Did anyone go?

Nowhere to park at 9.30am, we had to park down by the uplift road on a sloping grass bank, even as we unloaded more cars were turning up and couldn’t park

Was the worst Ive ever seen the uplift in the few years Ive been going, the queue was constantly down by the trail that leads to the uplift, this was before they removed the new uplift vehicle from service and one bus had to be replaced due to overheating on the fire road, to make things worse the pay as you go riders were being allowed onto the buses whilst the pre paid queue was all the way back to the trail leading to the uplift

To make things even worse one particular driver was very slow, the bus that was in front of us left at the same time and just disappeared up the road, we saw it coming back down as we were maybe 2/3rds of the way up the fire road, we were unlucky to have this driver twice!

We only managed to get in half the usual runs we do, i appreciate they were very busy but it felt like they had overbooked and were not giving pre paid riders priority which is annoying after you have spent 6 hours on a round trip and its cost each rider £80+ for fuel and a uplift pass

Hopefully things will be better next time

I must admit I rarely go weekends, preferring the weekdays but its not been too bad recently the 2 times i have been on a saturday. I wouldnt dream of arriving as late as 9.30 though.
It a bonus you no need to book months in advance. Can usually still get a booking a few days in advance of the weekend & during the week there is always space.
You get the usual groups of riders clogging up the trailhead deciding what to ride( why dont they decide on the bus?) but once on the trails there doesnt seem to be any congestion.
Ive never seem queues like you describe though, that sounds horrendous.

Just had my 15th trip there at the end of June and sadly my experience was exactly as you described so this isn’t isolated .
The que was a joke and the guy organising it was out of his depth and so annoying letting day tickets go ahead of pre paid when the que was as long as it was
It’s put me off going ever again
Please give them your feedback as I had a good reply from them but in there usual fashion made me feel I was the first and only person who felt like this so unless there told this isn’t right there not going to do anything about it .

Beginning to be a victim of it’s own success?? TBH I never bother going on weekends and probably won’t on a weekday until the school hols have finished. The same could probably be said for no end of other ‘attractions’ during the school hols.

One thing I wonder about – as an advanced rider (in age not ability!!) I find I mainly ride blues and easier reds. The likes of BMCC and the new Dyfi only seem to offer advanced trails when compared to BPW. So if you are a self-confessed cycling numpty like myself the default option is always BPW – they’ve a nice selection of routes you can enjoy without fear of killing yourself!

Apart from the number of riders doing single runs increasing, I can’t see how one week can be busier than another due to it always being sold out? That’s a real bummer that it wasn’t working out. Surely after all this time of it being open you’d think they’d have the uplift pretty sorted. For a lot of people it’s a long trip and a quite expensive one too so you do arrive expecting to get the maximum amount of runs in. We must have been lucky last time as the uplift worked like clockwork.

Could it be with the cancellation of Ardrock people are looking to fill their weekend pass?

If 2 uplifts leave at the same time does it not make sense for the second one to be slower so that the first lot have already started riding before the second arrives, else it will be busier on the trails?

I think TheGingerOne has it in regards to this weekend.

AS i see it, i think the problem is when 1/2 busses are taken out of the equation then the hole thing goes very pear shaped quickly. If you’ve sold out the day and everyone turns up, then lose the big bus and another due to say a drive being sick/unavailable, you’ve now got 45 riders too many for the number of seats to keep a good flow, that’s a LOT of people queuing at the bottom and not a lot you can do about it in advance.

Regarding the PAYG riders, i’m not sure it’s fair to make them wait every ride until all the full dayers have paid. Although that may be purely a selfish thought from my own perspective because i use PAYG instead of full day pass usually because my lad won’t usually do enough runs to cover the full pass cost. But i think we’re getting to the stage now where we’ll book the full day.

Worth noting this was ARD Rock weekend, i would wager that a lot of the riders from that were at BPW, I know a lot of local riders from my way did that.

I was there on Saturday. 2nd time in 2 years so I don’t know what’s normal service. The lift queues were long at times but I got in 7 runs which was as many as I wanted and could probably have got a further 2 or 3 if I was fitter and hadn’t needed so many breaks. I can see how it would be frustrating for a fitter/faster/better rider flying down some of the harder but shorter runs to be kept waiting in the queue as I guess normal service and a fit/fast rider could manage  12+ runs on a good day?

The parking is a real problem. One thing they could do is to mark out parking spaces. There were loads of vans and cars parked much further apart than they needed to be.

Cheers for all the replies

Ill touch on a few of the comments

I have emailed BPW explaining the issues and they are investigating and will let me know in due course

Regarding the slow driver, even other drivers said he was going slow, he wasn’t hanging back so not to overload the top of the hill he was just a very slow driver!

The removal of the new vehicle could of had an impact on the queue, no idea why it was removed as it was driven off the hill and seemed fine but who knows / not sure if it was replaced with one of the spare transits

Regards to pay as you go riders being let on buses whilst pre paid riders are waiting in the queue, BPW state the following

Please note that pay as you go riders will only be able to get onto the uplift service when a seat becomes available. As a result, waiting times will vary depending on how busy the system is.

As the system was very busy they should of done one of two things imo

Stop offering pay as you go until the pre paid queue becomes considerably shorter

Allow pay as you go riders to fill odd gaps on buses

They shouldn’t do which we saw which was allow large numbers of pay as you go riders onto the buses whilst the pre paid riders were queuing all the way down to the uplift trail

As i said before Ive never experienced this before so hopefully its a one off and it wont stop me going again

I think a few other people have spoke to them so they are looking into what happened

Just had a great day at BPW. fully booked sold out day and never waited for an uplift. Got 9 runs in and stopped for an hour for lunch.

Thanks to all BOW staff – brilliant.

We were there on monday, it was amazingly busy for a weekday but I think just once the queue was longer than a single busload for me. There was a wee spell where it seemed like the buses were running too close together meaning there were longer waits but it wasn’t bad. And the big truck wasn’t running (it was getting its stupid non-opening windows replaced I think) which probably helped.

We were there Tues & Weds and straight onto uplift after each run. Hardly any waiting, except for one of the buses to fill.
The big truck was in service, windows were open and it was noticeably cooler than the usual buses. A bit slower though, I think.
All was good, except the rain! And sadly jr crashed early on tues and we had to cut both days short. His first decent crash, cos he has damn good bike control, but managed to skid on a soggy tree stump on the side of an innocuous bit of trail and got propelled a fair way down the track. Not nice for a dad to see! 😕
We shall return!

Ive had a reply from the BPW business operations manager

She admits that they are having issues with the parking and are looking at making an overflow car park to meet demand at peak times along with a new visitor centre with extra sign in till stations

She is looking in to complaints about the slow driver and the pay as you go riders being allowed on buses before priority pass holders which is against their policy (seems like im not the only one who complained)

She has given me a £20 voucher as gesture of goodwill which is great and not something i expected

Its nice to see a company taking complaints seriously and to let the customers know what they are doing to improve things