Just for the sake of clarification:
I’m not interested in the natural vs trail centre argument here, I enjoy riding both.

I was just disgruntled to read that the type of trails built in the future will be more and more of the bike park style – this being the type I like least.

cut a new trail but keep it looking like part of the original mountain side with roots and ruts and all number of techy bits would cost a lot more than grading out a trail and creating features like jumps and berms.

I’ve sometimes wondered if the easiest method would be to repeatedly ride an enduro motorbike up and down the same wiggly line all day. Then let the rain do the rest.

Jumps, berms etc are my favourite thing about biking, bike parks are awesome. Not enough trail centres have good jumps though, at the ones ive ridden they’re always small and a bit crap.

My favourite trail centres are the more natural ones though just because i kind of feel that due to the aforementioned crap jumps, id rather not bother and ride some fast singletrack instead…

Also i always feel as though the people who say the “bmx track” comments have never actually ridden a proper set of jumps as they’re not that similar to trail centre jumps.

I can sort of see where the OP is coming from in that many of the older generation of trail centre trails have been retired (Penhydd at Afan, Pink Heifer at Coed Y Brenin) and the replacements tend to be groomed, machine-built affairs.

On the other hand, a lot of riders always liked the smoother bits of the old trails the best (Sidewinder and Hidden Valley at Penhydd were hardly rock-strewn techfests), there’s no shortage of rough bombed-out trails, and the tendency is for new sections to get techier rather than smoother.

Also why is riding an MTB over man-made jumps and berms not considered “mountain biking”? “BMX track” is used as a perjorative term yet I’d be very surprised if the majority of posters on this thread have the skills to ride a BMX track properly. Self included.

I’ve ridden many trail centres, and I can’t think of one with decent jumps – thanks to H&S.

But then again, I don’t go to trail centres for the jumps.

I’ve ridden many trail centres, and I can’t think of one with decent jumps – thanks to H&S.

^^For real^^

To many on STW (and trail centre visitors in general), a ‘jump’ is a 1m high table at a trail centre with no lip – big enough to get 12 inches of rad air at speed – but safe enough to roll over for riders with less experience (who H&S have to cater for). And yes, I am stereotyping.

It’s not a bad thing, and I certainly don’t feel disappointed by the lack of jumps – as I didn’t expect to find any in the first place.

If you’re complaining at the lack of jumps at trail centres, either build your own, or book yourself on an uplift..

Even though Llandegla is practically on my doorstep Ive only used it once and wouldn’t rush to go back tbh. I far and away prefer XC through the Clwydians and around Eryri

but im a relative newcomer to all this

If you’re complaining at the lack of jumps at trail centres, either build your own, or book yourself on an uplift.

Why, a good trail centre caters for all. Miles of rolling and undulating trail is fine, but chuck a few advanced features in and everyone is happier at all riding levels.

Thats the point, a trail centre gives you what you can’t get naturally. All thats good and varied about biking, in a concentrated area.

The problem is H&S won’t allow the builders to chuck in ‘a few advanced features’ – as advanced to you and I, is somewhat different from Joe Bloggs who’s much less experienced.

Won’t stop him attempting to ride the advanced features though – and it will probably end up in misery.

Im with Franki on this one why do the trails have to be six foot wide? bloody typical I do not use my Burley trailer any more grrrrr 😉

Anytime you want to visit franki let me know 😀

There’s something weird about all the trail center jumps I’ve seen. Despite being old(er) and afraid(er) than your average 12 yr old, I do get down my local motocross track and will quite happily aim at a jump and have probably had both wheels 10-12 feet in the air. I think this is because I get a broad run up, a long take off, and lots of room to land.

But your typical trail center table top is just odd. Almost vertical take off, 1 foot wide on top, and barely a bike length long if that. Combine this with the most common things that I think could go wrong – getting kicked over the bars, land to one side rather than on the top, or landing rear wheel on top and front off the end… They seem designed for disaster and I want nothing to do with them!

I’m not a jump building or a jumping expert but I think a lot of people would be happier on a bigger obstacle, which may look/feel less contrived too.

I’m not reading all that ^^ so here’s my take on Trail Centres.

Myself like most of you on here, cut my mountain biking teeth on natural trails and much prefer a wild natural ride than a trail centre. However!

Having ridden many trail centres around the country what i have seen is more families enjoying the simplicity of a trail created and waymarked to provide an mixed and therefore all ability centre for off road cycling.
This surely encourages more people into the sport whilst not over crowding natural and sometimes sensitive area causing excess erosion and damage to an already frail reputation given by a minority user group of whom we share the natural trails.
For many people the local woodland trails are to steep, muddy, lacking facilities, etc which puts off some riders old and young. Yes, there are plenty of kids that’ll still tear around down the local bomb holes, but there are still plenty who enjoy riding, but are a little more pampered to be allowed to risk injury on a piece of local land that’s not been constructed confirming to all the health and safety rulings that Trail centres should have.

