They're on NRW land and NRW have declared all their trails are closed. When the likes of Cwmcarn and Afan open up to bikes they may well be able to but they would still have to cover the costs of running the shop, cafe and having first aid cover on-site. I would hazard a guess that they will be making less of a loss with the site fully shut than if they had 50-60 people paying the £11 for riding up and down the hill. This may change with the furlough scheme shrinking soon but right now their choices are most likely full uplift or stay shut.
Im sure they will open up for people to ride up relatively soon, but unfortunately that wont touch the sides as above - less people paying less money overall, less in the shop, less in the cafe its all linked. You need uplift or it just becomes another trail centre that can support maybe a visitors centre but thats it.
Why less In the cafe?
There's cafes, restaurants and some pubs surviving all over the country using abit of initiative.
Take the tables away inside, spread them out outside, there's plenty of room.
Take away food only, if people want to ride there then they will obey the rules put in place to allow them to do so.
All staff to wear plastic face guards at check in/ cafe etc
Bike shops are open, so why any different to the shop there on site?
It wouldn't really be that hard, if they wanted to. But it's easier to stay in permanent closure and furlough everyone instead.
Paramedics are still operating as usual too.
You'd be a fool to go and have an accident, but that's the risk that people would have to accept if they went.
Plenty would
I don’t see why they can’t open up with a reduced a staff and let people ride up, I know plenty would definitely do it, ebike or not.
Would many people though? I know some would ride up, but they're a minority.
Take a random group of 4 mates car sharing from Swindon. The bread and butter of their business model.
1 is fit enough to do 10 climbs in a day
1 has an e-bike
2 would manage two climbs in the morning, one in the afternoon and then be knackered.
Of those 2 one puts on a brave face and agrees to do it anyway. One says Can't we just go to Afan?
So all 4 go to Afan instead.
Surely some form of rail track setup has got to be cheaper and more sustainable all year round than a chair lift? Would there be interest from non-cyclists to get up to the hill to walk/jog etc. when there wasn't enough demand from cyclists to fill each mini-cariage?
Would there be interest from non-cyclists to get up to the hill to walk/jog etc.
It's not really a tourist area though it is? People go there for the "Bike Park" bit, not the "Wales" bit. It could be Bike Park Surrey, Bike Park Birmingham or Bike Park Stoke. You'd need to develop something else there that would attract non-bikers that needed a chairlift. Like a dry ski slope, but there's already a few of those within driving ditance.
I was at Evo bike park, digne, France, last weekend, they have an uplift that runs four days a week with a big truck and bike trailer, similar to bpw.
On the first uplift, as per rules, there was only ten on the truck and everyone wore face masks. By the last run there was 18 on the truck, two on the trailer and not a single person with a mask on!
(This weekend at Montclar, ski station with lifts, there was hand lotion available and masks were only obligatory for a ten metre section when embarking onto the lift!)
TBH I'd just pedal up, if I was travelling to BPW, which I'm certainly not going to.
As for spunking £1m+ on a chairlift? This has been blathered on about since they set up the place, I can't see why they would bother TBH.
£1m would buy plenty of 16 seater transits and bike trailers, the forest roads already exist and as a system for getting people and bikes up the hill it's probably far less weather sensitive than a chairlift would be.
So all 4 go to Afan instead.
The unfit person will still be
climbing at Afan, just as steep and nothing like BPW descent wise.
That's not a viable alternative to most of the riders that visit BPW I should imagine.
If you pay £10 to ride BPW and only manage 2 climbs then that's £5 / descent. The same as the uplift cost.
£1m would buy plenty of 16 seater transits and bike trailers
What's the operating cost for a van, driver, maintenance, fuel? £50K/year minimum? Run 10 of those over a few years suddenly a chairlift starts to look good value.
The other issue is the 4 in the car can't social distance from the outset so the drive becomes 4 cars and much more expensive and less space in the car park.
