Me and a few mates are T’up North next weekend, where is better to ride Gisburn or Lee Quarry?

2 of us on HT if that makes any difference, just need somewhere for a good blast and challenging.

Many Thanks

MT

I prefer Lee quarry, but if you want woody and technical Gisburn might be your best bet, also if it’s windy Lee quarry isn’t that much fun. Although there’s plenty of great non-trail centre riding in the north without going to these places, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Lee Quarry is brilliant if you time your trip perfectly, when the planets are aligned etc etc and its not raining and/or blowing a gale. Loads of fun and compact enough to do a few laps, taking in new options each time.

Gisburn is very different. There are trees for a start and a cafe. Gisburn annoys me – there are sections (like Homebaked) which are brilliant. Super fast, twisty, tight through the trees and really well built but a lot of the rest of it is absolutely fecked. 10ft wide, rocks here and there with deep peaty puddles, very little flow etc. In my experience it tends to be the bits on the upper part of the 8 which suffer, I suppose because they’re more exposed but the climb up after the swamp up to the slab is absolutely battered and in the same vein, as is Hully Gully. Rest of it is good…

Gisburn is much better if you want to ride round in a loop and is much more varied. There’s nothing exactly challenging though, most of the black stuff is only that due to the consequences of failure, rather than actually being hard to ride. Lee quarry doesn’t really work as a “trail” as such but it’s a good place to mess about as most parts can be linked and repeated easily.

thanks for the replies so far, we don’t have much time to explore other places, Cannock on the way up on friday, a blast at either Lee or Gisburn then a day and a bit at 3 sisters.

Depends what you mean by ‘challenging’. There isn’t that much tech at Gisburn, certainly not in a downwards direction.

If it’s technical challenge you’re after, how about Stainburn instead?

The last time I went to lee quarry was also the first time,probably the longest hill to the shortest trail,tumbleweed was immense though,probably ok if you like wearing full face helmets as you will need one if you take a tumble,you can actually see the other side of the trail/not a trail from nod side that’s how small it is…..

You can spend all day at Lee Quarry finding all sorts of runs and trails. I’m not surprised some people are disappointed if they just follow the ‘perimeter’.

Helping at Brownbacks last year meant walking round it (a lot, I have a Hope course-marking tape fetish you see) and that meant seeing a stack of bits I didn’t know were there despite having been loads of times. You’ve also got Cragg next door (and going up means coming back down the connecting trail, very fast). Between them there’s everything, loads of ‘tech’ bits.

Go to Lee and have an explore.

And the climb from the car park is character-building.

One of my favourite place to ride.

And I ride a steel hardtail and don’t wear pads.

How does Cragg compare to Lee quarry? Same sort of set up? We never rode Cragg when we visited last year.

Cragg is probably smoother, a bit more pedally up and along and down with one pedally descent through the quarry to finish. Its ok. Its worth doing though for the descent back to Lee. Wide, super fast with jumpable options. Its great…

The climb up to Lee is only 5 minutes or so – nothing!

I normally do a few runs in Lee Quarry then head up the link road to Cragg for a circuit then back to Lee Quarry for more messing around. Lee Quarry is quite different from your usual trail centre in that there isn’t an obvious circuit, but there is loads of stuff to play on.

Rivington has some good stuff, but if I was to take someone from out of town biking in the NW it’d have to be The Peak.

The way to do Lee is to park up, ignore it and head straight up to Cragg. It’s a slog, but IMHO well worth it. Much more flowy, and just good fun. Have a play! Do a couple of laps. Then you get to ride down the link trail you’ve just ridden up, which is a right old laugh! Then have a play at Lee.

I find Gisburn a bit meh

There’s loads of good trails around Lee and Cragg to get in and extend the route too. From Cragg you could drop down Owd Betts, back up, then drop down Waughs Well back to the start of Cragg

+ 1 for stainburn over either of those. short trail but ace. Takes about three attempts to be able to ride the black there clean. some good loamy trails in the woods above and the red is ok as a warm up.

Gisburn is better than Lee

If you are at lee, you might as well drive down the road a little to hebden or todmorden. Loads better riding there

Two different places. If you like trees, woods and XC then Gisburn would be more your thing. Lee Q is more…more of a mess about place IMO.

Well thanks for all the replies, ended up going to LQ.

Pulling up at the car park we thought we’d made a really bad choice, not ridden since late Jan and as 154hopperavenue says the climb up was “character-building” especially on my 1 x 10 made it up OK though. Played around in the middle waiting for a mate who was late, quite frankly I thought the place was rubbish and boring. Once mate arrived we set off for Cragg and started to realise I had completely missed the point of LQ, all the little bits in the middle wasn’t the whole place!

Enjoyed the ride up to Cragg bloody cold and windy but still “fun”.

Loved Cragg a bit brutal in the weather but all things considered we were much happier by now, run back down to LQ was great, then a small play in LQ then and back to the car park.

All in all we were pretty happy, pleased I’ve at least been there, won’t be rushing back but I’d ride there again and maybe pay more attention to what can be found there!

Many Thanks

Bet it was a bit blowy up there…