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I'm going to soon be moving from Bristol to Congresbury area and was wondering which clubs/groups in the area are active these days and maybe some guidance on routes in the area given that young kids tends to mean I do most of my riding alone at the moment (I have a GPS so any routes gratefully received!).
Looking for mtb and CX friendly routes - the road stuff I know fairly well. Probably on the less rad side of the mtbing but will consider/try most semi-reasonable stuff 🙂
Thanks. Looking forward to being a Men-dipper 🙂
Scienceoffice
Candodavid
Buzzlightyear
Myself included are all Mendip riders.
I live just outside Nailsea so know that area too.
Having kids also means I ride alone quite a lot.
I'll work something out and hopefully fire a gpx over later.
Brilliant, thanks 🙂 I do know the area reasonably well but I'm sure that there's loads that I don't know about too and it's been 5+ years since I've ridden there so no doubt it's changed.
Anyone else?
Yep - Nailsea based and ride all the local stuff along the Gordano Valley and the Dips.
Often ride with flatfish above (bit put out that he didn't mention me in his list - probably not niche enough for his bivi centric ways 😀 )
🙂
So do you ride from Nailsea to the Mendips? Looks like a bit of a trek via mtb unless you have lots of time to spare...
I don't personally - I think ff has.
The distance is fine, I guess I'm really trying to get an idea if I'll need to ride 5+ miles before hitting anything offroad (eg the Strawberry line or similar) or if there are some tracks to link up before hitting the dips.
Evening.
My wife is from Congresbury and her parents still live there, although we now live in Worle.
Your natural link from the back of Congresbury is the strawberry line, although I'd hesitate to call it off-road in the context we're talking about. This will feed you to Sandford. From here you can head up quarry lane, onto the bridleway and down to the A38 at Dinghurst/Churchill. From there, you're at the bottom of Dolbury and a short pedal from Rowberrow Bottom, where upon you have all the choices Mendip can offer.
Great, thanks for the answer - so it sounds like I was right in that I'll have to get to Sandford via the SL before there's anything offroad to link a route out towards the Mendips proper. (I worded it poorly btw - I know the SL isn't offroad). I guess I was hoping that there might be some less well known bridleways or something as an alternative to the SL.
Just moved back as I missed it (moved away 6 months ago).
As above - SL into Winscombe/Sandford and climb up over the top and behind the ski centre and follow the BW to the bottom of Dolebury Warren. You can turn off and head down to Star for a quicker way to the Swan were some groups head off from. Or you can turn off the SL a bit sooner and come up past the Churchill Academy and turn up at the crown were a lot of people start their rides.
Best thing with SL is to just smash it out. Without junctions and cars to worry about, it's pretty quick to get to Sandford. It can be busy with families on weekends though.
There's also more to SL. You can effectively use it to access the rideable west part of the Mendip plateau right the way along to Cheddar if you so fancy. We tend to use it to link ascents and descents right across the area, or for covering ground quickly if we fancy stringing some of the more remote trails together.
Thanks again guys 🙂 Will have a look on Strava to see what routes people are riding out there.
Heatmap is great for this.
Indeed 🙂
SL is very useful for getting back from cheddar when you've had enough climbing and just want to get home. It's just a stick it in big ring (if you have one) and play dodge the dog/cat/fox/badger turd all the way back.
the Winscombe Quarry BP is a nice fast run going back to the SL and a nice climb to warm you up heading from the SL.
Some nice pubs to drink and eat at around this area too and pop into Bad Ass Bikes if you head up Burrington.