Bike Park Wales

There's no other allowed option now as such. You can take the Beast and veer off onto the Fire-road at a few places which make it a little less painful.

Sixtapod the other blues will be perfect for you. I'd arguably do it slightly differently and do Sixtapod/whatever to the fire-road, then climb back up, then session another blue... The climb from the middle>top is less steep than bottom>middle

Get the uplift when at an uplifted bikepark. Don't waste your day riding uphill, even on an ebike.

as above, deff get an uplift. you'll  enjoy it a lot more and get more of the riding you actually want to do in the day (unless you like boring sloggs of a climb). all the blues and most of the reds will be fine on 120mm, but some of the techier reds might be a bit chunky. saying that my mate rides all the blacks on a YT Jeffsy with 140MM of travel

Agreed, get the uplift and do all the blues and as many reds as possible. The red blend trails are a big step up jump wise though.

We have just been as a family and due to a breakdown on route we checked availablity for last Friday and Saturday and both had space for 3 of us. I remember that you used to have to be booked on 3 months in advance.

I love climbing so don't want an uplift. Enjoy the ups as much as down.

I love climbing so don’t want an uplift. Enjoy the ups as much as down.

I'm the same, I'd still get the uplift booked and work on pedaling up in the am and uplift in the afternoon, vice versa, alternating or what ever.

If you're making the effort to get to bpw you may as well enjoy the tracks, beast of burden is quite a nice climb, it's not nice enough to want to do it five or six times and there are a lot of good varied runs on the hill which is, let's be honest, what you're going for.

Another vote for uplift.

I love climbing so don’t want an uplift. Enjoy the ups as much as down

In that case go somewhere else. The up is just to get you to the top of the downs, it's not really a trail. Cwmcarn sounds more like your cup of tea.

i like riding uphill, but at bpw if you want to enjoy the day, preserve your legs, after 10 runs downhill, you'll be tired, managed between 9-12 the times i've been..

in terms of blues and red, do you prefer fast/smooth or techier, have a look at the map and read the small print on the trail progression scale.

my favourites: sixtapod / willy waver / insufficient funds / hotstepper / roots maneuvre

if you are adament you want to pedal up 3 or 4 times [circa 240m a time], its worth checking "PAY AS YOU GO" option £5 per uplift, which may allow a few more rides down..

PAYG uplift service is available in limited quantities and can be purchased from the Visitor Welcome Centre on the day subject to availability. The PAYG service is open to pedestrians wishing to use the uplift as well as riders who have a valid pedal pass.

I’d do what Weeksy suggested - one big climb to the top then do half runs to the middle fireroad then back to the top. The climb isn’t very fun from bottom to top- the lower section has a steep bit on loose gravelly stuff from memory. We did it as a pedal up on our 3rd day of a 3 day trip and still did over 1000m of climbing without doing a huge number of full runs. Maybe it’s changed but we jumped onto fireroads for pedalling up wherever possible.

On runs downhill there isn’t anything blue / red / tech black that a 120mm full susser can’t handle - it just depends on your skill level and what you like. The runs are divided into either flow or tech with a couple of blended red+ trails that combine both elements.

My favourite trails personally are Roots Manoeuvers and Sixtapod into Will Waver. Roots if a red with loads of 1 / 2 / 3 foot drops and (obvs) loads of roots. Nice and techie without really ever being very steep. Sixtapod / Willy waver are blue flow trails with endless berms and rollers.

Another vote for doing maybe one or two climbs from the very bottom and then a bunch of half way climbs from the middle fire-road. As for routes down, as per @joebristol, depends on your skill level really, most of the Reds are very doable on 120mm. You'll enjoy Terry's Belly by the sounds of it, but does go from the top to the very bottom, so maybe leave it for pre-lunch or the last run of the day?

my favourites: sixtapod / willy waver / insufficient funds / hotstepper / roots maneuvre

Mine too.

Yes to all those. Have a real soft spot for Watts Occurring after blindly going down it one time, not knowing what to expect and being faced with those drop offs that are huge fun. Same with Bonneville, the qualifier is weird, but the trail after it (like Escort just up the fireroad) is huge fun and quite unlike anything else at the park.

