Category: Sheffield Bike Trails

Wharncliffe Woods and Greno Woods sit on opposite sides of the hills near Grenoside, just north of Sheffield. There’s a car park right at the top with access to both woods.

Steel City DH – Greno Woods

There’s a couple of lines in Greno Woods, but the map above follows the Steel City DH – pretty fun, fast a bit rocky, probably would grade it ‘easy’ red. It’s a shame its not longer, and a bit annoying to start at the top as you have the slog up the bridleway to finish – although if you like practice the same lines over to get faster, then this is a perfect place for it. The signs at the entrance to the woods don’t show where the route is, but if you ride a couple of hundred metres along, there is a marker post showing the start of the bike track (although not labelled as Steel City DH). No real navigation needed!

Bit of XC, Peatys Wall Line, Wharncliffe Woods

On the other side of the hill, back through the car park is Wharncliffe Woods, which is a bit of a different beast. It’s bigger than Greno Woods with multiple paths and bridleways all through it, including the Trans Pennine Trail. On the positive side, there’s some really good riding and a decent amount of downhill tracks very close to the city, and you could take a few loops around to try the numerous lines.

I attempted to do a loop including the longest red route singletracks, called ‘Bit of XC’, ‘Peaty’s Wall line’ and ‘Fast Track Wharncliffe’ and back up the bridleway using the map from trailforks. On the downsides, there’s very little in the way of markings – I got lost and went along a footpath at first looking for a ‘Bit of XC’, which is actually pretty close to the bridleway – pretty fun red route! Then at the start of ‘Peatys Wall Line’, (yes it does run along a wall), there is a marker saying no bikes, footpath only… very confusing. The wall line is good in places, but its quite boggy and there quite a few huge rocks mixed in with routes, so you’d need to be a fit and technical rider (I had to push a good chunk). Navigating was a bit easier at this point – there’s a few paint spots on the trees which (maybe?) indicated the rough direction. Finally, the fast track Wharncliffe is a lot of fun with some good singletrack, but it mostly runs underneath the electricity pylons so loses points for scenic value!

I don’t mind doing some navigating on a longer ride through the Peaks, but found it a bit frustrating that there were no route markers in Wharncliffe Woods – it could be easily be turned into something as good as the other UK forestry commission trail centres with some investment.

Conclusion

Good for an short ~1 hour mountain biking session especially if you you like downhill riding on technical features and have the time to get to know the woods. Grade would be red with black in places. Less good for a one-off ride or if you prefer XC riding.

Map – Blue Steel

Map – Cooking on Gas

Review

These two short tracks (1km / 5 min) are in a small section of woodland near Ringinglow village, and in a great location next to Houndkirk Road (bridleway from the bottom of the woods to Fox House pub), so they are a great addition at the start or end of a Peak District Ride. Both start relatively close to each other at the top of the woods, you can either access them from the bridleway and gate at the top, or by pedalling up through the woods from the car park at the bottom – the woods is criss-crossed with tracks, but these too are specifically marked for bikes only (the way up is mixed-use).

Blue Steel is probably a red route with lots of jumps where you can get some air, steep berms and it’s really fast flowing from one section to the next. Cooking on Gas is probably rated blue and has the similar features but it’s been designed so you can’t gain too much speed, so its a safer for the beginner, but it’s a little boring for me.

Conclusion

I regularly ride this way into the Peak District, and I’ve ridden Blue Steel countless times – I wish it was longer – well worth a visit!

There’s now three bike tracks in Sheffield to complement the mega off road trails you can find just outside the city in the Peak District. I’m riding and reviewing them all – my opinion as a XC mountain biker (ad sometimes road cyclist) might be different from your experience!

Map

 

Review

Parkwood Springs is location about a mile out of the city centre set in a parkland. It’s easy to access with a car park, but at 10am on a Saturday morning the car park was locked which was a bit odd. Having parked in the few spaces outside one of the gates, I unloaded the bike and headed into the park.

The first thing I noticed was that the initial signage wasn’t obvious, and in a couple of other places it wasn’t as obvious as it could be which was the bike track and which were the footpaths – a small thing but could be dangerous for pedestrian and bikers. Some areas did have markers of which section of the bike track you were up to. After eventually getting on the right trail, it was a blast, there’s a short climb to the top of the park which then swoops down some concreted paved berms which I guess will make it great for being an all weather track.

There were a a couple of optional sections but neither were particularly difficult riding. After heading further down there were some nice fast sections with some opportunity to jump if you get enough speed up, and a few technical sections over some rocks.

The trail comes down to a view looking over towards the west of the city.

The second half is generally is climbing back up some switchback but pretty quick and enjoyable. Finally there’s a section along the edge of the woods by the playing fields before returning to the car park, past the paved pump track.

It was only a couple of kilometers, so I took another run round the track to try the other optional sections.

Conclusion

Short and sweet, great fun for a quick ride if you live nearby, and want to practice this kind of riding but I probably wouldn’t go back, despite only being 2 or 3 miles from my house. Probably between blue and red in terms of technicality.