Gisburn Forest is one of the best mountain biking spots in the North-West and has had loads of money thrown at it recently to improve the trails.
Looking on an OS map; whilst hardly mountainous, it looked like the forest had some promise for some downhill sections and I just hoped that the best trails would be rideable on a board.
Unfortunately, the best trails are all situated on a the “Red Route” which runs throughout the forest – with the “Black Route” which has the killer berms (named Hully Gully) at the very top (see Gisburn Forest Trail guide). I say unfortunately because the car park is right at the bottom of the forest (marked on the Freeride NW map) and the “Red Route” is approx 20km long…so you aren’t going to be exploring on foot.
View Freeride NW in a larger map
I took my bike out and had a bit of an explore. Most of the forest is made up of your typical firetrack and there are trails running off into the forest. Down those trails are a mixture of all sorts of singletrack; super-tight downhills, northshore style courses, elevated platforms above streams, rocky ascents etc. It’s a whole mixed bag.
The firetracks however were very rideable – they varied from solid rock, to mini boulders, to gravel and everything in between. Most were relatively short however and the longest downhill stretch I found was only approx 0.5 miles (there was no phone signal out there so no 3G for the GPS).
I didn’t manage to get all the way up to the “Black Route” because it turns out I am incredibly unfit when it comes to riding 20km of singletrack – so my current summary is:
Its an awesome place for mountain biking but for boarding it is a bit out of the way and what is rideable isn’t that exciting. It took over an hour for me to get there from Preston – in which time I could have been in the south Lakes, which offers much more.
I’ll post an update when I’ve explored the forest more – but I’m not holding my breath.
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