I love big rides and climbing but BPW is not the place to waste time climbing! Use your energy getting back to the bottom and back up on van a.s.a.p the fun is all down hill! Pretty certain thems the rules 😂

To offer a different opinion, I quite like going there and riding up. I find it really rewarding. The last few times I've done this I've managed to clock up 8 top to bottom runs. So depending on fitness 3 runs will almost certainly take you less than 3hours, so not a particularly massive ride. For a first visit there I see no harm in riding up, if you like it then sure book on to the uplift next time.

(oh, FWIW, last time I went EVERY. SINGLE. BOLT. on my bike rattled loose. I assume on the uplift, so maybe check those a couple of times...)

+1 @nickc yep fantastic, lots of angled roots on watts occuring, takes a special effort to do it as its half way along the middle fire road, so many options to ride past to get to it.

I liked AcDC before the latest rework, more tabletops now

surfin' bird is a cracker too

16mins from the bottom to the top on a full fat eeeb. Left half of the group just loading the bus, we were at the top of the trails waiting for them to pedal up.

8700ft, two batteries and 4 hours pedaling. Not been back on the KSL, but would imagine its going to be a bit slower up with less power. Still prefer it over a sweaty bus though.

I think BPW have done a good job on the Beast of Burden climb. From memory it's nearly all singletrack, quite pretty and with some technical challenge in places. Certainly way better than a fire road slog. Don't rule it out on your first day there.

Certainly way better than a fire road slog. Don’t rule it out on your first day there.

Aye, worth a go or maybe two but I wouldn't plan to ride it more than that unless it was a last minute "there's a seat in the car if you fancy joining us but the uplift is full" type thing.

Another +1 for the uplift

But I thought they had built a new ride up especially for the Eebs?

Get the uplift when at an uplifted bikepark. Don’t waste your day riding uphill, even on an ebike.

Why? It’s quicker on an ebike & I can generally get just as many, if not more laps than the uplift.

Because lifting your ebike onto the trailer is good for the soul

I love climbing so don’t want an uplift. Enjoy the ups as much as down.

If you ask the drivers at the top you might be able to get a downlift 👍

But I thought they had built a new ride up especially for the Eebs?

There's a track straight up from the middle fireroad type place. It's steep as pluck mind and rinses your battery. Not really worth it last time I went.

The ebike climb is horrible on a normal bike. The beast of burden is actually good fun to ride once or twice but it's pretty dull for anything more than that.

If you really don't want to pay for the uplift, I'd just session the top half or the bottom half - it's probably a 20min climb for a 3-5min descent and you'll get way more runs in than doing the full climb every time. My preference would be to do the top half - popty ping/terry's belly/hot stepper etc

(oh, FWIW, last time I went EVERY. SINGLE. BOLT. on my bike rattled loose. I assume on the uplift, so maybe check those a couple of times…)

Bolts don't rattle loose apparently, but let's not go there again... 😉

They absolutely did bloody rattle.

I have never, in all the time I've been riding, had pedals come loose. Both of them in that one trip. Headset bolts, suspension pivots, that preload/extractor bolt on my crank that can't be undone without a 5m long breaker bar. Every bolt. Even the sodding rotor bolts that then gouged my fork dropout. And all in a cacophony of mocking rattles. Like a wa-wa-waaaa played on a thousand maracas.

How nothing broke or fell off I do not know.

I love a classic trail centre, and climbing,but BPW definitely isn't one. Most TCs are designed to make the most of the hard-gained elevation, BPW drops down too quickly for me to think I'd love to ride back up again. YMMV!

Roots Maneouvre is one of my favourite trails anywhere, but it does throw away altitude and tbh it benefits massively from repeat runs- so satisfying to just smash down it with confidence, not so much if you're having to eyeball everything and ride with caution. So that's another one that gets "I love this but it's an uplifty trail" Same's probabyl true of Rimdinger, it's fantastic at whatever the maximum speed you dare is, lets big bikes actually do some work for once too.