Rode the new North Face trail at Grizedale on Saturday, and I am pretty impressed. man made trails of this kind are a bit new to me - I have not been riding in the last 3 or 4 years.
The trail is made up of 10 new single track sections linked by the existing fire road network, and is marked out very well. The waymarkers are pretty obvious and you cannot get lost on the sigle track sections. A nice touch is the care that has been put in on safety - its clear to walkers that they cannot use the singletrack trails and the one way system is a good idea. At several points there are footpaths crossing the single track, but these are well sign posted and have a kind of chicane for walkers to ensure they are paying attention - the way is clear for MTB’ers.
The actual singletrack has it all - rocks, roots, berms, jumps and some quite extensive board walk sections which again are new to me. These allow the trail to go across boggy ground without problems and are a nice challenge - they are narrow in places and contain some small drops and off camber sections etc etc. No problem for an experienced off roader, but I fell off a few times on the more tricky bits. Great fun though.
In the end we did 2 laps of the North Face Trail and enjoyed ourselves immensly. My camera didn’t go on this trip so no piccys :-(.
Grizedale has a good MTB hire centre and plenty of less technical forest roads and bridleways to entertain. Theres also a big high ropes course called Go Ape! that is on the list of things to do soon. For the more sedate people, there is a network of waymarked walks, lots of interesting sculpture in the forest and of course the cafe. Final good thing is the forestry commision charges £2 for 4 hours and £3 for a full day parking - much better than many NT car parks.
There should be some more MTB posts here soon - I have rediscovered the sport / hobby and my bike is fixed up and happy again. The bigesst barrier to riding was my weight, but since august I have lost 60lb (2 bikes!) and I have increased my fitness in the process.
