Reviews for Hamsterley Forest Mountain Bike Trails

Summary:
Good fun!

Review:
The skills area is fun but it is short and is over very quickly.
It is great for beginners though who want to improve their skills or just to have a bit of fun on.
However i went in the first place because of the skills area and it turned out that it was very short and not half as good and long as i thought it would be. so dont let the skills area sway your decision to wether you go to hamsterley or not.

Summary:
best bit of riding round here if you dont mind thinking for yourself.

Review:
ive been riding for years but dont consider myself to be particularly expert, that said i dont think that this route is very hard either, though it is fun to ride. i like a bit of xc so i usually head out into the moors for a bit and throw in some bits and pieces of the waymarked trails, often doing the first half of the black trail backwards to round things off. so i suppose what im saying is i dont think the black route is that great or difficult in itself but i dig hamsterly as a whole, it offers more variety and acreage than anything more local to me. if you live miles away its worth a visit but dont expect to be blown away by the waymarked trails, maybe stop off here on your way to scotland? :)

Summary:
Fantastic fun for everyone!

Review:
This is a real masterpiece of the trail builder's art, I took my kids here for the first time last week and I could hardly get them off it! Not only that, but it suits the hardened trail-heads too, it's as technical and as challenging as you want it to be! When we were there there was everyone from little kids with stabilisers to downhillers with body armour and full face helmets riding it! It really has everything and suits anyone! Ten out of ten!

Summary:
rooty on 1 part, muddy on another but its goot for bigginers i would think

Review:
i have been to 7 stanes that is realy good and chopwell but its short but sweet, hamsterly is great on black route but me and my dad went on a bike adventure and tested out kielder, chopwell, 7 stanes and dalby but the order we put them in for best was 1. 7 stanes
2. hamsterly black route
3. chopwell woods black and red (its short but its great
4. kielder black and red
5. dalby black and red (not realy good because u o downhill no jumps then u go up hill and they have jumps its stupid

Summary:
Rubbish

Review:
Maybe I expect too much from FC trail centres, maybe I've been to too many manicured trail centres that follow a format, but then, that is exactly the reason why I go there. I want something that I can't readily get on my local bridleways,I want berms, northshore, rockgardens, table top jumps, testing technical features etc etc. Once a month or so, I like to treat myself to something special.

If you've done the 7 Stanes, Dalby Forrest, Coed LLandegla etc etc and that's your ideal of a FC trail centre experience, then Hamsterley Black route is basically like going out on your local moors and woods. I'm sure alot of great work has been done on the Downhill, 4X and skills park, but I couldn't see much on this route. I think there was one berm and maybe a rock garden, but some features had been lost because there has been no management of what specific line people should take thru sections. So rather than being guided thru an obvious section, you end up trying to work out what is the correct line thru a sea of tyre marks going off in all directions and cutting corners. There is nothing really testing here, other than the roots, which test your patience.

It's a reasonable ride out if your local, but don't travel any distance for this route.