Bike Park Wales Planning Approval – new trails ahoy!

There may soon be a large number of new trails at Bike Park Wales (BPW); they’ve just had planning permission approval for 23 new trails of varying hues at their existing facility.

But hold your horses – this doesn’t mean that the Park will be embarking on a massive trail-building exercise imminently, as Martin Astley, BPW’s director explains:

“”The application is for 23 trails, but we’re not going to build them all in one go! When Bike Park Wales opened 5 years or so ago, we had applications approved for 19 or 20 trails, and over the next few years we’ve built most of them; there are only 4 or 5 trails we’ve had approval for we’ve not built”.

The ones BPW has left on the existing approvals aren’t suitable for every application – essentially, if your customers want a red trail, and you’ve only got approval for lines which will work as blues or blacks, you can’t have a red trail. The new applications gives much greater scope. BPW is now able to build a variety of trails whenever it wants to, and so it can react to public demand much more effectively. More blacks? No problem. Another red? Sure. The new trails are mostly within the area of the park as it stands at the moment, as you can see from the images, with a few minor outliers. But rumours of moving to the other side of the valley and buying new mountains are unfounded.

Martin said, “So now, the next step is planning when and what we do. And we’ve got the scope and the permissions to keep on investing in the area”.

He added, “We’ve done the maths, and we actually spend more than 100% of park entry fees on trails each year – and as long as people keep coming, we’ll keep investing”.

So keep your eyes peeled for new trails coming over the next few years to Bike Park Wales. Exciting times.

Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

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