Northern Ireland riding

Afternoon all,

I’ve tried a quick search through the forum and not found anything before there was some error message, so please do point me in the right direction if this has already been discussed.

Any recommednations for MTB riding in NI? Tinterweb has taken me to a couple of sites which showed me a few trail centres, but wondered if there were other sites or off-piste trails?

Plus any recommendations for a bike shop around Belfast? Just incase it all goes wrong…

Many thanks

In reverse order, for bike shop mechanic-ing, I don’t think you can do better than Norms Bikes in Belfast. There is also Mech Monkey in Belfast.

Northern Ireland seems to have even more antiquated access laws than other parts of the UK. There is a lot of off-piste riding, but the legality of those trails are sometimes called into question. One of the most popular riding spots is Tollymore – which is just a stunningly beautiful forest park. Rostrevor also has many off-piste trails. Those two places probably have the most elevation, but there is great riding to be had in many other places. Cavehill in Belfast is my local, which I has really excellent, and technically challenging trails. Helens tower in Bangor is also great – less elevation, but equally great.

I guess this is what you’re referring to re trail centres:

Home

https://www.bikemourne.com/bike-trails/

Rostrevor Forest gives plenty of scope–note there are no public rights of way here in NI so no bridleways etc in the countryside so tends to limit things more to forest parks…

Fermanagh is fantastic–https://www.fermanaghlakelands.com/blog/read/2024/05/discover-the-fermanagh-lakelands-by-bike-a-cyclists-paradise-b260

I like the north coast around Slieveanorra: https://www.outdooractive.com/en/mountain-biking-trails/causeway-coast-and-glens/mountain-biking-trails-in-causeway-coast-and-glens/236852877/

I know folks who, closer to Belfast, will do Black Mountain, Divis and Cave Hill, west of the city centre and easily accessible from Belfast–for bike shops, depends what you’re after, personally I like Bike House (https://www.thebikehousebangor.com/) but they’re in Bangor (get there from Belfast easily by train).

Others will have Belfast recommendations I am sure!

HTH 🙂

I raced at Rostrevor years ago and it was excellent

@johnhe Yeah, I’m quickly l wrong the access rights are somewhat restricted… The classic OS map recce hasn’t produced much at all!

Found Tollymore and Rostrevor, so thinking I’ll be able to visit them over a weekend.

@tractionman, yeah that has been my starting point but been trying to find anymore. Huge thanks for those links, that’ll give me other places to look through and investigate.

Cheers for all the points everyone!