RED & BLACK TRAILS - HAMSTERLEY
With red- and black-graded trail loops, a riverside family-friendly blue run and, of course, Danny Hart’s Descend Bike Park, Hamsterley attracts a wide and varied crowd. The forest itself covers a massive 2,000 hectares, and if you look out from the top of the hill you’ll see the pine trees disappearing over the horizon. A good way to see plenty of the forest is to take on both XC trails in one big hit. Forming a figure-of-eight loop, with the red route to the south-west and the black route to the north-east, you can always ride one and bail out halfway. Not that you’ll want to, though, because both have a number of standout sections.
As the harder of the two, the black has more of an emphasis on natural tech, with ‘Pikes Teeth’ pinballing between drystone walls and root-laced tree gaps, and ‘Root 666’ climbing out nearly onto the moors before dropping you back into the woods on another rugged and root-infested bit of trail. Across on the red, recent additions to the loop are the volunteer-dug ‘Poulty’s Last Blast’ and ‘K-Line’, which link into the already long and flowing ‘Transmission’. This creates one long continuous section, broken up by a few punchy climbs.
Depending on where you parked, it’s either a cruise back to the car or one last effort up the hill to the bike park. From here you can finish what you started down ‘Section 13’ and ‘Special K’, or, as is easily done, stop for a play on the DH tracks. Just remember that if you do want to ride the bike park, you’ll need to pay a few quid at the cabin and put on your full-face helmet.