I used to do the ride up when passing for work but as the costs went up and I only had a couple of hours, it made more sense to got to Cwmcarn.
What’s the operating cost for a van, driver, maintenance, fuel? £50K/year minimum?
What's the operating cost of a chairlift? Serious question.
Like a dry ski slope,
There used to be one on the other side of the valley (Pentrebach).
Didn't really work out.
You could still see where it was when i used to ride my Enduro bike where BPW is now.
Run 10 of those over a few years suddenly a chairlift starts to look good value.
Chairlifts aren't maintenance free, somebody needs to own the safety case for operating it...
Plus they're a damn sight harder to flip on via FB/gumtree/ebay/auto trader after you've had a few years use out of them...
Honestly the economics and liabilities that go with a chairlift for that particular location just don't stack up not when there are already two viable ways for punters to get to the top...
There used to be one on the other side of the valley (Pentrebach).
Didn’t really work out.
Yea, I was thinking that maybe if the infrastructure costs were shared between two businesses then it might be more viable. Unlike Fort William there just isn't going to be a tourism industry wanting to go up the hill just for the sake of it.
The unfit person will still be
climbing at Afan, just as steep and nothing like BPW descent wise.That’s not a viable alternative to most of the riders that visit BPW I should imagine.
Substitute Afan for anywhere in the FoD or South Wales with trails you deem suitable.
My point that was missed was that the people who go to BPW are by and large going to be in groups. and most groups are going to tend towards riding to the lowest common denominator.
The semi-pro solo rider on a training session is not the market BPW will be making money out of. It's the groups of weekend warriors.
If you pay £10 to ride BPW and only manage 2 climbs then that’s £5 / descent. The same as the uplift cost.
No one is going to drive to Wales to do 2 runs, however ganrr they are, and however good the trails are. Hence Afan, if you're going to drive up the M4 to Wales it may as well be for a days riding rather than 2x 4-minute runs.
Take a random group of 4 mates car sharing from Swindon.
Has guidence changed from two people only in one car sat on opposite corners with all the windows open unless they are all from the same household?
My point that was missed was that the people who go to BPW are by and large going to be in groups. and most groups are going to tend towards riding to the lowest common denominator.
The semi-pro solo rider on a training session is not the market BPW will be making money out of. It’s the groups of weekend warriors.
I've driven to BPW and winched solo for a day before, I reckon I'm closer to the weekend warrior end of the scale. It's not an actual mountain, you still get to ride the same trails, you just have to work a little more. 😉
The thing is the original linked beeb piece referenced BPW as a South Wales tourism business being hit hard by CV19 restrictions. One that currently has employees furloughed and basically no revenue coming in.
The solution favoured by half the posters so far seems to be errect a chairlift?
Being sensible BPW might be able to resume partial operation soonish, i.e. Only allow people to book pedal up and ebike slots via the website (no on the day transactions) most of the facilities would be closed, maybe open the toilets? and possibly allow people to buy inner tubes and essential spares (contact less only)? Otherwise you are responsible for sorting your own food/water/boo boos...
Turn up without a booking and you'll be turned away. No uplift in operation, minimal staff interaction, hand gel everywhere and any staff at the bottom merrily spraying disinfectant on everything in sight while wearing facemasks. It could be done.
The real question is could they resume partial operation, with a skeleton staff and still turn a profit? As soon as they take an employee off furlough they need revenue to pay them.
I'd even say it wouldn't be too cheeky for them to stick an extra £3-4 on their normal pedal up pass price to deal with the additional costs of lockdown operations and to try and offset their losses.
They might normally cater for cars full of tubby middle aged men dwelling along the M4 corridor, who between them will drop a good £200-250 in a day at BPW and expect to be driven up at least 10 times, but the current situation just isn't going to allow that. So can they make the next best available option work?
Open up for pedalling up, its quicker than the bus anyway!
thisisnotaspoon
SubscriberNo one is going to drive to Wales to do 2 runs, however ganrr they are, and however good the trails are.
