.
On an uplift, who knows, maybe 15-20?
Go. You won’t regret it.
I’ll deffo be using the service …. boing boing boing
havent been to the forest of dean in ages i feel a trip coming on.
looks good!
Looks really good and the sort of stuff even I could ride. E.G. not “Real” downhill. I can see the fun in doing this occasionally though i’ll always be a ride up type of guy. Wish I had a bike to do it on and the money to get there and take advantage of the service.
Went for the first time (no uplift) a couple of weeks ago. There are little runs everywhere.
Im a bit of a novice so i found the Ski run a bit tricky on my 456 but its all good.
Check out the FODCA trail too- nice tril well worth doing.
Doing an uplift day ASAP. Probably bring the meta 🙂
What bikes are Matt and Benji riding, just out of interest?
Looks really good. memo to self – “must get down there soon”
mcinnes Matt was riding the Commencal Supreme DH and Benji was riding his Specialized Big Hit, and I was riding the new Saracen Ariel, which was great fun and a really capable bike, more on that soon though 😉
Blimey, ST have found someone who can film. Now don’t let anyone back near the camera 😀
Thanks andituk I try my hardest. I’m goin off to study film production at uni next year. So it can only get better 😉
Looks good, might combine a visit with a trip to Cwmcarn for more uplift riding.
Sounds like it might be hard to find some of the good stuff though? I only rode there once about 10 years ago but I remember it seemed a bit of a maze then.
Chakaping – The runs are all pretty well signposted now AND you get a decent little A4 map from the uplift guys. We’d never ridden there before and had no problems finding the runs and were even working out different ways of linking bits up soon enough etc 🙂
…It’s the perfect beginners DH venue or the perfect, ‘messing about in the woods with mates in a chilled fun atmosphere here you’re never likely to really hurt yourself unless you get really lairy’ venue…
I dunno…there are still a few pretty big jumps over there that I certainly wouldn’t attempt.
FOD is great.
I just clicked on this link and let it load in the background. Then jumped out of my seat at the monkey noises through my headphones!
Cheers Benji, sounds good.
Benji Haworth; “The runs are all pretty well signposted now AND you get a decent little A4 map from the uplift guys.”
Benji, theres a pretty good Wikipedia pake on the cycle centre too, with a map of the downhills there.