South Wales has a brand new bike park full with uplift, inexperienced to black trails, and it is opening for spring

Hafod Trails has trails for all, and it is lifeless near Brechfa’s path centre too

South Wales has a model new bike park opening this Easter, it’s referred to as Hafod Trails and up to now there are 5 tracks to experience, starting from new-rider pleasant inexperienced to skilled black. Every of the brand new tracks will drop you round 100m vertical, so BikePark Wales it ain’t… but it surely’s on par with a number of the greatest UK mountain bike uplift venues, like Dust Farm, previously generally known as Black Mountains Cycle Centre.

That is no push up both, Hafod has its personal uplift service taking you on to the very best level, utilizing pickup vans and bespoke trailers to make shuttling up the hill simpler. “My youngsters can’t load their very own bikes onto one of many regular trailers the place the brackets are above your head, it’s too excessive,” Charlie Kingswood from Hafod Trails tells me. “So we constructed our personal trailer, my brother Alex has designed and fabricated them so new riders and children can do all the things themselves.”

Hafod is constructed from the bottom up as a household path centre, with a mixture of means trails  | Credit score: Dave Value Images

The Hafod trails are focused at a mixture of talents, however the massive factor right here is development, Charlie says. She based the primary trails to cater for her youngsters’ rising curiosity within the sport, and it snowballed from there. 

“We are able to cater to households, established riders and even enduro races,” she says. “We’re not attempting to be Revs, BPW, Dust Farm, or Dyfi. However the space now we have right here is right for individuals who need pure feeling trails which can be nice enjoyable.

Trails constructed for final summers enduro have been reworked with extra help and higher weatherproofing  | Credit score: Dave Value Images

The Hafod Trails

To seek out Hafod Trails you’ll have to enterprise additional west than the bikepark homeland of South Wales and the English-Welsh border. Drive to the tip of the M4 after which preserve trucking north and also you’ll end up within the Brechfa Forest, residence to 4 path centre routes together with the sensible Raven. Ninety minutes from Cardiff, tougher nonetheless to succeed in from England, however value it if you get there.

Nevertheless it was by no means the intention to construct a motorcycle park on a working farm, Charlie tells me. “After all the unique plan was to not run a motorcycle park however we’re all into our mountain biking in my household, so we constructed somewhat path for the children,” she says. “It was 30m lengthy so it bought fairly drained, however there was a small, steep little bit of land behind the barn, so we made a much bigger path there, which now varieties a part of one of many trails.”

Hafod is south dealing with, which means the paths dry out quick and the loamy shale drains effectively too | Credit score: Dave Value Images

A youngsters path is a good distance from a full-blown bike park, and it was curiosity in Hafod from Western Bike Occasions that basically bought issues going. The corporate was in search of a substitute venue for its 2023 season after Afan dropped out.

“It was a no brainer, in 10 weeks and two days we constructed the primary trails and sorted out the infrastructure,” Charlie says. “We had 250 riders right here final summer season for the race and everybody was actually stoked, superb to have individuals right here driving the paths that we’d constructed.”

With the paths in place and the enterprise mannequin already effectively established by the likes of Dust Farm and Flyup 417 it made sense to function Hafod as a motorcycle park. “The enduro was an enormous success, it was superb, however these trails weren’t essentially bike park trails as you’d anticipate finding them,” says Charlie. The idea was there but it surely wanted work to make them sustainable and capable of stand as much as full time site visitors.

Correct jumps?… not but, however they’re on the record | Credit score: Dave Value Images

The paths now are a combination of circulate and tech, with a pure off-piste really feel to them. Jumps are deliberate for the long run however you received’t discover something goal designed to get air off, moreover doubling up rollers or utilizing the pure options to ship it. It’s additionally very a lot a motorcycle park devoted to youngsters and households, in spite of everything that’s the place all of it started for Hafod, which actually grew up in response to the larger bike parks. 

“BikePark Wales is superb, but it surely’s over £300 for a day for our household,” Charlie explains. “What we’re attempting to do is have one thing the place households can come for an inexpensive amount of cash that will get youngsters out on the paths.”

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