Reassurances that every possible steps have been made to ensure the best rider experience without all the fear that could come from taking a ride out there in the every changing environment, far from roads, people, and therefore help should anything happens for the worst.

Many of us riders take for granted are own abilities and capabilities in the case of an incident to health or bike, therefore trail centres have there place.

A place to progress, to socialise, to nurture and to ride without having to think about a route.

Some of us ride daily, some weekly, some rarely.
We all need a place to ride, a place to suit the riding we like, with whom we like to ride with.

Trail centres open up mountain biking to many people and who can really complain about that,it’s gets people fit, it gets people out there in the great outdoors and it gets people riding bikes.

And we all love a bit of that.

Waffle over.

Sharki.

I’m not a jump building or a jumping expert but I think a lot of people would be happier on a bigger obstacle, which may look/feel less contrived too.

+1, most of the crashes I’ve had or seen are from jumps that are small/poorly designed resulting in overshooting the landing. I always feel better on a bigger jump as smaller ones can feel like you’re “tripping up” over it or something, feels much better to have the whole bike on the takeoff. Can’t really explain it but hopefully someone else gets it!

Obama approves of sharki

DezB – Member

Not really a trail centre, but at QE Park where there are tech bits, people just bloody ride round them and make new lines anyway!

Absolutely… At Glentress we have what I’m starting to refer to as The Example. On the main climb up to the top car park (blue graded) there’s a red/black graded shortcut, that cuts across a corner up a couple of rock slabs, with a wee rock step to get you into the feature. Nice.

Oh except lots of people couldn’t do the rock step, so they rode round it. So the rangers put up a fence. So they rode round THAT then rode the wrong way along the trail for a bit. So eventually, the rangers gave in and modified the entrance to tone down the step.

So now what? People are riding over the former step then UP THE SIDE OF THE MAIN FEATURE. So now they’re actually riding absolutely none of the black/red graded shortcut.

For all of this, there’s a main line that adds about 30 metres onto the climb. But they won’t ride that, oh no.

And this is why you can’t have nice things. Lots of mountain bikers are ****.

I ride anything and everything. Sometimes I prefer trail centres; I hate riding on roads and through fields which many natural routes do, if it’s been wet sometimes I can’t be arsed to ride through a quagmire and have an average speed of 2mph due to mud. It’s ok for sharks to say these things, he has some of the best natural riding in the country on his doorstep. I agree that its great that families and beginners have places to ride but to suggest that people who ride trail centres are lesser skilled is ludicrous. Most MTBers ride a mixture of natural, trail centres and downhill routes(I know I do).

I blame geography lessons. The countryside is a closed book if you can’t understand maps.

Thank god!

And this is why you can’t have nice things. Lots of mountain bikers are ****

I just love that, very good…. 😀

_tom_ – Member
I always feel better on a bigger jump as smaller ones can feel like you’re “tripping up” over it or something, feels much better to have the whole bike on the takeoff. Can’t really explain it but hopefully someone else gets it!

This!!!

Although TC’s do have pro’s and con’s same as natural stuff. I’m live under a mile from Cannock Chase and while the ‘trails’ are ok for what they are, the rest of Cannock is what provides the best riding, techy and flowy

The days that stick out for me are the ones that involve big mountains, tech riding and stunning scenery, something that very few of the forest based trail centres are able to provide.

Sanny you missed out pushing/carrying and bog trotting 😉

I must say that the most heartening thing I get from this thread is that there are far more people out there than I thought that want to ride proper technical trails. I thought I was in a minority of one despairing the proliferation of overgrown bmx tracks at various trail centres.

So if there are lots of people wanting decent technical features then why don’t they provide them?

Health and Safety, you cry, it’s too dangerous. But surely if it’s a trail marked as being black then you can put difficult sections on it…

…or is the problem that someone will get hurt doing a proper technical piece of black trail and sue the centre saying that they’ve done super gnarly blacks with huge numbers of scary signs and warnings and disclaimers and signs and warnings at Llandegla and that other trail centres are negligent for not overinflating the difficulty of their trails…

The h and s stuff is nonsense on natural trails since no one built them for public use. So they get proper nice. Different matter with bike parks. Take a leaf out of the mountaineers yearbook and learn to be self reliant use judgement and only ride the hardest stuff when youve looked at it and feel ready. There has to be some small element of risk taking at least on some rides or it’s not really sport. It really becomes golf on wheels or pony trekking which is fine but it’s not the whole thing. I love finding stuff I can’t or won’t ride. What would happen if you lived all your dreams and there was nothing left to frighten you?

I much prefer natural stuff but like the occasional visit to a trail centre because they do have the jumpy bits you can practice on and stuff like ‘Berm Baby Berm’ at Glentress which is so much fun. GT was so rough and eroded in places yesterday that much of it felt like natural trails anyway.

