It’s got a very different feel to the old one – the start out of the car park is much longer and steeper, but very well surfaced or terrible horrible man made crap – depending on your point of view – there a new section called Jim Crow (named after the charming Welsh Nursery Rhyme and not the system of racial segregation in the Southern US) which is so new school it’s Nu Skool, but it’s pretty fun and you can do big jumps if you want.
Then it’s into the same old long fire road climb as before – the short little section called Desolation is still there – the bit that used to go down the hill on a wide bit of trail between the tree and back up to almost the exact point on the fire road is gone – Hidden Valley which used to be tight, twisty and wet through trees is long gone – same bit of the hill is now called Big Dipper, the very start is a bit like the old one, but not much, the rest is more woops and berms but very rocky and fun.
Sidewinder is pretty much as it used to be, as it Dead Sheep Gully but it’s now longer, thankfully the little stone (postman pat) bridges/jumps are still there, but there’s a nice bombhole with a tight entry and option for a pretty big jump out of if you want.
The bit that’s like a short trials section is still there, but then it’s a completely new final descent – quite techie with some drops that are much smaller than they look when you first ride them.
After that you can either go down the hill (fireroad again) and into a short section of big berms, or go up the fireroad and have a lap of Bluescar – it’s very easy, I ride it with my 9 year old – but you can throw a lot of speed into it to make it a challenge – momentum is the key, if you can hold your nerve through the bends and compressions it flows beautifully and it’s nice fast descent with some cool features – but if you brake too much you have to pedal quite a bit and it becomes a bit of a slog – don’t listen to people who moan about the surface, it was loose for the first couple of weeks it opened but it’s absolutely fine now if you stay off the incredibly obvious piles of loose stones – it’s no where near as loose as Airwave on Cwmcarn for example.
If you’re into Strava there’s a fun section for Bluescar called Blue Scar time Trial – is almost the whole trail from the car park but doesn’t include the last bit back as it’s mutli-use and multi-directional so not really socially responsible to STRAVAVAVA! I’ve done 32:01 which isn’t IMO for a nearly middle aged bloke on a 6″ trail bike.