[Closed] Swindon, Croft Trail - opinions, worth a 20 mile detour?

It's good for a quick bit of fun, especially for a night ride. 20 mile detour...yeah I would. Easy to get up to Cirencester along the A419 afterwards. You could always extend the ride up ladder lane & over to the Ridgeway, although much of the latter will be a crapfest at the moment.

Dunno, I work in Swindon and have yet to haul my worthless, lazy backside the 2 mile detour to ride it.

But these are the people that do know and they have regular group rides there :
http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/

Rode it Sunday - lots and lots of very rideable flowy fun. Not a massive detour so definitely worth it I reckon!

Could be a great laugh as a night ride too I think....

Cheers, sounds like it's a go-er.

How long does a lap take?

I would probably make a 20 mile detour yes. It is VERY short though so you'll whizz around it and / or will be able to do a few laps. I can't remember how long it took i'm afraid.

In the nicest possibly way it reminded me of a skills loop (a bit like the one at Dalbeattie was it...?) more than a 'trail' as such 🙂

No, especially not in the current conditions.

If you're already in Bristol you'd be better off spending your time at Ashton Court/Leigh Woods.

A lap takes around half an hour.

Is it not in very good nick at the moment then?

I'm the other side of Brizzle to Ashton Court, it'll be as quick to get to Swindon...

It'll take you anywhere from 11 minutes to 33 minutes depending on light, riding partners, crashes etc
[url= http://app.strava.com/segments/890185 ]strava[/url]

Its good for the little choice that the land offers, and holds up well in rain.

Well worth the detour, and the woodwork sections should be great fun with a bit of ice on them...

Hi there, I've been involved in this project for a few years.
The trail is 4.5km long and if you can make it round all of it including the obstacles in 15 minutes you're doing pretty well.

It's survived the wet summer pretty well. Two years ago a lot of it was deep mud but we're down to 3 x 10m sections of mud now that will be fixed on the next build weekend.

So I take issue with the comment "No, especially not in the current conditions.". If you see the conditions of local tracks then you'll realise how well the trail has held up.

More features are going to be added in the future.

Unlike Ashton Court this one has been 100% volunteer built - with a core of around 30 people who've given up weekends over 3 years to make this happen.

There are night rides there every Friday, starting at 7:30pm in the car park.

[url= http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=croft+trail+swindon&search_sort=video_date_uploaded&uni=3 ]Videos of the trail.[/url]

[url= http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/croft-trail/ ]http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/croft-trail/[/url]

[url= http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/croft-trail/croft-build-diary/ ]Build diary[/url], [url= http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/trail-build-report-sat-27th-oct-2012-north-side/ ]latest update[/url].

[img] [/img]

Latest news always available on twitter. [url= https://twitter.com/@mbswindon ]https://twitter.com/@mbswindon[/url]

Croft is brilliant fun...in fact every bit of it has a fun factor. It is fun packed into a very small space! MB Swindon have done a brilliant job down there.

I'd go take a look 🙂

Yeah I would. Ideal as people say for a little night ride. Do 3 laps in 1-1.5 hrs and as its well surfaced its very rideable in current conditions. If it was a weekend i’d extend it up onto the ridgeway for a nice all dayer. Think there was a ST article the other month on the area wasn’t there? Can see the mention of a long skills loop rather than an “XC” trail, lots of fun little things packed into a small area. Top fun.

Well, I did it last night, two laps in about an hour. I have to say, I'm usually not really a fan of man-made stuff but the Croft is absolutely cracking.

The beauty is that it doesn't feel 'built', and it doesn't have loads of that grey hard-pack gravel stuff that is the staple of trail centres and makes me shudder. In fact, the only section that was vaguely like that was the bit in the picture above, and even that felt like a cheeky bit of footpath rather than a built cycle track.

And as for mud, there was only one bit (by the wooden rollers - how do you get to them?) that was in any way properly sloppy, and even that wasn't too bad. Yeah, there were patches and puddles elsewhere, but they added to the 'natural' feel.

It knocks spots of the stuff at Ashton Court. Croft feels like it's 'evolved', Ashton Court feels like it's been bulldozed...

All in all, top job to all those involved in it's making and maintanence 🙂

Although not quite as long serving as tomstickland I've been involved in the project for a few years also. When I first discovered it in 2009 it was pretty much unrideable through the winter, conditions like we've had over the summer would've all but destroyed it. So much hard work has been put in over the last 2 or 3 years it's now an all weather trail perfectly rideable all year long. I like the "skills loop" description as that's kind of what we aimed for. My average time is about 18-20 mins hitting all the features and depending how many pies I've eaten/tabs I've smoked that week, I believe some of the quicker guys are doing sub 15 mins without hitting the avoidable features. I'm slightly biased but I'd say it's worth a 20 mile diversion just to say you've ridden it and be able to make your own mind up about it. If you're there tonight there'll be a few of us there at about 7.30 for our regular night ride, would be good to meet you and see what you think. We like feedback, positive or constructive, so feel free to post your thoughts on this thread also.

Ah, your way ahead of me. Thanks for the feedback, really glad you enjoyed it. The "wooden roller" section isn't officially open yet so we've yet to build the approach line to it. We've been really busy lately fixing all the patches that were affected by the pants weather this year and will hopefully get on with that job early 2013.