How To Hunt Out The Best Bike Trails Near You

But how can you go about finding the best bits? Routesmith and cycling journalist Katherine Moore shares her top tips for exploring local.

For me, nothing beats the feeling of discovering a sublime section of trail on your patch. A linking singletrack that cuts off a slice of busy road, a steady doubletrack climb that makes light work of the hills, or a spectacular balcony road that offers views for miles around. These all offer up the kind of moments that we crave when we’re out on the bike, but how to find them?

There’s a real science in finding these sections of off-road tracks for some riders, and for others it’s a more haphazard affair. You might be a route master who loves to show others the way, or you might be happier to follow in the tyre tracks of your pals. Here are four ways to find new trails near you, no matter what your favoured approach is.

Follow your nose

We’ll start by going old school. Forget your cycling computer, maps or GPX files, this is the kind of riding that’s best on your own or with a trusted friend who doesn't have an aversion to trying out something new.

Try heading out on your bike and just see where your mood takes you. Keep your head up and look out for bridleway and byway signs, cycleways, tracks and trails that lead you off of your known routes.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You might find a mud-infested dead end track overgrown with brambles, but equally you might just find that dream gravel or singletrack that you’ve been pining for. Don’t beat yourself up if it’s not great – it’s just as helpful to know where not to head as it is to know where’s good when it comes to route planning further down the line.

One word of caution with this method though, is that you do need to make sure where you’re riding is legal. Signposted routes are a safe bet (though sometimes bridleways aren’t signed, with fingerposts damaged or removed), but it’s worth double checking before you speed off down what might be a private farm track or footpath. In the UK, the OS Maps app is handy for checking, or you can get an Ordnance Survey mapping layer for free on Bing Maps using the desktop site.

Digital mapping and apps

There are a whole host of digital mapping apps and tools to help you find the best off-road routes near you. If you haven’t already, check out our Complete Guide to Cycle Route Planners for more about our recommended options.

While paper maps are also a great way of highlighting rights of way in a given area, digital maps and route planning apps offer so much more information than can be fitted on a single (admittedly rather large) piece of paper.

As most route planning apps are based off of OpenStreetMap, a community-generated digital map of the world, sections of trails can be tagged with much more information, such as terrain, mountain biking difficulty and direction.

Apps build on this further, with some allowing users to create points of interest which can help lead you to more great viewpoints or trail features. For example, komoot’s sport-specific highlights can help lead you to amazing mountain biking trails or gravel sections, and the Trail View feature is amazing for giving you insight as to what to expect.

Some route planners can also show you the popularity of a trail, for example with Strava’s global heatmap function. This can help you see what other riders are choosing to factor into their rides – or not!

If you’re unsure about a trail when you’re looking online, a few tricks to help you include toggling the satellite map layer so you can see if it runs through a field or forest, and using Google Street View to either see the trail or where it joins other ways or roads at either end.

If you’re less confident with route planning, then some apps, like komoot, offer ready-made routes near you based on what other riders are enjoying and your chosen sport type for you to try.

Join a local group or club

There’s nothing quite like harvesting the hard-earned knowledge of other local riders when it comes to finding out where’s best to ride. This can take the trial and error out of exploring and lead you to some of the best riding around.

Whether you’re joining an informal group or more traditional club, you’re bound to meet folks who know the area well and can either offer some route planning advice or take you along with them to show you the way.

Even in an area that you think you know really well, you’d be surprised what someone else might be able to show you that you’ve only ever overlooked or missed before.

Take on a local event

For some, entering yourself into a local event might seem like a strange idea. All too often we centre events around far-flung trips and big goals, but actually you can gain a lot from smaller-scale local gravel rides and races. Now I don’t just mean getting to know some new trails; you could even end up making new riding pals too!

Whether it’s a ride put on by a local club, a sportive, a mountain bike event that you fancy testing out drop bars at or vice versa, a race or an audax, you’re bound to learn something new about where to ride.