Bike Park Wales

To finish my week away riding in Wales I had a bit of a treat for myself. I planned a day at the much-hyped Bike Park Wales. Just outside Merthyr Tydfil this new trail centre has been all over the cycling press with its new pattern of gravity assisted runs that have been raved about. There is either a four-and-a-bit kilometre climb to the top or an uplift service to allow bigger travel bikes to session the runs.

I have to admit I was a little nervous as we rocked up at the centre at around nine in the morning, snagging the last two parking places in an already busy carpark and taking a first look around the bikes that would be riding with us today. It was a collection of mid to high end machines, with riders who looked the business. Would I be outclassed without the excuse of a hardtail to cover any skill gap as I’ve had in the past. We bought a day pass, got ready and rolled out up onto the climb, suddenly leaving most of the other riders behind waiting for the uplift.

The singletrack and fireroad climb was a great place to settle nerves and focus on riding a bike as the distance rolled away steadily until we popped out of the woods and rolled over the open track to the beginning of the adrenaline. Electing to go on a blue run first as a warm up, I dropped the saddle, set the suspension to descend and dropped into the flowing delight of a trail. At speed even the blue rated trail offers a challenge and rolling jumps, berms for a long downhill that pings through a tunnel and plunging through the options back to the centre.

Grinning, we turned back up the hill for more.

Back at the top we both decided to shoot straight for a red route. This was even better fun, with rocky drops and jumps, rougher surfaces and tighter lines through the trees. It was fast and frantic and frankly brilliant, plunging to the bottom of the centre through a trail that gave plenty of opportunity to get things wrong, but rewarded every right line with even wider grins. While I enjoyed the run on a 140mm full suspension rig, I was genuinely impressed to meet my brother successfully at the bottom, riding a hardtail at a tenth of the price.

We reclimbed to a midpoint and blasted a couple of the bottom blue lines to take us to lunchtime, and a substantial and delicious burger at the café outside the top-end bike shop, then it was back to the top along the singletrack to do it all again. This time I went for the other red run branching off from the original blue and including some tight steep gullied turns and more jumps and rolling rock drops. Experience my mediocre skills here:

After all that it was time to drag tired bodies back to the top again and for me to finish on the first red run again, adding even more fun as I knew what was coming up and could anticipate and set up for each line. Shattered and happy we headed for a beer to relive the best moments while also chomping cake and then it was time to head home, cruising back along the M4 daydreaming about the trails and trying not to instantly turn back to go and do more.

So let’s leave all the brilliant things the Bike Park is doing for tourism and development of the Valleys and just look at the fantastic trails that they have put together. It really does live up to the hype. I seem to now spending a lot of time watching black runs to see if I think I could handle them.I can’t wait to go back.

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