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We're off to BPW in May, and have been looking for stuff to do on the Sunday.
One option is Cwmcarn. They also advertise an uplift service, but where BPW seems to sell out pretty much as soon as they open for bookings 90 days in advance, Cwmcarn still has spaces available for every weekend day this week.
The website does make a point of saying that the uplift is only running up one side of the valley rather than both due to logging work, but even so, I'm wondering why it's apparently so underused compared to BPW? Is it just that the trails are a lot longer, so we'd end up using the uplift a lot less?
Anybody? 🙂
Uplift takes longer than BPW, each side is one route with various options, the original DH is quite hard with some of the optional lines being quite challenging depending on your comfort zone.
I'd happily spend a day uplifting there on either or both of the tracks.
As good as pedalhounds is im not sure i could spend all day uplifting it. Yes you can do Cafal final descents but it would take a lot longer so you wouldnt get many runs in doing that. I think you can pay per uplift if thats an option.
Can you still do half a day? That's what I'd do, ride the DH in the morning and finish with whichever trail you fancy.
I used to use the uplift before PedalHounds and enjoyed a whole day there.
I went late last year, and only the new downhill trail was open- the old main trail and dh trail we're on a different side of the hill and shut (forestry commission, maybe something to do with tree fungus or similar?! I stand to be corrected!). Te newer dh wasn't very challenging at all, we used the uplift for the xc several times instead. If this is the only side open, I'd say no. But if the main dh trail and main xc trail are open then yes, as loco said it's harder with more options
I wouldn't book a whole day, until it was all fully open again, When we went we rode cafal as twrch still closed then done a few uplifts, paying as we went, switching between the downhill track and final decent of cafal.
I think it's worth it, it might be worth checking to see if the original side is back open to the Cwmdown - the XC reopened a few weeks ago.
Cwmcarn's uplift is aimed at the DH trails. Y Mynydd and Pedalhounds. The best one, Y Mynydd is effectively shut as they can't run the bus up there at the moment. Though you could ride/push but it's a killer.
Twrch and Cafall are regular trails and the idea is you climb them. They're long enough to take a few hours on average so you're not going to get much out of an uplift day pass, which gets you some way up on Cafall and isn't running the other side anyway so Twrch is still a climb.
As for being unpopular, that's popularity of BPW at fault combined with the logging on the Y Mynydd side.
They used to have two busses but cut backs meant they got rid of one, and even that one isn't majorly busy.
Sad really. Used to be well worth an uplift day for Y Mynydd and used to be busy.
Thanks for all the inputs, chaps. We're looking at regular trails more than full on DH anyway, so sounds like it's worth a go, but not worth paying for. 🙂
Needs more trails, isn't anyone's fault in fact they would do better than BPW as their closer to M4. Cmwcarn just hasn't been developed.
My go to for "making a weekend of a day at BPW" is to do the uplift at Forest of Dean the day after. There's also their new A417 project as an alternative, but at the mo there's only three trails open I believe.
Black Mountain centre....If it's dry
If they invested in ages more DH trails the Cwmcarn would be great again. The original track and it's variants were great and catered for different skills/balls levels.
I really liked Y Mynydd trail and could and did spend happy days riding it. Not done the Pedalhounds trail.
Twrch again is a great trail as is the new Cafall, though as people have mentioned the idea is to pedal up those 🙂
isn't the Afan uplift running again?
or Flyup at the Forest of Dean?