I dunno if I’m spoiled by mostly riding in the Lakes, but for me ‘natural’ riding features plenty of techy, rocky stuff – so I’m quite happy with trail centres mostly being jumpy and bermy. I love Spooky Wood in Glentress and struggle to see why anyone wouldn’t TBH.

I would agree a lot of jumps are not well made though – takeoffs generally seem to be too short/steep.

I wonder if the rubbish jumps are down to H&S…?
Trail designer says “we’ll put a nice big table top in here, people can roll it, then float it, then maybe jump when they’re ready” to which some H&S goon says “oh, it’s too big, small is safe” and we get the utterly horrible “dirt poured over a microwave oven standing on its end”.

Maybe jedi knows how they’re supposed to be approached! 😀 But the pictures of his back garden show, to my eyes at least, full sized, wide, well made jumps.

It’s not just trail centres which suffer from H&S – I was at Farmer Johns MTB Park (Stockport) at the weekend, and there was only one reasonable jump and one small gap. The jump had a flat top for the chicken run, but you could easily sail over the whole thing if you wanted (about 1-2m high). The gap has a chicken run ‘s-bend’ going through it.

Everything else designed to be a jump was just a short pile of rubble, about 1 metre high. More like large speed bumps you had to absorb, else you landed flat (hard!) the other side.

They have plenty of land, and some good trails which could easily accommodate some decent jumps – wonder why they don’t?

Whistler = Proof that tech and flow can both be present at trail centres, as long as a regular maintenance programme is installed.

Whistler = Proof that tech and flow can both be present at trail centres, as long as a regular maintenance programme is installed.

I would argue there’s tech and flow on both the DH tracks at Fort William too – so we clearly can do it this country.

I would argue there’s tech and flow on both the DH tracks at Fort William too – so we clearly can do it this country.

I’m not saying we can’t, I was just taking this opportunity to brag about have just got back from Whistler

Well I’ve read most of that.

OP +1, FWIW, was going to say more but can’t be arsed.

Whistler = Proof that tech and flow can both be present at trail centres, as long as a regular maintenance programme is installed.

Yep, Whistler has to be the biggest trail center in the world.. even if you forget about the bike park.
Trouble is you need a membership in excess of 1500 riders paying $45 each, a council that appreciate the merits of allowing potentially dangerous mountain biking trails to be built on its land as well as a provincial government that wont tear trails off crown land.. as well as land developers who are obligated to replace trail that they remove when developing land… significant government grants and based on a 2006 study, a resort destination that brings a rider spend of over $6million to the resort from xc mountain biking visits alone (an additional $18 million associated with the bike park)

Once you have that, you can build whatever you want.. not just the trails that pull in the majority of the riders.

No one says it has to be on the same scale: Whistler Bike Park has 50-odd tracks. The average UK trail centre has around 2-6

I’ve sometimes wondered if the easiest method would be to repeatedly ride an enduro motorbike up and down the same wiggly line all day. Then let the rain do the rest.

Thetford do this, just replace the words repeatedly with “hold a race”.

I struggle with long sentences, but is this ‘mountain bikers’, a demographic grouping which seems increasingly to include people who spend £1000-£2000 and upwards on bicycles, then about half that sum again on fancy bags and hats, and glasses, and shoes, and sports drinks, and gloves, and baggy trews and cart all this kit about the country in quite expensive cars, complaining that the purpose built trails, the trails built expressedly for them to indulge their pastime, at no expense to themselves, are not meeting their needs?

The same trails that are free to use?

OP, pop over to Stainburn. The black route sounds up your street 🙂 Plus Norwoods full of superb natural trails (well at least after a long dry spell, so not this year).

And that’s the problem with building natural feeling trails. Most trail centres attract big numbers and soon become blown out ruts if not built properly. And building tech is very labour intensive and subjective. Whereas, berms and jumps are based on a formula.
If you add even the most simple tech features then too many people just ride around them!!

If I have a choice I will ride a natural trail on a good day every time but that never ending berm on the Verderers Trail doesn’t exist in nature 🙂

So these ‘natural trails’ (sorry, this cracks me up)

They’re man made, almost exclusively, just not exclusively for bikes. Potato Alley is not the result of millions of years of erosion. Dollywagon Pike? Yup, those steps and drainage channels are the result of centuries of freeze/thaw!

So, I’ll not complain about the features at a trail centre that I am under no compunction to ride, as there are miles and miles of man made trails straight from my front door, or else easily within a short drive in the Lakes etc. Some are 10ft wide, some I can barely squeeze my stupidly wide bars through.

To the OP: I kinda get what you are trying to say, but suspect you are not the target demographic of those building trails, and that is what it is about.

Numbers around tail centres are falling, give it a few years and all centres will be back to natural trails due to lack of funds.

Numbers around tail centres are falling

Evidence?