Walna Scar
This beast of a ride starts from the village of Torver, there are many places to park free, we usually park in front of the pub/deli as we tend to find we end up in there after the ride. It’s very biker friendly.
Leave the car park and head up the main road (away from Coniston) until you get to a right turn with a very steep climb, don’t worry you’ll spot it in good time. This relentless road climb winds it’s way up over the common and eventually brings you a to gated right hand turn into the woods. Take this and descend down the fire trail until you come to right turn. There is a small trail that runs parallel with the fire track but it’s generally boggy and not really worth it.
A few yards after you’ve turned right you’ll see a left hand drop in, take that and basically follow that through a succession of mini trails interjected by fire trails. You’ll then hit a small windy road that climbs up to cottage with a gate on the right. If you’re doing the shorter route then you turn right here which takes you up the left hand side of the valley, across the tops and brings you out half way up the Walna Scar Road buy the old quarry buildings. If you’re doing the longer route with the full descent down to Seathwaite turn left and head out onto the fells before turning left again for some superb undulating single track that eventually brings you onto the Seathwaite descent, this is a good technical, fast descent and will put a smile on your face.
That smile is soon to knocked off though as you now have the daunting task of hike-a-biking up Walna Scar road which, unless you’re superman/woman, is only really rideable when you get to the quarry buildings (mentioned before as this is where the short route will bring you to).
Ride (or carry) to the summit then you’ve got an amazing descent down towards Coniston, again super fast, technical in parts and a lot of fun. Watch out for a cheeky right hand turn above Torver which will bring you down a super little piece of single track, through the quarry and finally joins a small road which will nicely bring you back to your car, otherwise you’ll descent the trail all the way to Coniston and have quite a dull road ride back to Torver.
