Forest of Dean

In the pursuit of great mountain biking to tell you about, FMFT will go to literally the end of the River Seven. In fact, that’s exactly what I did and checked out the riding in the Forest of Dean.

The cycle centre in the forest is set up with a shop, café and bike –hire so it opens the woods up to all sorts of riders, both pottering out on the family trail, or hitting the singletrack trails. Obviously this means more people getting into mountain biking, and that’s a good thing. However, it does also fill up the trails, especially on a hot Saturday afternoon in August, with people riding slowly, stopping a lot, pushing bikes and wobbling along.

This is a shame because the trails are great fun. There is a 3-mile red-trail which kicks up some steepish climbs and chucks in a healthy smattering of roots and rocks. It’s short, and good, but in the end the real treat in the forest is the blue-trail.

At 7-miles it is one of those routes that challenges you to ride fast and hard (avoiding the less-good cyclists). It flows around the woods, with berms and jumps that tempt you to hit it with no brakes. The trail is non-stop fast fun and ends with a full-on (red graded) downhill with rolling jumps and berms chucking you back and forth across the valley and back to the carpark grinning like a loon. I challenge you to ride it and not instantly want to head out to get that thrill again. In fact I did. I rode both trails twice, back to back, and that all adds up to a pretty big ride.

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