I did a skills course this weekend at Llandegla, through http://www.oneplanetadventure.co.uk with 4 others.
We can all ride OK, although there is one novice in our midst, but we wanted to do a course to give us all some more confidence.
And it was great – well worth it. It wasn’t anything that you didn’t know you should be doing anyway, but it taught it to you in a correct way and corrected quite a few ‘bad’ habits that some of us had picked up. You aren’t gonna become a trail riding god overnight, but if you practive what was taught on the course, it should get you well on the way. We did the Llandegla loop the day after including all the black bits and it did feel that I was more confident and able to read the trail better. I also felt that I had that little bit more ability to go over obstacles with some decent pace.