Yeah, from the tourist/visitor point of view, or at least from mine, the big advantage of uplift is the sheer amount of riding you can do in a few days. I don't mind climbing but I don't want to spend most of my holiday doing it.
For the last few years we've done a weekly trip to do BPW, BMCC, FOD and some other stuff, without those uplifts I don't see me going back to south wales, as much as I like some of the pedalled riding down there.
So can they make the next best available option work
doubt it. Even at £20 per person its not enough to sustain the business
Opening up pedal only with limited staff won’t be viable, I bet it doesn’t even cover the cost of rent, never mind staffing and maintenance. If they did you would get a bunch of near locals and a few hardcore going. BPW rely on large numbers of people traveling from all over the country, sometimes for 5-6 hrs, do people really think folk will travel those distance to pay £8 to pedal up a hill 3-4 times?
As for a lift, no business would spunk £1m+ on something that, given the constant changes to regulations over covid, and the length of time it takes to get planning, then find a chairlift ( if you can) install it, train up staff etc, unless a chairlift had long term viability irrespective of covid, over vans. Which clearly it doesn’t yet or it would have been built.
Seems to me they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Let’s hope the regs change soon for them, or like the rest of the hospitality and tourism sector they get some proper government support.
do people really think folk will travel those distance to pay £8 to pedal up a hill 3-4 times?
YUp, i'm in.... but.. as you and I say, it won't cover the costs.
Even if they could open up the vans or install a chairlift, movement is still restricted. We are meant to be staying local (withing 5 miles) and visitors from England are being turned around, fined etc by the police.
do people really think folk will travel those distance to pay £8 to pedal up a hill 3-4 times?
I would and I live 3 hours away, I think I could actually do 3 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon and I'm quite unfit! Plus with pedal up, I prob wouldn't do as many top to bottom full runs, I'd end up riding the top half of the hill or bottom half and have less of a push or ride up, maybe even get more drops in this way and for some of the trails going all the way to the uplift queue is miles out of the way and then up and a hill!
It may be a good thing that will lead to the evolution of DH bikes that are more fun to ride uphill...
people may just need to accept that the luxuries of pre-corona (if you can call being stuck in a van with 14 other sweaty smelly blokes is a luxury) may be more expensive post corona.
this obviously applies to other elements of precorona socienty - restaurants, pubs, theatre etc etc.
i think teh pre-booked group/van idea is probably the best.
to be honest i`ll probably pay £20+ to ride up. (just because we dont have trails like it on teh south downs). Afan and other wales places are not the same riding at all. a 20k XC loop is not hte same as riding AC/DC. You will inevitably just session more bits rather than do full runs but this iOK.
“It may be a good thing that will lead to the evolution of DH bikes that are more fun to ride uphill…”
We already have them, they’re called enduro bikes. Or ebikes. But the BPW hill is bloody big if you want to do repeated laps and the trails descend fast, you’d never design the trails like this for a non-uplift centre.
Surely some form of rail track setup has got to be cheaper and more sustainable all year round than a chair lift? Would there be interest from non-cyclists to get up to the hill to walk/jog etc. when there wasn’t enough demand from cyclists to fill each mini-cariage?
Build one of them and you get to charge for people going down as a side benefit.
They should build a funicular
They should not build a funicular.
Whoosh
Helli drop would be good, probably no less viable than any of the other suggestions either.
Bungee cannon?
What’s the operating cost of a chairlift? Serious question
BPW have talked about a chair lift since before they opened, they foolishly put a pic of one on their FB when it was first announced and let people assume.
I've chatted to one of the drivers at BPW about it and to Darrel who runs Cwmdown a few times okay they're not exactly experts in it, and I'm certainly not but at one point many moon ago before BPW was even an idea Cwmcarn looked into it. I'm sure BPW have done a lot of work looking into it.
