Cardinham Woods - First Ride

After all the recent hype around the new trails that were under construction down in Cornwall, MoreDirt thought it was about time to go and see what all the fuss was about.

The new trail network at Cardinham woods near Bodmin is only a smidge over an hour from the MoreDirt offices so we packed the van up and hit the road.

Location.

The location of Cardinham couldn't really be any better if it tried. Only 7 minutes from the A30/A38 junction just outside of Bodmin. For those of you not as local as us, the A30 is the only real road in and out of Cornwall.  This makes navigating to Cardinham a breeze, but come the middle of summer the traffic over Bodmin moor can be an absolute nightmare so that's something to bear in mind when planning a trip down south!

Cardinham Woods has been established as a hotspot for the Sunday strolling brigade and dog walkers for years, so consequently, it has a great bunch of facilities including an awesome café (The latte was to die for!), a good-sized car park which most importantly costs a very reasonable £3 for the entire day along, with a toilet block that was currently undergoing refurbishment.

The Trails.

The trails constructed at Cardinham currently consist of a 12km Blue loop called the "Bodmin Beast", with two additional Red sections of trail named "Hells Teeth" and "Dialled-in Dave" which are expected to add about 30 minutes onto the loop. Currently, the two red sections of trail weren't open for our trip but we could see they had made great progress with their development and looked like they could incorporate some seriously fast descents and steep climbs.

The Bodmin Beast starts with a short fire road climb before reaching the start of the singletrack. Throughout the whole loop there's a feeling that it was definitely designed to always keep you on your toes and looking ahead which consequently made for our first lap to feel like we weren't quite getting the flow of the trail and making the most of its full potential.

You will realise pretty soon on that you really have to put in some work on the pedals to get the most out of the trails. In return, your speed and enthusiasm will be rewarded by picking up a natural flow through hundreds of short sweeping turns interspersed with short sharp climbs as the trails carves its way across the steep hillside.

The climbs on the trails are not to be taken lightly and a bike with a short wheel base would certainly be your friend! After our first lap, we were struggling to understand quite why there was a need for so many extremely tight switchbacks throughout all the climbs but after another lap sorting out a technique where your feet didn't snag the front tyre, we were starting to get why they are in there and almost begin to enjoy ourselves!

The descents on the Bodmin Beast never give you that feeling like you can truly let go of the brakes and let it all hang out as you have a constant reminder of a pretty significant and large drop if you were stray from the side of the trail that I can only imagine would produce an outcome not to pretty!

The super loose "just finished" feeling was ever-present which also added to that hesitance with all the fresh surface that had been laid on the trails. In time this will fade as it is swept of by the thousands of passing wheels, but in the meantime it just adds to the fun!

In Summary.

Cardinham certainly seems to be an excellent facility and its fantastic to have trails of this standard this far south down in deepest darkest Cornwall, that will no doubt improve vastly with more riding and the opening on new sections of trail.

The most exciting part is the scope for even more incredibly great riding in this neck of the woods with planning granted for another trail centre just minutes down the road at Lanhydrock.

The future of Cornish mountain biking is looking bright!

Pack your bike… That family trip to the seaside doesn't seem like such a bad idea!

For more details check out www.1sw.org.uk, MoreDirt's Cardinham trail listing and the Cardinham Trail Riders Facebook page!