Anyone local to Redditch, Worcsestershire have any off road XC type routes on GPX at all?

There’s quite a bit if you have a look on Strava Phil

Really Mark, been looking but yet to find…

And Mark still gets lost.

Do you want riding from your doorstep or are you willing to travel a short distance?
From your doorstep I can’t really help. The Lickey hills maybe but the riding is pretty rubbish from what I have seen.
Not far away you have Kinver, Clent and the Wyre Forest. All are great and offer quite a good variation of riding.

I live in stourbridge and have rode over to the Lickeys pretty much all off-road so its possible to reverse that to get over here. The riding wasn’t great though so I would advise driving.

Pretty much from from the door. Im not talking what i would call proper MTB stuff just XC stuff, basically like bridal ways etc.

The Lickey hills maybe but the riding is pretty rubbish from what I have seen’

Awaits the local trail master ‘dog to arrive to dispute this… 😉

I work in Redditch and tried a few methods of going offroad to work. Apart from the odd tiny bit of bridleway/footpath/dirt road there is nothing much I have found. For proper mountain biking your best bet is either Malvern or Cannock…both of which are about an hour away.

Malvern is a hidden gem 😀 – I was about to offer to show you around until I remembered Iv just had a knee operation 🙁

As i said, im not after “proper mountain biking” , Just off road stuff. Been there done that when it comes to all the trail centre stuff so after bridal ways etc not gnarly stuff.

And Mark still gets lost.

True story 😀

Best thing to do OP is get yourself an Explorer 1:25000 OS map and scope out all the BW’s (and footpaths you can get away with riding) yourself. It’s fun exploring too.

Ride over to Tardebigge and jump on the canal maybe

Fairly local to Redditch here and best I’ve found are Rough Hill woods (The Slough) for a quick CX/XC blast or Pitcher Oak woods for the same. Both need multiple loops but I get a 6 mile there and back also so not too bad.

Chris

The Lickey hills maybe but the riding is pretty rubbish from what I have seen.

So rubbish it featured in an article in issue 82 🙂

I stand by what I said. I have friend who lived over that way and knows it well. He kept telling me how good it was. It was very disappointing and not worth the ride to get there.

He’s right, it’s rubbish. Stay away 8)

One thing to remember around the ‘ditch is the bridleways are rubbish at this time of year, the soil is high clay content so they become sticky quagmires very quickly and hence soul destroying to ride (even trailrakers clog up and provide no grip!!!). Plenty of loops using canals can be created up to 60km if you head all the way to stratford and back, get on at tardebigge and worcester is towpath all the way there, head the other way and you can go in to Brum. Plenty of miles to be had on the towpaths if you just want to avoid the roads.