It's logistically difficult to install and run, but not impossible there are actually a couple of dozen lifts in the UK, mostly at dry ski places, they're shorter than BPW would need and the drag style so not well suits, but a few of the indoor places have proper chair lifts.
I'd guess the investment would be millions though, maybe Welsh Gov. will support them, they got the bulk of the £6m investment into MTBing in South Wales way-back-when. As above though, there was a huge dryski slope near to BPW with a big lift decades ago and it failed spectacularly.
I suspect it won't happen, it all seems very bleak at the moment for anything that needs lots of people to be in close proximity, but it won't be forever.
I think they'll open as soon as the other Welsh TCs do, it'll be fairly soon. Cwmcarn have started clearing the trails apparently, it'll be push/ride up only, the cafe will be take-away etc. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of Europe scales back social distancing in coming weeks and months because we'll no doubt do the same when the time it right.
Or ride back up to the top?
But the BPW hill is bloody big if you want to do repeated laps and the trails descend fast, you’d never design the trails like this for a non-uplift centre.
well yes. because no one expected the current situation. that said you can push up bits (popty ping/A470 etc) and lapping half /parts the park is easier than lapping full laps on a non ebike. i've never looked at lapping bits but then i've always been on teh uplift. riders will just use the park differently.
you are Ok anyway chief! i`ll give you a lift when it opens if you tow me up haha
and remember 50 shades the old gethin DH track used for non uplift related riding outside of race weekends.
Yes but Gethin was free to ride back then, well it was unless you count the chance of having your wallet stolen by the druggies that hung about in the car park in the evenings!
I think they’ll open as soon as the other Welsh TCs do, it’ll be fairly soon. Cwmcarn have started clearing the trails apparently, it’ll be push/ride up only, the cafe will be take-away etc.
It's pre-emptive work as there's no guarantee the 5 mile limit will be lifted anytime soon. It's more to appease the locals who are riding the trails anyway, it'll be a few weeks yet before the car park is full of people from further afield.
I think they’ll open as soon as the other Welsh TCs do,
I'd love to agree but I think you'll be disappointed.
Most trail centres aren't really a business, they're an additional revenue stream for the forestry business, the car parking etc is there already so no real cost, trails are built and maintained largely by volunteers so minimal cost.
The cafés and shops are separate entities and again, they're an additional revenue stream for NRW, they don't need to make a profit to keep the forest viable.
BPW though is a distinct business, with a single premises and that poses very different issues. They need to make money so the uplift has to pick up any slack in closing the cafe, the trails are built and maintained by the staff at a cost, you can't just open the cafe for takeaway - and take away isn't takeaway if you're sat 100m away on BPW's furniture on their grounds, it's just sitting outside, where as sitting on a NRW bench on forestry property 2 yards from the door of the cafe at afan is.
Running coed brenin as a trail centre for £100 a day in parking charges with no café, loos, bike hire etc is a very different proposition to running BPW for £100 a day in pedal up fees.
One amounts to letting people park, the other is trying to run a business based on a model that was viable 4 months ago and now isn't.
Yes but Gethin was free to ride back then, well it was unless you count the chance of having your wallet stolen by the druggies that hung about in the car park in the evenings!
well yes but there wasnt a bikeparks worth of other trails there either... (there obviously was other stuff buit not as now)
i was trying (vary badly and in a not very pertinent way) to point out that we rode/pushed up/dodged druggies on hills before uplift was a thing.
i like being lazy though so obviously i'd prefer an uplift but, if needs must (and it probably will) then i'll push/ride up as i like to ride stuff. the best stuff in FOD is out of the bike park and no uplift. no shortage of bikers there!
the problem i think is that BPW make money out of loafers/non serious riders who book teh uplift, have breakfast, lunch, do 4 runs and post ride beers and buy stuff from teh bike shop to look cool. not the actual people there to ride who have a few clif bars on the uplit and max out laps.
I’d love to agree but I think you’ll be disappointed.
