I know shotover is no mountain biking hotspot and its not worth over a 20min travel. But for locals i think its good to know there is stuff there!
This is for when people google shotover woods biking (like me i found bugger all).
So, its worth a few hours up there. From the main car park (you can drive to the top of the hill, called shotover country park)looking over oxford take the trails towards the left. There is quite a bit of single track. Me and my mate also found a little DH section which is incredibly tucked away. We then joined this onto another single track section which had 4 trees about 15m apart in the way..........so......get the shovels out, we made jumps over the buggers! I think people should build more up there as its great digging grounds.
Im posting this for people, like me, thats live in oxforshire and have absolutly naff all local riding, any thing decent is at least 1hr drive.
Enjoy
Some good trails, a mixture of legit and "cheeky" with an old dug jump spot at one end. Ridden regularly by the locals for midweek night rides (just have to dodge the doggers in the car park). It is heavily used by walkers who are anti-bike and trails are routinely blocked with branches etc.
And its part of an SSSI, so anti social use and over-digging are likely to get us banned completely.
http://www.shotover-wildlife.org.uk/ghp.htm
http://www.sssi.naturalengland.org.uk/Special/sssi/unitlist.cfm?sssi_id=1000351
Watlington is FAR less than an hours drive from Oxford and opens up stacks of terrific chiltern singletrack.
Yeh I have been informed its an SSSI so just to not take the p*ss! which as an adult biker id never do! We thought putting some dirt and broken sticks on one side of the tree log is harmless really.
So where is the jump spot? We could not find it last time but know there is something as there are some crappy you tube videos of them!
I live 10mins from watlington but do like burms, jumps and drops to spice it up a bit. I am not into doing long distance rides. I prefer the shorter intense stuff
if you come in from the tarmac road climb, its at the other end of the "top"; if you kept riding on the dirt road from the car park it would be at the end on the right handside, not far from the edge of the open area and the woods. Not really a full on jump section, its a small bomb hole with a few jumps built around it so you may have been there and I'm overselling it 😀
hey crashtest, me and my mate found it today! for oxfordshire its pretty good. must have had about 8 jumps in total with a few berms and stuff, good for a couple of hours, definitely needs some work though!