BikePark Wales has just opened a brand new skills area, packed with gaps, drops, skinnies and techie bits the idea is to mimic the features you’ll find on the trails themselves.

Called the Quarry Skills Area, BikePark Wales says it’s been built in response to rider feedback showing BPW customers wanted an efficient way of practising their skills. This includes jumps with tabletops on one side and gaps on the other, letting you build up confidence.

The scale of BPW’s Quarry Skills Area is impressive

Skills Zone need to know

• Jumps, drops, techie steeps and a tech climb, across 17 lines in 5 zones, in one acre of land
• Quarry Skills Area is located near the Popty Ping blue trail
• Designed and built at the request of riders
• Open now, with the exception of the jumps which need more time to dry

Last summer BikePark Wales promised a massive expansion, including 46 new trails, meaning this is just the start of a slew of news from the UK’s biggest bike park. We’ve ridden past the site of the Quarry Skills Area as it’s been built and it looks amazing in terms of scale and ambition. BPW has prioritised jumps and drops of course, something the park is famous for, but there is also a focus on technical terrain that gives you a real feeling of the stuff you’re about to ride.

Quarry Skills Area skills details

• Three jump lines – two blue (tables) and one red (gap)
• Three skinnies and three rollers
• One bue drops line, one red drops line, one black drops line
• Two red steeps/freeride, one black steeps/freeride, one pro steeps/freeride
• One tech climb

You won’t find the Quarry Skills Area near the car park though, or close to the pump track at the visitors centre. Instead it’s near the start of the blue-graded jump trail, Popty Ping. Presumably this is because the terrain is more suitable higher up the hill, and because there simply isn’t space for a skills area of this scale lower down.

Practice the table on rider’s right, before progressing to a gap jump with the exact same profile and length on the left

That means we have some amazing bedrock features to play with and build a really unique “Steeps” zone which is home to some amazing technical bedrock rolls and drops,” BPW says. “This is a very unique area, the likes of which you don’t often get to ride in the UK and the trail crew have been able to build something really special, we’ve even been able to sneak a pro-line in there!”

BikePark Wales Quarry Skills Area is now an invaluable resource

We’ll add in more detail after riding the new BikePark Wales Quarry Skills Area later this month. From the images though it looks like the kind of zone you’d want to spend a fair bit of time at as the features do seem to perfectly replicate what you’ll find on some of BikePark Wales’s best trails. In particular, the series of drops in quick succession that trail builders Duncan and Ian have built looks to mimic features I’d love to practice on trails like ACDC. If you don’t know the place this well though, never fear, we’ve got a complete guide to BikePark Wales, check it out before you ride.