Most trail centres aren’t really a business, they’re an additional revenue stream for the forestry business, the car parking etc is there already so no real cost, trails are built and maintained largely by volunteers so minimal cost.
The cafés and shops are separate entities and again, they’re an additional revenue stream for NRW, they don’t need to make a profit to keep the forest viable.BPW though is a distinct business, with a single premises and that poses very different issues. They need to make money so the uplift has to pick up any slack in closing the cafe, the trails are built and maintained by the staff at a cost, you can’t just open the cafe for takeaway – and take away isn’t takeaway if you’re sat 100m away on BPW’s furniture on their grounds, it’s just sitting outside, where as sitting on a NRW bench on forestry property 2 yards from the door of the cafe at afan is.
Running coed brenin as a trail centre for £100 a day in parking charges with no café, loos, bike hire etc is a very different proposition to running BPW for £100 a day in pedal up fees.
One amounts to letting people park, the other is trying to run a business based on a model that was viable 4 months ago and now isn’t.
You might be right, who knows.
I know they've got their Trail Crew back working full time in preparation for reopening so they're
paying them at the moment with zero revenue.
No, it won't be viable to run it forever as a pay to ride TC without an uplift, but it shouldn't be hard to make it viable for them to return a few staff back to work to take money for day tickets. For example I was at Cannop at the weekend for their first weekend post-lock down. The car park was full by 10:30am which each car paying £5-£7 to park, and as you can't car share at the moment you'd guess many will be single occupants. £7 to ride FOD all day, £8 to ride BPW all day. With all the bus drivers on furlough with or without the cafe, it's going to be a better position than zero revenue at the moment.
it’s going to be a better position than zero revenue at the moment
Depends if the outgoings for opening are greater than the receipts. Some revenue isn't necessarily better [or worse] than none.
FoD has several areas you can park free around the place and it's a lot easier to go riding or using the push up path to get several runs in.
I just can't see BPW being financially viable to reopen any time soon, as others say, they make their money from groups coming over paying 43 quid a head, having a breakfast butty and coffee for a tenner, then having a plate of macaroni or burger for restaurant prices. Can't see many of those groups wanting to tackle the beast of burden once, let alone multiple times in their full armour kit, 170mm travel bikes and so on.
I'll stick to FoD for the foreseeable, take a pack lunch, choose from just doing XC runs, trail or DH runs, if it's busy at sallow vallets then i'll head over to Y2K, EM, etc for my £35 annual membership for FoD.
£7 to ride FOD all day, £8 to ride BPW all day.
BPW is £12 per day now, plus you're limited to 9.30-5pm. Compared to FOD at £7 (or free if you know where to go) where you can ride sunrise to sunset if you wanted and it changes the sums a bit. Plus:
I just can’t see BPW being financially viable to reopen any time soon, as others say, they make their money from groups coming over paying 43 quid a head, having a breakfast butty and coffee for a tenner, then having a plate of macaroni or burger for restaurant prices.
BPW rely on the average punter spending £70 or more each visit: uplift, bearkfast, lunch, a fresh tyre or a bit of merch from the shop. They have got used to near-full uplifts every day all year.
Pubs and Restaurant opening is under review in Wales with an announcement due on the 18th of June (changes to take place on the 21st).
Also Masks to become compulsory on Public transport or wherever Social Distancing is impossible.
Might be a life-line for BPW.
I noticed 417 are opening soon as push up only, they have raised the price to try and compensate for the loss of earnings from not having an uplift.
Got to be better than nothing?
with an announcement due on the 18th of June
Restaurants and bars may open so long as they serve only steaks cut directly from the cattle of Geryon or deserts made from the golden apples of Hesperides
I know a price of £1m+ was mentioned just for installation.
I was on the Aston Hill committee between 2009 and 2013, and we got an estimation for putting in a chairlift – £1.5-2m.
There is an element of comparing apples to pears, but it does give you an idea of how prohibitively costly it is.
