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So, if me and some buddies wanted 3 days of biking, where would be your recommendation in the UK? We’re not the fittest, but not totally incapable of pedalling either. 2-3 hours of pedalling and 600m climbing would be a normal day on the bikes for us. So ideally, we’d like either 1 day of uplift and 2 days of pedalling, or vice versa.
We’ve been to Fortwilliam a few times, and Pike Park Wales and Antur. We are not opposed to going back to any of those, but wonder if there is somewhere else.
Personally, I’d love to try Aviemore and Ballater. But I don’t think there are any uplift choices. And we are convinced that 3 big pedalling days would leave us dead!
Aviemore and Ballater
They're quite a distance apart, but funnily enough have The Lecht uplift halfway between them
Loads of stunning biking options at Braemar and Aviemore..
Dunkeld, Pitlochry and Glassie with one of the days using e-bike hire?
Machynlleth area is good. You’ve got Dyfi Forest for trail centre and off piste tech - then you’ve got Dyfi bike park for your uplift.
In south wales you could have your uplift day at Dirt Farm instead of Bike Park Wales and then you have Forest of Dean / Cwmcarn both close to those areas among other south wales tech riding spots. Barry Sidings / Smilog / Tirpentwys etc
Innerleithen obviously
Tweed valley? Uplift at Innerleithen then plenty to keep you amused at Golfie, Glentress (or the rest of the valley).
Day trip to Ballater and Aboyne is doable if you fancy it. Bit of a drive but manageable with some planning.
This year I've done a couple of ~3 day trips with some uplift. One based in Inners and using the uplift at Glentress the first day, Inners the second, and just riding up the Golfie on the third. The other was stopping off at the Forest of Dean on the drive down to Bike Park Wales, 2 days uplift there, and a ride at Nant Yr Arian on the way back north.
Uplift at Antur and Dyfi, pedal up in Dyfi Forest.
The best place in the country for uplift imo is south wales and adjacent. BPW obviously but also Dirt Farm and forest of dean, flyup 417 for a more trailcentry uplift. For me it's harder to figure out non-uplift around there (there's lots of great riding but it's become increasingly secret) but that's OK,we end up on full on uplift holidays anyway.
tweed valley's an obvious alternative- only the one uplift (*) but all the pedalled riding you can eat. Can be downright overwhelming with choice. TBH innerleithen dh is a bit of weird, oldschool experience at this point, little useful waymarking and it's super confusing to ride until you've spent a bunch of time there. But as long as you're going "I will ride a random trail" and not stressing out if you're on the exact right line that's fine. It's definitely possible to accidentally end up on something much harder than you expected though.
(*well there is the glentress uplift but it's not for you)
Dyfi and Antur aren't too far apart, I'd go there and depending on where you are coming from maybe Revs.
Has anyone rode the uplift at Glentress? Does that make for a good days riding with lots of trails to enjoy, with less climbing?
I could be wrong but I <think> that since the new trails open the uplift only runs up to teh top of the new blue. Haven't seen it any higher up than that. The website still says it uplifts to spooky bench and to the skills area turning circle but that's at least half wrong. I'd check with adrenaline though.
GT's a pretty easy place to get yourself around even with the obstruction of the building site in the middle, I'd say it doesn't benefit as much from uplift as, say, innerleithen which is a pretty harsh climb to do multiple runs.
I'd also say Inners (enough to go at for more than one day on the uplift) or the FoD and BPW (heard good things about Dirt Farm too).
There's also an occasional uplift at Ae, which has some cracking enduro trails now. Could be combined with Inners uplift?