A 12Km/8 Mile cycle trail that travels around the beautiful Alton Water reservoir along a mixture of trail surfaces that are rideable by practically any cycle.
This beautiful cycling trail in the East of Suffolk makes it’s way around the very scenic Alton Water Park reservoir. Although some of the surfaces are dirt trail, they are still predominantly smooth and can be ridden on practically any cycle.
On my first visit to the park, one or two of my counterparts were using road bikes and had very little trouble throughout. That being said, the ride is more comfortable on something with wider tyres such as a hybrid or MTB so worth bearing in mind if you are planning to head over and enjoy this amazing route.
An easy and fully signed Green Graded 5 Mile/8 Km Forest Trail loop that’s suitable for cyclists of all ages and abilities, beginning and ending at High LodgeVisitor Centre.
The Shepherd Trail is a flat and easy going forest trail through the beautiful High Lodge area of Thetford Forest. Predominantly making use of the fire roads through the area, this trail is suitable for cyclists of all ages and abilities with no need for any particular type of cycle.
Trail surfaces are firm throughout the year, even in the winter seasons and the scenery can be truly beautiful. This is an ideal trail for a family cycle ride, even with younger children and there’s event a convenient shortcut about half way round if you want to take things easy.
The Lime Burner Trail is a red graded and fully signposted 9 mile/15Km route through the heart of Thetford Forest, starting and ending at High Lodge.
Certainly towards the easier end of the spectrum for Red Graded trails, the Lime Burner can still certainly provide some fun riding through it’s mixture of trails and named features. Among these are four missable ‘black’ sections that can be undertaken to switch things up a little. Again, compared to other trails in the country, these black graded sections are on the easier end of the spectrum, but no less fun for that.
The trail itself provides a nice mix of surfaces and scenery, with tightly packed woodland with natural forest ground to hard packed maintained trails with berms and rollovers. This, combined with it’s lower difficulty makes it a great trail to use as a training ride for honing skills, ready to take on it’s bigger brothers and sisters in other areas of the country.
Next week, from 1st August, I will be heading over to Cumbria to venture out into the hills for a well earned couple of weeks R&R and will not be returning to work until Monday 15th August.
I’m going to be visiting places like this…
During that time I will be mostly unreachable and will not be checking emails on a regular basis. Over the next week or so, I will be doing my level best to tie up any loose ends and make sure that any preparations are in place for anything taking place during my absence.
And doing lots of this…
I will respond to any enquiries or emails on my return and look forward to speaking with you then.
If you’re interested in seeing what I get up to while away, keep an eye on my Twitter and Instagram for updates.
A gathering of the lesser spotted Suffolk Road Safety and Cycling Instructors at Alton Water Park.
With the Covid pandemic having caused so much disruption over the last couple years, and given the very mobile nature of our roles, it’s been quite some time since the Bikeability Instructor Team from Suffolk Roadsafe have been able to properly get together and catch up.
Forcing ourselves away from the cake to go for that ride 🙂
However, we managed to break that spell today and those of us who had no prior engagements were able to meet up at Alton Water to chat, enjoy a (well earned) piece of cake and go for a fantastic group ride around this beautiful venue.
We were also joined by our county representative from Cycling UK and were able to have a very welcome discussion about some other possibilities for getting involved further in community cycling.
It was a fantastic day out and a real pleasure to see everyone. Can’t wait until the next one!
I can honestly say that I had a fabulous couple of days on The South Downs last weekend.
Arriving in Graffham in the early part of Saturday afternoon to set camp and have a quiet evening before our busy Sunday showed what a truly beautiful place this area of the UK is.
Whilst (thankfully) the temperatures didn’t make it up to those we’ve experienced over the last couple of days, we weren’t long into the route before we were starting to feel the heat as the sun started to warm everything up .
At the finish (and much warmer than I look!)
My Ride Track
The View From Chanctonbury Ring – Highest point of the route
Although the temperature wasn’t perfect, the lovely clear skies did provide some stunning views and the South Downs really have a lot to offer with beautiful open scenery and delightful woodlands.
The course itself is a mixture of road, bridleway and narrow track with much of it following the South Downs Way.
No matter where we were on the route, the trail surfaces were all very rideable with no nasty surprises, making the the climbs relatively easy and the descents a great deal of fun.
