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Hi, I'm Hannah from singletroutworld.com and I'm here with Jill and Dan at Dovey Bike Park
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I've been having a look at the trails. Dan's got some food which is made by his mum but I understand
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everyone could buy if they went to the cafe that's just over there. So there's a cafe here
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we'll find out a little bit more about what's here. So first of all, what's new for this year
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Well, this here, cafe and shop. So we started about a year ago
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We had a much smaller setup down there. And lockdown was actually a brilliant opportunity to get buildings
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So we have a new, non-damp, really big and lovely, airy sign-on area in shop and expanded cafe
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I notice it's quite a large stove sitting there. Is that waiting for winter
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It's ready for winter. We actually ran it last winter and it was amazing
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you know the riders should kind of get warm dry their gloves and kind of inspiration from revver
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really you know they've got on there but yeah like jill says it's a lot more airy kind of we've moved
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it around the corner so it gets the sun a lot more um and yeah the the few days that are sunny in
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wales you want to make the most of them so you've got some new trails for this year as well yeah
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yeah so two new reds again built over lockdown we kind of had the idea of we were going to branch
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out and build reds but we wanted to start with those black trails start with a higher level of
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rider just because they're a little bit easier to deal with you know they they kind of turn up
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they're a bit more hardcore and they just kind of get on with it and you know as soon as you have a
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red trail the expectation of what you offer goes up you know so the cafe's got to be a bit better
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parking's got to be a bit more dialed uplift's got to be a bit more dialed
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so they're pretty red reds from my experience riding down them today they're not
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your average family day out are they um well i guess as kind of racers we don have a massive amount of experience with building reds or riding reds for that matter But I think I guess I wanted them to be fun for everyone not just for a red level of rider
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And so, yeah, some of the jumps have got bigger takeoffs on the side and the landings are kind of bowled around so you can kind of jump as far as you can
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But there's definitely steep sections in them that could probably be tamed down a bit
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And I think, you know, the more days we're open with guys coming up, the more we're learning
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And that's been the same since the bike park opened, you know. I came straight off racing World Cups and EWS into building this
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And from then on, I've learned. And it's not just about the level of rider
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It's about, you know, you want to have fun on your bike
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Yeah, and, you know, as a pro rider, you're so used to that mentality of whenever you ride your bike, you're pushing
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and that's all you're ever doing is pushing pushing and so to forget that put that aside
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and suddenly it's more about just flow and fun and enjoying yourself is it's such a different
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mentality but some of the pros that have ridden it already have been like that's the most fun
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trail ever you know it it is something that everyone's been really enjoying and you can
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kind of ride it at your own level really oh my god
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so you said about the different expectations of of what there's going to be here with the different kinds of riders so what is here in terms of
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facilities this is a short list well we've got the cafe and the shop yeah but yeah in terms of
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in terms of facilities we've just we're building the bike wash at the moment obviously that probably
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should have been the first thing but and then yeah it's weird like literally because we're a
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little bit further out into Wales people's first impressions of the places other than this other
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than the sign is the toilets and so yeah we kind of need to get that dialed really. I thought the
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portaloos were quite clean by portaloos standards I didn't have to hold my breath. I cleaned them
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this morning. Was that in the job description when you signed up? Definitely not. So what's in the
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shop then if I turn up and I forgotten some key stuff am I an idiot or am I going to be able to buy what I need Hopefully you be able to buy what you need So we got inner tubes we got chains
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we've got all those sort of bits that are going to break hopefully, but we've also got some really
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nice merch in there. We've got W Backpark t-shirts and hoodies and we've got things from Endura
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We've got gloves and knee pads and elbow pads and then the Kingwood stuff
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So we've got stands, sealant. Hopefully we've got everything that you need to get through the day
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but some fun stuff as well, some nice stuff. I just enjoy shopping
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And what's the mandatory kit for people coming today? Gloves, knee pads and full face helmet
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Pretty much, you know, it's hard to enforce elbow pads, but we do tell people to ride them
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especially if they're going off the reds onto the downhill stuff, but hard to enforce that
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And a face mask, of course, because you need that for the uplift at the moment
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So how has that affected your capacity to operate? Well, we've gone down to 50 riders a day
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spaced out the Land Rovers, windows are out or everything's out, as you've seen
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to try and get some air in. With this build that we did over lockdown, we made the car park bigger and the cafe bigger to accommodate more riders
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And now we've gone the opposite way. You know, we're only dealing with 50. So everywhere feels quiet
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The trails feel quiet. Car park, cafe, all feels quiet except the uplift queue, which is manageable at the moment
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But we're literally running half the numbers up the hill. So, you know, as soon as we can start creeping the numbers up, the better, really
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So is 100 riders a day your maximum under normal conditions? Yeah, we were doing 90, 100 before lockdown
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and now it's like literally half that, 50. And we're buying more Land Rovers now and building more trailers
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so we can get rid of that queue and start to kind of increase those numbers
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But it is all come down to the uplift, yeah. okay so let's assume that covid gets sorted and you can get your uplift sorted what's next in the
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on the trail side of things what's to come just kind of reaching out to that broader audience
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really um obviously it a little bit further for people to come here than go to revs um and so So we do need to be you know offer that a little bit more in terms of range of range of tracks um but yeah just just kind of feeding back from riders and that that why i ride on the
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weekends as well really you know it's sometimes it's hard to to motivate stuff to always ride but
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it's so important because like you hear what people think in in the uplift and on the tracks
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you hear little snippets because people people aren't going to come up and tell you or not many
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people are going to come and tell you what they really think so it's nice to hear it you know
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whether that be good or bad and try and feed that back into the build so for those that want to ride
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with a pro they should get themselves along here soon and then you might be hanging around yeah but
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i'm not pro he's always hanging around though he's always hanging there and rachel's here an awful lot
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of the time and gee as well ride with the pros brother so yeah you've got a really good chance
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of riding with an Atherton if you come and that's a bad thing. And could you ride on an Atherton
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Is there going to be a higher fleet of bikes to try out at some point? Yeah there's actually more
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and more people inquiring about that and you know I guess if you break it down the bigger picture
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that's one of the reasons we did start a bike park was because of the bike company. You know we
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really felt like we wanted a platform to to kind of bring that product to market you know not not
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driving around the country showcasing it in other people's bike parks we really wanted like a base
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for the company to be and so people knew you know there was somewhere solid they could go
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test ride a bike and they knew that it was kind of born from this this area sort of thing which
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I think helps the image of a bike company. Cool. So, watch this space
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Get here while the trails are quiet. They're definitely quiet at the moment
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Well, they've been great. I mean, it feels great to me. I've had a load of fun
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I've ridden some stuff that scared me the right amount. And I'm probably going to go and ride some more stuff
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that will scare me a little bit more now. And maybe I'll just look at some other things. We'll do some laps together now
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Oh, crikey. Thanks very much, I'll let you finish your lunch. Oh for 's sake! I didn't know it came out here
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You can rip round here if you want
