Welsh Cycling Industry Unites Against Welsh Trail Centre Closures

Yes fashions change – but a good trail is still a good trail.

What does this even mean. Are you just staying the obvious or do you mean ” a good trail remains a good trail even as time passes by”?

If so then it’s patently obviously bollocks, because the bar for good trail rises hugely as time goes on..

Or if you would prefer,  it may still be good, but the number of very good trails grows, then we have amazing trails and superb trails. So compared to the others it’s actually a bit mince

However you try to express it, a trail that was rightly deemed one of the best in the country when it was built 25 years ago is quite clearly no longer in that league.

The Llandegla comparison is an interesting one. It’s hugely popular with families, and essentially it offer pretty much the same things, a café, toilets, a bike shop, but it gets trail maintenance and updated pretty regularly, the food is good, and the bike shop is pretty nice, and it’s rammed every time I go there.

Agree on all points, but none of those things is the main reason it is popular. The reason it is popular is that it is so close the some major cities.

It’s a fair point about shops / distributors and manufacturers not being consulted about the letter. Whilst not directly affected, i’m sure manufacturers would be concerned about the health of trails.
However, i disagree that 3rd sector organisations are looking for a handout. What is being requested is for investment in public infrastructure for health and recreation which anyone can use. Who isn’t interested in that? Especially when the cost of continuing trail provision (by maintenance of existing routes, tender the cafe and shop, employ a local ranger/small team for day to day management) is relatively low when spread across a large population/ from NRW or general taxation.

Anyone who thinks maintaining leisure access from public money is a wasteful, needs to wake up and apologise.

Problem is that it comes from a different, and future, budget….

So they ain’t going to give leisure and rec more money now to save money in health later on.

Crazy, but…

I recently had a week and a half on holiday in Wales. On the Wednesday we drove down to South Wales and on the way stopped at the Forest of Dean. It was busy. There was a decent choice of trails that seemed in generally good condition and the cafe had food. After a couple of days at BPW we were heading to North Wales so called in to Nant Yr Arian as it seemed a good spot to break up the journey for lunch and a ride. The cafe was shut (on a sunny Saturday ffs). We rode the red route anyway which was pleasant enough but very old school xc and it’s elevation was 30% higher than stated on the trail map. There were far more people there to look at the red kites than riding.

I’m in the camp of the mtb industry has decided its direction which is bike parks and uplift, and big travel / capable bikes

The industry is now geared up to people who don’t do the sport for fitness reasons. Plus riding round a trail centre on YouTube looks boring compared to someone going down a manicured burned bike park jump line.

Llandegla IMO has stolen most of CyB footfall. It’s close to Manc and Liverpool, why would you keep going another 1hr +

What I don’t understand is why bike parks don’t have more XC/Trail riding integrated in to them. Revolutions Bike Park said they were going to but no sign of it yet, Dyfi could do and create a massive area combined with the other stuff near by.

The fact is many people don’t want it, or are prepared to pay for it

Re reversing budget cuts, I’m not sure. What other services would be cut instead?

I think that when CYB was first opened there was a shortage of legitimate riding in North Wales. I always enjoyed riding there as it used to be fun with swooping, flowing single track. Then as suspension bikes became more of a thing two things happened. The original cafe was closed and moved across the road as well as the trails becoming rockier to provide more thrills for people with 130mm full sus bikes.

That was the point my partner stopped enjoying trail centres and we ceased to go. I would sometimes go on my own until I got rammed by a knob on an ebike.

I will never go to a bike park as it’s not what I do and I am sure that lots of people enjoy them and have a great time. The problem is there are relativly few and from the photos I have seen they are a blot on the landscape.

I can easily drive to LLandeglla and ride but it’s packed and and not that great to ride. CYB is a long way from population centres although I would consider riding their gravel trails. I would never go that often to ride gravel.

We now ride mixed road and limited offroad locally and with occaisional trips to ride in the Lakes, Peak District and Dales to limit our environmental impact. If we go to Scotland we will take bikes and ride while we are away which make me envious of the people who live there as the scope for riding is massive.

Maybe it’s time to decide that CYB has had it’s day and build facilities for cycling near local communities with the money.

Where I live the council with British cycling built a pump track in the park which is a huge sucess may be local facilities in Wales might work better. Cycling facilities should be about local kids not just people who have transport and long travel bikes.

I’m in the camp of the mtb industry has decided its direction which is bike parks and uplift, and big travel / capable bikes

The industry is now geared up to people who don’t do the sport for fitness reasons.

I’m going OT but The Industry’s influence and what people want & buy are 2 parts of the same thing – consumer demand. We can all buy XC 120mm lightweight FS bikes if we want them but still they don’t sell that well. Bigger bikes, E-FS etc are what sells so that’s where the efforts are focussed. I said a while back that MTB would be a powered sport in time and while oc it won’t become exclusively electric, the trend in that direction is strong. 90%+ of the bikes at the last trail centre I rode at were e-bikes. Though there’s still plenty of us who like to pedal, popular MTB culture isn’t really pedalling culture like it is in road and gravel.

