Just a short bike ride from central Bristol and easily accessed from the M5 motorway, the trails at Ashton Court and Leigh Woods are short and sweet but are well worth a lap or two if you’re visiting the area already or just have a half-day to use up.
There’s not much height to play with, but the trails are fast and flowing, stand up well in all weathers and offer plenty of fun to novice and experienced riders alike. It’s all pretty pedally, so riding a long-travel full suspension enduro or trail bike might get a bit tiresome but the trails are great fun on a hardtail.
The best place to park is at the Ashton Court Golf Course which has toilets, a cafe, a bike shop with hire and other amenities, but there’s also free parking slightly further away at the Leigh Woods Forestry car park.
The two waymarked trails are divided by the main road that runs between Leigh Woods and Ashton Court, but it’s easy enough to join them together in a figure of eight loop to maximise your riding time – doing multiple laps is also possible to get the lines you might have missed the first time around.
It’s also possible to join up both trails to the jump spot at Ashton Hill Plantation (or Belmont as it’s also known) via some bridleways if you fancy adding in some serious air time to the mix. It’s worth pointing out that Belmont is a no-go in the wet – it’s seriously slippy clay and riding it will be both awful and do damage to the volunteer-maintained trails. The same applies to the off-piste trails found in Leigh Woods, most of which are much more technical to begin with and very sketchy in the wet.
