[Closed] Rowberrow

How recently? They've shut a lot of the off piste but made two trails official. Its quite a bit less riding than there was but I'd say the two official trails are better than they were. That alone is not enough for a day out, IMO, but coupled with some tracks around the trig point you can have a decent ride. I would caveat that with 'if the weather is nice'. Its somewhere that is much improved on a sunny day and a bit poor in the wet

I rode up there last week. The two official trails have really suffered during lockdown. A combination of a lot more use and Ride Mendip being unable to carry out maintenance has left lots of holes full of water. That was before the biblical amounts of rain last weekend. I can only guess what they are like now 🙄 You can make up an old fashioned 20 ish mile route if you know your way but for me the general rule is stay away when we have had this much rain.

Rowberrow has soft soil and doesn't drain brilliantly. Its been wet recently and it won't dry quickly under tree cover or with lower temperatures. It will be very muddy, but not that stodgy stuff that slows you down - that only forms as it starts to dry out.

Inevitably, the increase in popularity of the adopted trails, especially under lockdown and now the closing of the other off-piste stuff has really hammered those that remain.

As a local, its something I've been concerned about since the inception of Ride Mendip, but I think they've had so many hoops to jump through and more recent difficulty with the locals that they're only just starting to realise that maintenance of this ground is going to be quite tricky.

The top of xmas trees is turning into a series of blown out holes and braking bumps are starting to form on the berms in the upper reaches of the trail.

I understand that the importation of local aggregate to armour the trail was flat refused by the FC and without that, I can't see the adopted trails remaining any good for the medium to long term, even with dig days.

That said, there is easily a day of decent quality trail riding on Mendip of off-piste and ROW outside of Rowberrow that ranges from Crooks Peak to the south west, to Cheddar Gorge/Charterhouse in the south east, to Sandford in the northwest and Burrington in the north east, but without a guide you'll never find it all or string it together well and if you're an enduro bro it probably won't have enough balls-out descending and too much pedalling.

Looks like I’m better going FOD then didn’t know how it would hold up in the rain sounds like it wouldn’t be much fun for a couple hours ride

Yep, nip over FoD, if you're going sunday then maybe get Dowies/Shutcastle, saves the parking charge and will be quieter than the centre.

Way more riding ay FOD.

Never been either of those seems so much riding there just wish we had something like that within half hour