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My son and I are off for a wet Wales weekend this weekend. Dirt Farm Sunday and BPW Monday.
I suspect we may have bitten off more than we can chew at Dirt Farm as neither of us are very good airborne, so that may have been a bit of a misjudgement with hindsight*. (Hand sort of forced as it's too far really for a day trip, and BPW was full Sunday). We are comfortable on reds and manage the blacks at Deggars and done the big drops as LUBP and a few trips to Morzine under our belts but jumping is a mystery.
So, BPW, thinking more the flow trails but there are loads and seems to be that a decent session is maybe 8-10 runs in a day? Which are the funnest, flowyest etc?
Excitement and trepidation in equal measures.
* we have body armour, pads and FF helmets.
Sextapod into Willy Waiver is a classic, great to warm up on.
Kermit makes a fantastic last run of the day.
I like Vicious Valley into Surfin’ Bird for something a bit more tech.
Insufficient funds if you’re happy with mandatory blind drops.
At BPW following the trail progression chart is a great way to find out exactly what your skill level is.
Rule at BPW, trust the builders.
If it looks blind and massive on a red trails, it's not massive.
A470 may be the only exception to this
BPW are also excellent in that if you can ride the qualifier then you can ride the trail.
Poppety Ping, Terry's Belly and Hot Stepper are all great trails without too much jeopardy as you build up. Dirt Farm is also great fun (I'm not a big jumper) but the flowy trails do sucker you into going faster and faster with a lot of trees to hit!
Dirt Farm is way less jumpy than the online stuff makes it look- we were pretty wary about it too but it's one of my favourite places to ride even with never going near the big jumps line. Also has some really good jumps-for-people-who-can't-jump. You can do it all in a day, and it's literally all good. Quite confusing to navigate as you get further down, the blues and reds are really entangled so I tend to do the innerleithen "don't know or care what trail I'm on" 🙂 The blues and reds lower down get hilariously fast as the day goes on, absolutely brilliant. Also TRACTOR UPLIFT! (but if it's a wet day you want to really dress for it, because TRACTORS, you're outside all day and often not moving much. It can be very slippy when wet)
Basically stay off the jump lines Tidy Darts and Full Moto 🙂 Bompah is a bit of a weird mix too, some excellent jumps but also some jumps that I just don't know what to do with.
BPW is very approachable, their signposting and grading is about as good as it gets. Disagree with Kramer though, the qualifiers are IMO pretty terrible. "Hey look, a gap jump qualifier for a trail with no gaps", etc, they too often just don't represent the trail. (I'm pretty sure the quali for Dai Hard used to be for a completely different trail and they just recycled it regardless of it being completely stupid and inappropriate?)
Be a wee bit more wary of the "Blend" trails too, it's not just that they're a wider mix of features so you can be totally happy then get a decently committing jump, it's also that they don't flow too well together if you're good at one bit but not the other- like, I cannot carry speed on Blackadder because of having to be more cautious of the jumps, so the bits I like end up slow and awkward. So in practice I just don't do em and stick to the ones that are more coherent and rewarding. It's no hardship as there's so much good stuff.
But overall it's one of the easiest places to figure out I think. Root Maneouvres is magnificent btw (and has barely any roots) I could basically do laps of it all day. Oh yeah, last thing is that it's not immediately obvious how spread out it is, frinstance some trails end right at the turning circle while Terry's Belly kicks you out right at the bottom of the hill which slows your laps right down, and others go to the visitor's centre so you need to pedal back up. And it takes time to ride over the top of the hill too. I wouldn't let it dictate the trails you ride, just keep it in mind. You can probably do 3 laps of Rim Dinger etc, in the time it takes to do 2 of Root Maneouvres or Terry's Belly
Lastly, try and get there early if you're a "back to the car/van" rider. The car parking is massive and it sprawls, you can end up an inconvenient distance away. I try and pack for the day and just avoid going back.
Thanks for the tips, I'm feeling a little less anxious about Dirt Farm now. Some of the videos online do appear to show various lines blending into each other and I saw one YouTube video (Crash test riders/Average Dad or something) where a group had managed to inadvertently end up hitting a gap and one chap went badly over the bars coming up short. Fractured most of his middle area....
Staying at the Premier Inn, and hoping that they still allow bikes in rooms? Should be handy getting to BPW for a premier parking position.
I'm at Dirt Farm Saturday and don't do jumps, love the place as there's so much to have a go at. Prefer it to BPW actually as it's so much more relaxed and not so corporate. Just take your first lap or two to get to know the layout and from then in it'll be great.
Yes the Premier Inn in Merthyr still takes bikes with no issues, just ask for a sheet or something to put your bike on if it's a little muddy (Dirt Farm has a hose pipe to get the worst off).
There's loads of flow at Dirt Farm but it's not always easy to follow a specific trail as they're all quite tightly packed together. It's worth taking a bit of time to scope the runs out before going at speed.