Product Description

"Mountain Biking Trail Centres" is the only comprehensive guide to the UK's purpose-built, off-road mountain biking trails. This guide features thousands of kilometres of singletrack, cross country, downhill, freeride and bike park riding at 67 centres across England, Scotland and Wales.Included are classics such as Dalby, Coed y Brenin and Glentress, lesser-known centres such as Balblair and Aston Hill, together with the latest developments including Whinlatter, Rossendale (Adrenaline Gateway) and many new trails at existing centres. Complete with detailed information on the facilities, the number of trails, the length, style and difficulty of trails, local info, useful contacts and bike shops all complemented with clear directions and Sat Nav coordinates.The stunning design is complemented with action photography from some of the country's best mountain biking photographers, including Wig Worland, Dan Barham, Seb Rogers and Mountain Bike Rider's staff photographers.Vertebrate Publishing (VP), the imprint of Vertebrate Graphics (VG), is one of a new breed of independent publishers, dedicated to producing the very best outdoor leisure titles. VP have critically acclaimed and bestselling titles covering a range of leisure activities, including; mountain biking, cycling, rock climbing, hillwalking and others.VP have published or produced many of the UK's bestselling cycling and outdoor titles, including "Dark Peak Mountain Biking", the "MLTUK's Hill Walking", "Rock Climbing and Winter Skills" series, peak district: bouldering and "Getting to Grips with GPS".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12241 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Review
"Far and away the best Peak guide we've come across." BIKEmagic.com on Dark Peak Mountain Biking "I'd say the best Mountain Bike Guide I've seen to date." Planetfear.com on Yorkshire Dales Mountain Biking - The South Dales "Overall, there's tons to admire about this book, which easily sets a new benchmark in quality guidebook presentation." CLIMB Magazine on peak district: climbing"

About the Author
In the course of writing this book Tom Fenton racked up over 1,500km of riding in one month and became possibly the only person in the world to have ridden every waymarked singletrack trail in England, Scotland and Wales. Now, after a quick break in order to write this guide and let his knees recover, he's back to riding bikes as often as he possibly can. Tom is also the author of Cycling in the Peak District and has edited several of Vertebrate's bestselling mountain biking titles. An experienced mountain biker, Tom has ridden all over the UK and Europe and recently completed the demanding MegaAvalanche in the French Alps.

Customer Reviews

The best book ever written
If you ride bikes in the UK you simply can't afford to live without this book. Fenton makes guidebooks a joy to read and expertly leads you through the numerous trail centres now established around the UK. He has missed one, which is a real shame, but that aside I don't think this book can be faulted. Give it large!

Excellent and informative, but very XC-oriented
An excellent book, and fantastic inspiration for planning weekends riding around the UK. Be aware that it's very XC-oriented, and while it mentions DH, freeride, and other types of riding, they're not what the author concentrated on.

Having said that, you get a very good idea of what is there to ride, so it would suit anyone looking for XC rides, all-mountain, enduro style, or similar.

An unsurprisingly excellent guidebook.
Given the existing product catalogue of Vertebrate Publishing, with titles such as Dark Peak Mountain Biking, White Peak Mountain Biking and also several titles for MLTUK to assist their ML, SPA and MIA schemes, it comes as no surprise that this latest guide is excellent.

The ideal use of the guide is to pour over it during the week, or on a Friday evening, to plan a cheeky trip for an afternoon, or even when you find yourself in an unfamiliar part of the country, wondering if there is any worthwhile riding nearby.

The guidebook comes in a slightly larger format than the previous ones, reflecting that this guide need never leave the house (or the car). The extra space is well-utilised with lots of excellent photographs that try to portray the character of each trail centre, rather than filling it with maps that are largely unnecessary for riding at these way-marked centres. Each area contains a summary of the facilities available, the suitability for beginners, intermediates and advanced riders, where the nearest bike shop is and useful websites for more information. The regional nature of trail centre development has conspired to make this book necessary for those who like to travel around a bit to get their riding 'fix', as there is no single website that contains all this information.

It is the breadth of the work contained here that makes it really worthwhile. For those new to the sport, the more developed centres such as Afan, Coed y Brenin, Glentress and Dalby are well-covered. It is the more esoteric gems, such as Esher, Arran and Pitfichie that widen the books appeal to riders who are seeking new challenges within the UK.