DAN ATHERTON

Lockdown has given Affy the chance to build new trails and rediscover old ones

“Most of the last month has been spent digging at Dyfi Bike Park. The digger requires many hours of work, so in that respect lockdown hasn’t been a bad thing. I’ve been working on the new red trail, which needs to be better-groomed than any other I’ve built, so it’s been slow going. Building a red has been a huge learning curve. My trail-building mentality is always about pushing the boundaries, but the last six months of riding has made me see that people aren’t just about the challenge – they want to have fun! Rach has been helpful with that. I’ll be up there digging and she’ll come up and say, “That’s terrible, it doesn’t work, it’s too hard.” Then we’ll have a massive row. Normally she’s right and I’ll back down and change it!

We’ve been closed for uplifts, so the Atherton Bikes 150mm has been seeing a lot of action. We spent ages working on it with our designer Rob Gow, so it’s great to take it out into the wild. I’ve been riding offpiste stuff outside Dyfi that I built when I was training for the EWS. It made me think about how we used to ride gnarly tracks when we were kids. Young riders coming through now get to ride at bike parks a lot more, but it’s definitely not as gnarly – it’ll be interesting to see what effect that has down the line.”

With the park’s uplift closed, both the digger and Atherton Bikes’ 150mm trail bike were out to play

Dan’s been using the lockdown to work on Dyfi Bike Park’s first red-graded trail

Variety’s the spice of life – MTB, MX, 4x4 and caterpillar tracks have all been on the menu