Comrie Croft Mountain Bike Trails in Perthshire is the iBikeRide UK Trail of the Year 2026, reclaiming the title it first won in 2016 by the finest of margins over BikePark Wales, the 2026 Bike Parks champion. Ten years on from that first win, 164 riders rated the Croft and still scored it within a whisker of perfect: a decade of putting riders first, confirmed by the riders themselves. It leads a top ten that stretches from a trials wood in Hampshire to a volunteer-built skills park in Rossendale.
Comrie Croft won this award in 2016, and to win it again a decade later says everything. Trends in riding have come and gone in those ten years, and the Croft has never stopped doing the thing that matters most: looking after the people who turn up with a bike. 164 riders rated it this campaign, one of the biggest turnouts in the field, and the score barely dipped. You cannot fluke that once, let alone twice, ten years apart. And this year BikePark Wales pushed it all the way to the line, which is exactly how an award like this should be won. What I love about this year's top ten is its range: a trials park, a pump track hub, volunteer-built woodland and bike parks from the family-run to the biggest in Britain, all judged by the only people whose opinion really counts, the riders.
Daniel Mintz, founder of iBikeRide
The Top Ten
Perthshire, Scotland · Trail Centres · 4.891 · 164 ratings
Photo: Pete Scullion
Set on a private estate in the Strathearn Valley, Comrie Croft packs 21km of purpose-built blue, red and black riding, a refreshed skills park and a new all-abilities trail into one free-to-ride, open-all-year hillside. First crowned Trail of the Year in 2016, it takes the title again a decade on. It drew one of the biggest vote hauls of the campaign, and the reviews read like love letters: "If Scotland was a trail centre it would be Comrie Croft," wrote one rider, while another called it "the Hobbiton of trail centres. Something for everyone. Incredible community. A special place."
South Wales Valleys, Wales · Bike Parks · 4.890 · 193 ratings
The UK's benchmark bike park needs little introduction, and this year it very nearly needed a bigger trophy cabinet: no venue drew more ratings this campaign, and a late surge carried it to the Bike Parks title and agonisingly short of the overall crown. Fifty-plus trails from green to pro spill down Gethin Woods above Merthyr Tydfil, split into flow, technical, blend and plus flavours, with a quarry skills area and pump track thrown in. Riders this year singled out the immaculate maintenance, the variety ("from first MTB ride on greens to red-plus within a year") and an uplift crew whose banter is apparently worth the ticket on its own.
Carmarthenshire, Wales · Bike Parks · 4.876 · 97 ratings
Last year's overall champion is not going anywhere. The family-run uplift park on the edge of Brechfa Forest actually scored higher this year than the number it won with in 2025, powered by nine progressive trails from green to black and an uplift so efficient riders report a run every ten minutes. "Each trail has a blend of tech and flow and keeps you on your toes for the next feature," wrote one reviewer, and the warm family welcome comes up in nearly every rating.
Hampshire, England · Bike Trials · 4.871 · 29 ratings
In the woods of Hedge End near Southampton, Shamblewood is a fully-equipped trials venue for low-speed, technical riding, and the first winner of our new Bike Trials category. Obstacles run from complete-novice lines to elite-level challenges, and the park is constantly evolving. "It's the sort of park we dreamt of having years ago," one regular wrote, crediting founder Shaun and a welcoming crew of regulars for building somewhere young riders can get into trials safely.
Hertfordshire, England · Urban Bike Parks · 4.829 · 42 ratings
The outdoor heart of the Cottonmill Community and Cycling Centre shows what an urban venue can be: a 206m pump track, a 406m leisure loop, a cyclocross track and four dirt jump lines, backed by an on-site bike shop, workshop and cafe. Reviewers marvel at how much progression fits into the footprint, with jumps "exceptionally maintained" and a track that locals say is "never empty, used 24-7" by everyone from first-timers to seasoned dirt jumpers.
Gloucestershire, England · Trail Centres · 4.809 · 137 ratings
One of England's most complete riding venues, the Forest of Dean Cycle Centre near Coleford runs from Old Bob's accessible green through the Verderers blue and Freeminer red to more than ten downhill runs and 42 square miles of natural off-piste, all for the price of parking. Reviewers this year kept returning to one theme: whole families riding together. "Everyone welcome regardless of age, ability or gender," as one rating summed it up.
Rossendale, England · Urban Bike Parks · 4.800 · 15 ratings
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Zona Moller in Crawshawbooth, Rossendale, is proof of what a community can build. Run by the WAVE Adventure charity and local volunteers, who rejuvenated the site of a disused pump track, it is a free public skills park of berms, tabletops, rock gardens, skinnies, drops and a much-loved seesaw. "I couldn't believe my luck when these trails got built," one local wrote. Riders keep coming back for features that let beginners progress and experienced riders sharpen up.
Aberdeenshire, Scotland · Trail Centres · 4.793 · 22 ratings
The larger of the two Tarland Trails sites in Aberdeenshire climbs Pittenderich with around 17km of blue, red and black riding across 12 sections, with views over Deeside to the Cairngorms and a beginner-friendly sister site a mile away at Drummy Woods. Both bases suit adaptive mountain bikes. "You finish every trail with a smile on your face," one rider put it, and several simply called it the best-built flow riding in Scotland.
