I’ve booked to go to Bike park wales in October. The uplift is fully booked for the weekend, so I wondered if anyone had any experience of cycling up? I enjoy the ups (ish), though can’t seem to find many reviews of those that have done it without the uplift assistance.

Reading the reviews on their Facebook page, the uplift appears to be a fraught process of queuing anyway.

If you’re going in October only Saturdays are booked up ATM. Ride up sat, uplift Sunday.

I’m there 12th and 13th.

Teethgrinder – yep that’s the plan. What’s the climb up like and roughly how long do you think it would take?

Lol. No idea! Never ridden it. This’ll be the 7th or 8th time and always booked as soon as they release the passes for the weekends we go.

One of the drivers said one of their fitter number did the ride up 11 times in one day.

Now that there’s more buses the PAYG queue isn’t as bad, and they do contactless

Id do a mix of ride up and PAYG probably given the choice. Chasing uplifts can be a bit soul destroying! The climb is fine and relatively sheltered so if the weather’s not playing ball its not the end of the world. Worth considering more closely the lines though, so you don’t burn your height too fast, and maybe do half runs down and then back up from the mid-way track to stop you having the full climb each time. Do the long, traverse-y runs when you’re climbing, and bomb down the steep direct to the bottom runs when you intend to uplift back up.

Alternatively you could ride somewhere else on the Saturday. Black Mountain and FOD both do uplift and are quite near BPW. Or you could do a big day out in the Brecon Beacons or at Afan.

Yeah a mate did this not too long ago and concluded it was best to session the runs from the top to halfway for a period, then the same with the runs on the bottom half – but not doing entire runs top to bottom.

I haven’t done the climb for about 4 years but I don’t have fond memories of it. The sideways rain didn’t help, but I did 3 runs up / down and that was me done that day. I think in a sunny day my limit would be 5 or 6 top to bottom runs.

You could see if you could hire an ebike that day as a thinking outside the box option?

I’m an advocate of the PAYG crew.

I have paid for full day uplifts and then due to mechanicals or sessioning sections only ended up doing 5-6 runs, not worth £43.

Do a handful of pay as you go runs and session sections much more fun and feels more chilled no need to try to get value for money. Plus if the weather is shit and you don’t fancy it you can just go home having not wasted a fortune.

Virtually no waiting on PAYG, only on mega busy weekend days.

One other option is to book a course for the morning and you can use the uplift in the afternoon. This worked well for me once, I found the cornering course helpful.

As another poster mentioned – Black Mountain Cycle Centre is a really good shout if they have room still available on their uplift. IMO much better than the FOD uplift option (but then I like fast flow trails rather than nadgery rooty ones).

Even if you aren’t doing the massive jump black runs (bomper has some big features and Full Moto is bonkers) there is plenty there to keep you busy. The reds / blues are all rollable and flat out fast, then there are some short black options which are a bit more technical.

Alternatively you could ride somewhere else on the Saturday. Black Mountain and FOD both do uplift and are quite near BPW

Don’t forget Cwmcarn!

Keep checking on the booking page as most of the time passes will become available. I went for a group meet up last week, and between the bookings opening and the actual day, it sold out and came available again about 6 times.
The uplift is good, even on the first uplift of the day when the queue looks massive we only waited a max of 10 minutes to get on.

Pedal up is fine, it’s just the first bit that’s a complete arse.  5 full pedal ups for the day is enough for me to feel like I have ridden properly.  As others have said session from halfway up rather than full runs to avoid the worse part of the climb.  It takes about 30mins to pedal up from top to bottom if I remember correctly

All good fun. Never ridden up. I’m there 18th October for a chilled one

There’s two ways to get up: follow the fireroad, or the singletrack climb. The singletrack climb is actually quite a good ride, but obviously the fireroad is the easier option if you just sit down and spin.

As BPW posts generally descend eventually into slagging the place off, I’d like to add for balance that I was there this weekend just gone, the work on the uplift road has made a massive improvement, don’t think I ever was in the queue for more than 5 mins, even one point where it looked massive as everyone had returned from lunch.
Got 10 runs in, at no point felt stressed or rushed in doing so (6 of which were to the bottom-bottom, E.G. the end of Terry’s/Roots/Stepper; and had one group issue which probably cost us another run)

They had run out of wibbly wobbly at the end of the day though, the bastards.

As said above, when they see a weekend day is busy, they’ll book another driver and release more spots, keep watching the website.

If you can’t get an uplift then IMHO there are better places to go.
It’s nothing special (that’s not slagging it off, it’s just not a place to make a pilgrimage IMHO)

There are other places work better without uplift and I’d rather have a booked uplift than chance a PAYG you can save BPW Wales for when you can book uplift. It’s not going anywhere.

Like others I’d go elswhere, I really like BPW but without the uplift, I’d go to BMCC or FOD instead, both of which I prefer. (no slagging here, just that BPW is good while both BMCC and FOD are absolutely bloody phenomenal)

Thank you all for the thorough replies, greatly appreciated. We’ve got 3 days / 2 nights down there, so going to do some exploring outside of the park. I’m pretty new to all this, so will leave a review afterwards for others in the same boat. Thanks again 🙂

I used to pedal up every time, but now it’s about 50/50. I’ll take a look at the uplift queue, and pedal if it’s too long. I’ve only ever done the singletrack climb once – it’s ok as an XC climb, but more tiring than the fire road. Plus you probably won’t be on an XC bike. The fireroad climb is not the same as the uplift road – pedalling from the uplift pick-up, take your first left and stick to the wider gravel road.

Like others I’d go elsewhere, I really like BPW but without the uplift, I’d go to BMCC or FOD instead, both of which I prefer. (no slagging here, just that BPW is good while both BMCC and FOD are absolutely bloody phenomenal)

There are lots of good places … without any uplift then Afan/Cwmcarn/FOD
With a couple of PAYG uplifts then FOD is just better… (IMHO) you can do an uplift and then do one of the Enduro loops… or Cwmcarn and do the reds … these are all nice places to go without uplift that are or can be enhanced with a bit of uplift but where there are perfectly good alternatives (unless you’re taking a DH bike).

I really enjoy the BPW climb, but I’m probably not “normal”.
The uplift is great too, but I like to feel that I’ve earned my descents.

25 mins at a reasonable clip. I think it’s only about 250m ascent.