Longridge Fell – The Test Track

Longride Fell (unsurprisingly enough…) is located just outside Longridge in Lancs. It’s a hill in the Bowland Forest and well known for being a pretty good mountainbiking spot near to Preston.

Its not an awesome site for mountainboarding as the forest roads are relatively short (0.5-1.0 miles) and the forest itself has a bad tendency for being waterlogged if its rained anytime in the past 6 months… BUT its only 30 mins from my house, making it the closest spot I’ve found so far that has some reliable trails. Oh and there is parking at the bottom of both sides of the Fell – so it isn’t too much of a trek up.

Because of that, I call this place my test track and will pop up there if I want to test out some changes to my rig, or if I only have a couple of hours to kill.

There are 3 main trails I have found that I stick to:

View Freeride NW in a larger map

West Trail

This is a short half mile section of forest road with a couple of corners. It’s good for a beginner to try out downhill riding as the conditions are very similar to the lakes (but smaller). A run will last less than a minute, but it only takes 5 mins to walk back up…

Watch out for walkers and dogs on the 90 degree right-hander...its a blind corner and there always seems to be someone in the track that you don’t see until the last minute – even when its quiet.

It is possible to get the road to run all the way from the top of the Fell which add maybe another quarter mile, but its pretty flat and you need the wind going the right way to get any momentum. Its easier to start from the tree stump (you’ll know it when you see it).

East Trail

Another short trail – but this is FUN! It is about half a mile of forest road, but this starts with a little roll in, into 7 very quick, very tight, technical corners (some real dog-legs) and then straight down to the car park. It’s kind of like Dave, but there aren’t any straights between corners.

This is another good trail to use for practicing corners – which I really need to do…my heel sides aren’t that great :(

Middle Trail

There are tons of little trails on the Fell that a lot of mountainbikers use. Unfortunately it is pine forest, so the trees tend to be very close together and the ground very soft from pine needles. This means that a lot of the biking trails aren’t great for boards.

One of the ones that isn’t too bad is the trail going straight from the trig point at the top of the Fell down to the farm in the middle. It is a pretty wide break in the trees with loads of roots and stumps to dodge and jump.