Denbighshire, Wales · Trail Centres · 4.720 · 23 ratings
Coed Llandegla near Wrexham, run by Oneplanet Adventure, pairs four waymarked trails from green to black with Natural Selection off-piste lines and a dual slalom track, plus a visitor centre whose cafe is nearly as famous as the riding. With sections of forest recently felled and a skills zone rebuild planned, reviewers praised how hard the team works to keep the centre open and evolving: "they're really investing in the trails," as one put it.
Leicestershire , England · Community Trail Networks · 4.631 · 22 ratings
Winner of the Community Trail Networks award, Bardon Hill is volunteer-built downhill woodland on Leicestershire's highest point, with trails from blue to black diamond. The craftsmanship draws rave reviews, from stonework features to shark fins and vertical berms, with drainage "shaped with particular attention to detail." As one review put it: "Amazing work from the trail builders, everything built perfectly, with great features for every skill level."
Category Winners
No Pump Tracks award this year: not enough pump track venues reached the vote threshold for a credible result. Rate your local track and put it on the map for 2027.
Trailblazer of 2026
One more piece of silverware. Our Trailblazer of 2026 award, decided by a public vote across our social media channels in the final week of the campaign, goes to Exeter Bike Park. The compact Devon hillside park reopened in June after a long spell closed, and riders picked it as the new build or rebuild that shone brightest this year. With projects at Woburn Bike Park, Aston Hill and Richmond Bike Park landing too late to qualify, next year's shortlist is already taking shape.
How 2026 Compares to 2025
The most telling result this year might be third place. Hafod Trails, our 2025 champion, did not drop off: it scored higher this year than the number that won it the title last summer, a reigning champion getting better. The rest of the field just rose even faster, and that is the story of 2026: the bar for the UK's best riding has moved. Last year's top ten was dominated by gravity: six bike parks and the podium to match. This year the spread is wider, with trail centres, urban bike parks, a trials venue and a community-dug downhill wood all represented, and the crown has crossed the border back to Scotland, returning to the venue that first won it in 2016.
Part of that is the 2026 category system doing its job. Giving bike trials, urban bike parks and pump tracks their own awards surfaced thriving scenes that a single leaderboard used to hide. And the thread that connects almost every climber this year is ownership: Comrie Croft's estate team, Shamblewood's regulars, the WAVE Adventure volunteers at Zona Moller and the diggers at Bardon Hill are all communities building for themselves, then welcoming everyone else in.
What We Learned This Year
Reading back through hundreds of campaign reviews, three lessons stand out.
Consistency beats spectacle. The venues at the top are not necessarily the biggest or the steepest. They are the ones where the hundredth rider has the same experience as the first: trails maintained weekly, uplift queues that move, staff who remember faces. Comrie Croft is the proof at the scale of a decade. It won this award in 2016, and ten years later it held a near-perfect average across one of the biggest bodies of ratings in the field. That is an operations story as much as a trails story, and it is the same story told over ten years of putting customers first.
Progression is the product. The phrase "something for everyone" comes up in review after review across the top ten. Riders reward places where a beginner, a nervous returner and an expert can share a hill and all leave better. Skills areas, graded stepping stones between trail levels and coaching all correlate strongly with high scores.
Community is infrastructure. Half of this year's leaderboard is volunteer-built, charity-run or family-run. Free-to-ride venues stood shoulder to shoulder with paid uplift parks. When riders feel a place belongs to them, they look after it, and they vote for it.
How the Winner Is Decided
Trail of the Year has no jury and no sponsored places. Riders drive, riders decide. Throughout the year, riders rate and review the UK trails they have actually ridden, scoring grin factor, trail variety, skills progression, trail quality and general setup, one vote per rider per trail. New for 2026, every vote had to come from a registered rider account: a smaller pool of votes than an open poll, and every single one accountable. Even so, the campaign drew more than 900 ratings across 70 UK venues.
Rankings are not a simple star average. A trail rated five stars by four mates should not outrank a venue that hundreds of riders scored 4.9, so our scoring blends each trail's average with how many riders stand behind it. The fewer the ratings, the more a trail's published score is pulled toward the middle of the field until more riders weigh in, which is why a score on this page can sit below the star average on the trail's own listing, and why a big sample of near-perfect ratings beats a small sample of perfect ones. For a brilliant small venue, the route up this leaderboard is simple: get more of your riders voting. The final scores are shown to three decimal places because at the top of this field, the margins are that fine.
Voting closed at 6pm on Saturday 18 July 2026 and the scores on this page are frozen as the final result. Reviews stay open all year round, and every review you leave helps the next rider find their new favourite place to ride.
Thank You
Finally, a thank you. To every rider who took the time to rate and review the places they ride: these awards are yours, and they only mean something because you made them honest. And to the trail crews, volunteers, diggers, families and staff behind every venue on this page and hundreds more besides: your hard graft is what makes the UK trail scene what it is. We just count the votes. See you out there, and see you for Trail of the Year 2027.