At the Findon Rest Stop – 20KM Point
I’d like to offer a huge thank you to St Barnabas House and Chestnut Tree House for putting so much effort into organising this great event and Marmalade MTB for the huge amount of effort they put into checking and signing the route in the few days leading up to the event itself.
Click the logos to find out more about these organisations
Next year? I think I’m up for 60KM 😁
Support Us
Event though the event is over, if you’d like to support me and these great charities, there’s still time to head on over to my JustGiving page and make a small donation to help us out.
From £1 to £50, every penny counts and will be very gratefully received!
When I posted back in June that I’d be in the South Downs, taking part in the Hit The Downs MTB event to raise much needed funds for St Barnabas House and Chestnut Tree House in West Sussex, it seemed like such a long way off.
Just a mere few weeks later and the weekend has arrived!
After finishing up with providing some Race Timing Services to a great event tonight (more on that later), I’ll be loading up the van and then getting some well earned sleep, ready to head down South early tomorrow morning so that I can make a weekend of it.
The Challenge
I’m going to be riding 30Km across the South Downs, starting at 9am on Sunday taking us along some of the beautiful roads, trails and bridleways in this stunning countryside.
If you’d like to support me and these great charities, there’s still time to head on over to my JustGiving page and make a small donation to help us out.
From £1 to £50, every penny counts and will be very gratefully received!
With the School Summer Holidays just around the corner, it’s that time of year where keeping your little tykes occupied for a full six weeks can, at times, prove to be a challenging prospect.
So why not get out in the fresh air, grab some exercise and help your youngsters develop their cycling abilities with Forestry England and their excellent new Forest Rider packs!
Primarily aimed at 7-12 year olds, these packs contain a host of resources to help hone your younglings off-road cycling skills and a log book to keep track of their rides and progress.
Skills cards, activities, stickers and a pretty cool neck buff are all included, as well as the chance to solve a puzzle and enter into a competition to win a host of awesome prizes!
Cool Forest Rider Activities, Log Book & Stickers
Instructive Forest Rider Skills Cards
Awesome Forest Rider Neck Buff
The Forest Rider Packs cost just £5 (+ £1.50 Postage if you order them online) and are available at selected Forestry England Sites or from the Forestry England website (link below)
Upon further investigation (thank you YouTube) it seems the front wheel broke on a kerb impact, so The Q decided to totally re-engineer the rear of the bike.
Regardless of the inspiration behind the thought process, I can’t deny that it’s a creative, unusual and pretty interesting. I suspect it’s probably also quite weird to ride – especially when trying to corner – and I wonder just how much of a concern uneven ground might be.
Anyhow, check out the video below to see how The Q managed to put this together.
Last weekend, I was delighted to attend the first Suffolk Cycling Open Day of 2022, hosted by The Way To Go Suffolk and very well supported by We Are Cycling UK.
I attended the day with one of my colleagues on behalf of Suffolk Roadsafe to have a chat or provide advice on Family Cycling and other related subjects. We were also available to provide some additional assistance for the Led Ride into Bury St. Edmunds Town Centre towards the end of the day.
As well as The Way To Go Suffolk, We Are Cycling UK and Suffolk Roadsafe, there were a number of other teams, agencies and companies available at the event.
Bury St. Edmunds Rickshaw were present, along with their new EcoCarriers service, offering free rides on their awesome rickshaw cycles, while Bury St. Edmunds Police were doing free postcode marking to help prevent cycle theft and make it easier to get bikes returned to their rightful owners should the worst happen.
Outspoken Training were providing mechanical checks and services and had their bicycle powered scalextric so that we could have a fun (if slightly unusual) race with each other.
There was also a fantastic range of e-bikes available to try from local companies Eezybike and Spoke and Motor, which a great many of us took the opportunity to have a go on around the event area.
After we’d all had our fill of checking out some of the awesome e-bikes, cycles and activities on offer, it was time for our Led Ride into Bury St. Edmunds town centre to have a very enjoyable cup of tea and a scone.
We Are Cycling UK‘s Suffolk Representative, Nik did a fantastic job in making use of the local cycling infrastructure to lead the ride with the two of us from Suffolk Roadsafe providing some additional assistance to keep us all together and raise visibility to other road users where needed.
Thank you to everyone who was involved in making the day so enjoyable and I hope to see some of you at future events like this!