Perhaps trail centres should cater more for e-bike use, perhaps that makes it too specialist based on the price of E-MTBs. Not sure on that one tbh.

What I don’t understand is why bike parks don’t have more XC/Trail riding integrated in to them.

I think XC riders have a more old-school get-out-there attitude, they’re more likely to ride a mix of trails and byways in any area and less likely to travel to do a loop? More likely to be happy riding natural rails or loops that take in teh good stuff in an area. I used to live near Aston Hill and in 10 years I rode the XC loop maybe 5 times but rode natural trails in the area 10hrs+ a week year round. And there’s trails like C-UKs Traws Eryi to cater for longer ride aspirations, I expect we’ll see more of those pre-mapped longer distance trails with route guides published.

Are you just staying the obvious or do you mean ” a good trail remains a good trail even as time passes by”?

If so then it’s patently obviously bollocks, because the bar for good trail rises hugely as time goes on..

Only if we see MTB as all about progression and going bigger/faster etc. See my previous point about the bigger/harder/gnarrer influence in MTB or road sportives etc. It’s only one way of seeing riding. I’d enjoy the original Afan trails as much today as I did then, on a bike I ride now. There’s also BPW for another day’s riding.

it’s patently obviously bollocks

No, it’s an opinion. You appear to be confusing your opinion with objective fact

1) Sorry for my rudeness.

Coming back to the discussion…

Only if we see MTB as all about progression and going bigger/faster etc. See my previous point about the bigger/harder/gnarrer influence in MTB or road sportives etc.

I don’t think that’s the case here. I wasn’t saying tht CyB isn’t gnarly enough, I was saying it is neither gnarrrly enough nor flowy/ jumpy enough. It sort of sits in the middle in this no man’s land…. The Red Bull in particular is rocky and twisty enough to require a fair bit of control and effort, but not gnadgery enough to give satisfaction. On the other hand there are minimal flow sections on it and hardly any decent jumps. There’s loads of fire road downhills, but enough gnarr to preclude a gravel bike.

MBR has that awesome jumpy section, but it’s a long slog to get to for someone whose main goal is jumps.

The Beast has a reasonable length, especially if combined with Red bull, and that’s CyB’s main plus…. Long interesting XC at a semi consistent difficulty without having to navigate.

It’s got nice scenery, and nice views, but by no means epic. If you want long epic XC, and are willing to navigate, and surf the internet, then there’s loads better.

Interesting though the debate about whether CyB trails are any good is, there’s a basic mismanagement issue

The bike shop is independent, run well and does ok on the current visitor numbers.

The parking and cafe is run by NRW who don’t seem to be good at getting money in eg:

Car park machines regularly out of action – leaving a major part of the site’s income on the floor (& no there isn’t a penalty for the provider)

Cafe run badly (see comments above about opening hours, food selection etc) also leaving income for the taking.

Get those sorted by people who know and are invested in the area and the financial picture would look different and enable better trail upkeep and development.

Totally agree.

Hope the community interest company being mooted does get off the ground.

As I said on a previous page, it’s not going to suddenly become a goldmine, so get a sustainable solution in place now.

Curveball.

Do NRW or any other similar bodies have an advertising presence?

If I was Mr and Mrs Average with 2.1 kids on holiday and I saw something like CyB being advertised I think that I might be tempted to give it a go.

Thu @ 5pm: Online Public Meeting on future of Coed y Brenin & Nant yr Arian

Hi everyone

We wanted to let you know that NRW are holding an online public meeting at 5pm this Thursday, 5th Dec, on the future of Coed y Brenin and Bwlch Nant yr Arian:

We are holding an online public meeting to update communities on the future of Bwlch Nant yr Arian, Ynyslas and Coed y Brenin visitor centres.

The online meeting will start at 5pm on Thursday, December 5 and you can join via this link https://orlo.uk/Y8K09

This meeting will cover the same information provided at public meetings recently held in the local communities and will include the chance to ask questions.

If you’re at all interested in what happens to these important parts of the UK’s mountain bike infrastructure, then please attend the online meeting to show your support!

NRW have also set up an online consultation page, which may be updated with some FAQs before the meeting, and where they give an email address for people to ask questions ahead of the meeting.

NRW are currently saying that, although they’re temporarily closing the cafes and visitor centres while they look for new partners to take them on, the trails themselves will remain open and continue to be maintained. Given the budget cuts that NRW have committed to, we are sceptical about NRW’s intention and ability to maintain the trails on an ongoing basis, and thus whether they’ll be able to keep the trails open in the long run. That scepticism seems to be shared by the local businesses and communities around the trails.

Thank you in advance for your help on this.

cheers

Robin

Robin Grant
Founder & Chair
UK MTB Trail Alliance