Review for Swinley Forest Mountain Bike Centre

Ian:

I like Swinley but I'm a little tainted by the fact they are trying to make people use only the fireroads and groomed trail. There used to be maybe thousands of km of trails in there and after 5 years I was still discovering places but when they built the groomed runs they ploughed them up or felled trees over them :( So let's talk about the groomed trails. There aren't many; 3 to be precise - a green, a blue and a red. The green is great for kids starting out but too short and the jump to blue is too much in my opinion. You often see kids and parents who don't cycle regularly struggling and blocking the way on the early part of the blue and some of it is fast. You get some silly behaviour on a busy weekend - people parking on the outside or just in the middle of corners on descents. By half way round the blue the muppetry has gone back to the lookout. That's not really a fair comment it's because the green is insufficient for novices and they probably end up put off by the blue. They need a few greens, some a decent length. The blue is good in parts but there is, in my opinion, a long tedious flat bit just before the red - it's just too twisty and the same for no particular reason and just doesn't feel right. The red isn't harder than blue really there are a couple of bits that are and some of the descents have more potential for getting it wrong but not if you exercise some self control! The best thing about the red is that you don't get people parking on it. One thing to watch out for on blue and red is that some of the berms are too short. Once you start upping the pace you find you can run out of berm which forces a messy exit onto the straight at a funny angle. You kinda get forced off the berm before you finish turning. In summary well worth a visit and excellent if you've not been spoilt by how it was before. Why couldn't they leave the old trails as well? I'm a bit sad by the amount of tree felling recently not sure why - is it harvested? Not sure if it's a true working forest.

It's close to me. It has a cafe. Not much mud as sandy ground. Lots of trees or there were - they keep disappearing