Freeminer Trail

If this is a 'Red' trail I'll eat my tyres. It's way, way, too easy to have that classification. What's worse is that (as someone who has trail building experience) I can see that there's bags of potential and no real reason why it couldn't be fairly easily beefed up. There are some steps, for example, and it would be pretty straightforward to make these trickier. Similarly, there are a couple of piddley-little rock gardens that could quite easily be made more difficult, simply by the addition of more (carefully placed) stone. The only real difficulty anyone could have with this trail is dealing with the excessive amount of roots - and they're not a deliberate feature. I imagine they've become exposed because the track has worn away due to poor maintenance.

4 Stars

Cycled the Green Family route as a warm up and then the Verderer's Trail, which is excellent, especially for myself as an 'intermediate' rider. I have a car park Season Pass and yesterday it was very busy, perhaps party due to the work that has taken place recently on these routes and the weather! The new information boards are good, but I had to guide two separate people, one to the start of the Verderer's Trail, and another to where the Cycle Hire had moved to, just around the corner. A good Display board / location map would make all the difference to new arrivals. Let me know if you require assistance with this?

2 Stars

Toby's comment is in the wrong place - he's talking about the downhill runs. The downhill runs, and the Verderer's Trail, certainly are excellent, but the Freeminer (FODCA) Trail has been allowed to deteriorate. It needs work to bring it back up to a Red route as many of the technical sections have simply worn away.