FABIAN BAREL, DH LEGEND
Mtb’s movers and shakers select their favourite places to ride
Fabien Barel is an mtb tour de force. A three-time world downhill champion, he retired from DH to take up enduro, and has helped Canyon develop its bikes since 2013
This French trail is called Chemin des Feuilles, which means Trail of Leaves. It’s pretty unique to me because of its diversity and length. You start at the summit, which is above 1,000m, all the way down to 300m, so it’s quite a drop. We start in a very deep and dark forest, with leaves and loamy dirt, that’s super-fun to ride. You can commit, you can see quite far, but then there are tight sections too. Then you head into a pedalling transfer that brings you into this very typical grey earth, a section where there are jumps, techie steep stuff that afterwards brings you into another section where we have send! So in one trail we can find rocks, send, dirt and epic views. Towards the bottom we have a long transfer that’s very open in the valley; you can see all the way down to the sea and it brings out quite some emotion. It shows you the landscape here that you can ride too.
The ride is probably a good 45 minutes down, with two main transfers and very epic scenery, while the diversity of riding is absolutely unique. Except for some occasional times of the year, you can ride this trail all year round, that’s also the beauty of it. This is for me a super trail.
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It’s pretty unique to me because of its diversity and length. You start at the summit, which is above 1,000m, all the way down to 300m