Revolution Bike Park - Trail Guide

For the first of MoreDirt's Trail Guides check out all the info on Revolution Bike Park in Llangynog!

Revolution Bike park is a bit of a gem in the middle of the North Wales wilderness. A downhill riders dream with 110 acres of privately owned pine woodland with some great technical downhill tracks nestled between the trees over the 300m of vertical drop.

It makes for quite some venue…

Location

Revolution bikepark is situated in an old slate quarry on the outskirts of the town Llangynog.

The quarry is the same as that made famous by the Athertons which actually lies within the boundaries of the bikepark itself. It's strictly off limits to ride as a member of the public but if you’ve seen the video it’s well worth going and checking out the size of the jumps… Its absolutely mindblowing.

How could we write a feature on Revolution without including this video...

Facilities –

• Multiple Landrover uplift up with scratch free trailers for 10 riders at a time.
• Lunchtime BBQ
• Rain Shelter
• 4 amazing trails and still growing

What’s there.

The Revolution bike park team offer an uplift service with a quicker turnaround than your body will be able to manage by the end of the day and probably more than your hands will be able to hold on for! It runs from 10am through until 4pm in the afternoon!

As a little comparison It takes Gee Atherton 2 minutes 40 to make it down “the far side” double black trail at world cup DH pace.

I would of guessed that the uplift landrover wouldn’t be far behind him on the return journey with something like 3 or 4 minutes to get back down to the bottom again.

And if your not Gee Atherton… It’ll take you a considerable amount of time longer than that….

Located in the shelter at the bottom of the trails on the car park is a serving hatch that has a BBQ going during the lunch break for food aswell as some other confectionary items on sale. Llangynog could be described as remote… There’s no where else to source food from for some considerable distance so remember your packed lunch or some money to buy some at lunchtime!

The Trails

At the moment the Bikepark consists of 4 separate trails that share the same lower slopes as make your approach back to the car park.

Ranging from Red through to a welsh graded Double Black. (I stress welsh grades here as they tend to be a bit more extreme than you’ll find over the border in England.)

The Red freeride line is a typical A line style jump line with tabletops and drops that could be ridden by anyone with some experience of that kind of terrain. Currently this trail doesn’t go all the way to the bottom of the hill and you have to rejoin “Ghetto track” but plans are in the pipeline for this to be table’s and berms top to bottom. I can’t think of anything better!

The Ghetto track is graded red and is the “tamest” of the downhill tracks on offer at Revolution. It’s loamy underfoot with grip for days in the turns when it’s dry. The tracks not overly technical but thanks to the topography of the land it’s still very steep. It makes a great introduction to riding downhill at Revolution!

The Main line is graded black and is logically the next step up in difficulty from the other 2 tracks. More of what you could call a proper UK downhill track! The mainline is rooty at the same time as being a little more slick than the ghetto track. It shares the same finishing segment as the other trails so be careful as you meet the junction!

Finally, “The far side” is funnily enough located on the far side of the woods. It’s graded double black and is slightly longer than the other trails but not by much. It’s very technical with steep chutes, roots and large drops littered throughout. There’s no chicken lines here so if that doesn’t sound like your kinda thing I would give it a miss!

Best of all… The uplift drops you within about 30m of the start of all 4 trails. What’s better than that!

Who’s it good for…

To make the most of Revolution bikepark you are going to need to be confident at riding technical downhill trails and probably of tackled terrain similar to this before. A good level of fitness and stamina would be advisable otherwise your going to be feeling it in your hands and arms by the afternoon!

Hop onboard wth Angus during his first run testing the Maxim bikes Maya!

Bike set up

A downhill bike would be preferable but you would definitely get away with the new breed of slack 160mm enduro race bikes if you were confident and didn’t mind things getting a bit wild from time to time!

Tyre choice? An intermediate in the dry like Schwalbe’s Muddy Mary or the Maxxis Minion f would be perfect but when things get wet a spike would be preferencial!

Make a weekend of it?

If your looking to make a weekend of your visit to North Wales you are spoilt for choice when it comes to riding local to the park with Coed Llandegla, Coed-y-Brenin and Antur Stiniog all within the near vicinity it’s well worth making a weekend visit to North Wales! You can find details on these and loads more on our North Wales trails database…

Need somewhere to stay? You can find a few of our suggestions in our North Wales accommodation database…

You can find out even more about Revolution Bike park and leave a review over on the Revolution Bikepark trail page...

For more info check out www.revolutionbikepark.co.uk

Have you ridden at Revolution bikepark? Let us know what you think!