Dalby Forest Red Route Route Comments

Dalby Forest is my local trail spot so I ride the routes around there quite regularly. All I can say is you need to ride this route. Magnificent trail design coupled with a great area make for a brilliant day's riding. As mentioned in previous comments the red can be technical in places, mainly consisting of very rocky sections, log drops and steep downhill sections. Bear in mind most of the bigger stuff can be avoided, such as the 'bomb holes', which are an absolute blast. There are some punishing climbs around the route, particularly around the Crosscliff area (black route country). All I can say is don't let them put you off, because the decents make it worth every ounce of energy you burn. If you have a decent amount of bike control and gear up to a punishing few hours there is no reason not to try this route, and the new trail mapping makes it easy to swap out sections for green if you don't fancy the whole 20-odd miles. Good luck!

Went on this route mid 2008, three of us, none of us regular riders, none of us very fit and all on out £350 hard tail mountain bikes, mine 9 years old!! Anyway what an absolutely brilliant day, I would say we are confident riders, balanced and able to throw our bikes around according to the requirements of the track, or if we weren’t at the start we most certainly were by the time we had finished. The weather was good so that was a good start, we started at the visitor centre and went strait up the winding hill, at this point the least fit of us three was about to go strait down and wait in the car for us two to finish! After much convincing he decided to carry on. The course is brilliant, very hard and extremely tiring but very rewarding, there are some tricky bits and many exciting bits but you will laugh your way round it, like we did. As it’s a long track we took it easy on the climbs as to not waste precious energy that we were lacking anyway. A mistake we made was getting carried away on the tract with the jumps halfway round. Anyway, I think as long as you’re confident on your bike and have basic balance skills and helmet you will be alright on the course, if you don’t have all three and are unfit give it a miss!! The last few miles were terrible, instead of enjoying the good downhill sections and amazing scenery we were just hanging onto our bikes for dear life, with cramped up hands and legs hoping not to fall off and dreaming of the finishing line!! Can’t wait for April for my holidays so we can go through it all again! Forgot to mention the laughs we had flying past some blokes kitted out with the most expensive stuff and bikes walking over a long rocky stage, also a man asking if any of us had a suspension pump or something, and the blank looks he got in return because we didn’t have a clue what he was on about, brilliant!

If you are looking for something else to ride in the North York Moors area, see one of my other sites: www.mtb-routes.co.uk/northyorkmoors Plenty of routes on the moors, and all well documented.

Just got back from 1st real foray into serious off-road riding on Dalby's Red Route. WOW! Fantastic! Only a month ago a group of us completed a 215 mile trek over 4 days, averaging between 50-60 miles a day. So we figured we'd be fine doing a measly 23 miles! WRONG! Killer! Do not attempt this on anything less than a half decent hardtail (you can hire decent spec Kona bikes from the visitor centre 'Purple Mountain' they're called). The downhill sections are mental & dont get a mention in the route details. Big drops, fast sections, jumps & rather inconvenient rocks & tree stumps right where you'd like to take the corner! We got lost very early on after the 1st real downhill section as the signs were non-existent, but managed to pick the route up again. We had many falls, some fast, some daft slow ones when we couldn't clip out our SPDs in time, but haven't laughed so much in ages! We will deffo be coming back (when the limbs stop aching!) & I know one mate will ensure he has some proper knobblies on next time. Looking for similar rides to this, so ideas anyone? Ideally no further north than this as we travelled from Lincolnshire. Oh forgot to say, it had lashed it down for 3 days b4 we went & the trail was surpisingly dry, just the odd puddle here n there, so dont let the weather put you off!!! GO 4 IT!