Family day out at Bedgebury Forest, Kent

At the Tourism South East Awards, Bedgebury Forest and National Pinetum received the Tourism Excellence Award for Sports Tourism.  On the same day it  won the Medium-sized Tourism and Leisure Award at the West Kent Business Awards. Greentraveller's Catherine Mack headed down with family and bikes to see if it lived up to its ever-growing reputation...

If you Google ‘Bedgebury’ you’ll find a load of cool videos of skilled mountain bikers taking on the singletrack trails of one of South-East England’s most exciting forest enterprises. Bedgebury, with its two thousand acres of pine and broadleaf forest, managed by the Forestry Commission, describes itself pretty succinctly in its publicity material as “An adventure in a world of trees”. And YouTube amateur videos of bikers traversing the manufactured challenges of wooden see-saws and slippery logs must have done wonders to spread this message far and wide. 

Left: photo taken by Catherine Mack.

We were, however, joining the slightly more sedate Boden-clad family trail, much to the frustration of my two young boys who were all set to join the Lycra clad, and much cooler crowd,  ‘off piste’. With promises of lessons on one of  Bedgebury’s mountain biking courses next summer, they agreed to defer for a while, and I could breathe a maternal sigh of relief for another year. 

We headed down to Bedgebury, on the Kent/Sussex border, from London the day the clocks changed for winter, keen to stay in denial of darker days for just a while longer. We were rewarded with the most exquisite panoply of autumnal gorgeousness...

This was a welcome breath of the freshest of air, after an hour and a quarter’s drive from London, bike carrier stress, and then a queue to find a space in the car park, which was overflowing despite the season. We had looked into going by train, but it is thirty minutes’ cycle from the station - fine if you don’t have young children but having driven down that road, and seen the number of four wheel drives speeding along in search of a Kent Sunday carvery, I was glad that we decided not to take on the challenge. Perhaps a shuttle bus system for cyclists arriving by public transport might be an option for the future. The carbon footprint wasn’t helped by Bedgbury’s ice cream vans which sat pouring out diesel to keep their fridges going from morning until night, especially when it’s the first thing that greets you as you start and end your journey into nature. 

Being short of one adult bike at the moment, we hired one at the on-site hire shop, Quench.  They were very helpful and speedy, if a little pricey, especially if you are hiring more than one bike. £5 an hour for 1-4 hours or £25 for the day (+5 hours), with no reduction for children. Compared to bikes we hired in Devon  recently, which were £10.50/adults for the whole day, with reductions for kids. Or on the Isle of Wight where £25 got us a bike for the entire weekend. On top of the £7.50 Bedgebury car park fee, albeit supporting the maintenance of the forest, it is not a cheap day out. 

The bike was excellent, however, and the hourly rate gave us incentive to lash around the circuit in time for lunch, leaving the afternoon to explore the National Pinetum and Bedgebury’s famous wooden children’s play facilities. The first mile or two sorts out the men from the boys, as it is all uphill. Great for warming up, though, and for letting us know from the start that the Family Trail isn’t just a quick pootle around the park.  The forest started to creep inside our lungs with a wonderful aroma of mossy wood and dripping pine needles filling us with the desire to keep going. Family dynamics are interesting to study at this starting point of the trail, with some enthusiastically cheering each other on up the tough bits, and others feeling the strain just a little. I overheard one mother shout at her four year old, “Don’t be silly, of course you can do it, I’ve seen you cycle round Dulwich Park, for goodness sake!” The words ‘fish’ and ‘water’ came to mind, as this is no Dulwich, but a glorious swathe of forest, on some of the highest points of the High Weald designated Area of Outstanding Beauty. 

The crowds soon disappeared after the first mile or two, as everyone took on their own pace, or perhaps the braver ones were tempted by the red signs onto the Mountain Bike Trail. I certainly had to drag my boys back from it a couple of times. The Family Trail is looped, with an option for a quicker exit after 2 miles, where the Dulwich domestic may have ended in tears, as I never saw them again. 

But plenty kept going around the nearly 6 mile long trail, from one teeny on her first pink two wheeler, to grandparents on days out with their little ones. We soared round at a pace, with a promise of bacon sandwiches at the café, which was just as well, as the last lap is another killer of a hill. The sandwiches were great (the café is impressively good value), and the play trail exceeded all expectations for my seven year old, with wooden climbing frames, sculptures, the lot. However, with GoApe's customers soaring up ahead in the canopy, my ten year old had his eye on the big boys, and felt a bit short changed by mere see-saws. The compensation, another circuit of the forest, this time in a race with me, with the loser buying ice cream. Not hard to guess who ended up out of pocket. 

To get to Bedgebury by train, the nearest station is Etchingham, travelling with Southeastern. It's about a 30 minute cycle ride up the A21 (there is a footpath along the edge of the northbound carriageway). Other options are to take a train to Tunbridge Wells, Frant and Wadhurst (on the Hastings line) and Staplehurst and Marden (on the Ashford line) and cycle from there. For more details see National Rail. 

For more information on cycling in The Weald, see Sustrans' website and also Visit Kent's website.  

Quench, the bike hire company at Bedgebury, also offer a series of courses for beginners in Mountain Biking in the summer months, including for women-only and children.