Cannock Chase MTB Guide: Follow The Dog & Monkey Trail, England

England's busiest trail centre packs a 10.8 km red loop and a 23 km technical extension into a Staffordshire forest two miles from a mainline railway station — an all-weather, lift-free ride that rewards the train more than the car.

By the IMPT Travel desk · Published 2026-05-30

The opening cobbles at Birches Valley are deceptive. Pitched at little more than a roll, they have spat off enough first-laps when wet that locals quietly call them the welcome tax. Beyond them, Follow The Dog opens into 10.8 kilometres of machine-cut and hand-built singletrack winding through a Staffordshire pine plantation that, by the metric of population catchment, is the most-ridden mountain-bike forest in England. Cannock Chase is not an alpine resort. It has no chairlift, no gondola and no top-station bowl of scree. What it has is engineered, all-weather red trail, a mainline railway two miles from the trailhead and a riding season that effectively never closes.

Follow The Dog: the red benchmark

Built by Chase Trails and Forestry England and opened in 2005, Follow The Dog is a red-graded 10.8 km (6.7 mile) loop with roughly 230 metres of climbing concentrated in one sustained drag. The riding is flow-forward rather than steep: tight wooded singletrack, medium berms, rock gardens, boardwalks and a sequence of named features — Twist and Shout, High Voltage, Son of Chainslapper and Snakes 'n' Adders — that have become quiet landmarks in British XC. Surfaces vary between loose stone, exposed roots and the occasional damp loam, and the trail's stone-armoured base is what allows it to ride through a wet Midlands winter when natural trails further north are closed for the season.

The Monkey Trail extension

For riders who finish the Dog with anything left, the Monkey Trail branches off as a 23 km red-graded extension carrying a handful of optional black-graded features — rock drops, step-ups, larger jumps and gap options that punch the loop into expert territory. The Monkey climbs steeper, twists tighter and exposes rougher hand-built sections than the Dog, with the combined Dog-plus-Monkey ride totalling around 370 metres of ascent. It is the trail by which proficient UK riders quietly measure their fitness.

Off-piste and skills

Beyond the waymarked network, an informal off-piste scene runs across Stile Cop and the surrounding woods, with steeper, rawer descents that are not maintained by Forestry England and not signed. Riders new to the Chase should stick to Follow The Dog and the Monkey, both of which start and finish at the Birches Valley Forest Centre (WS15 2UQ), where Cannock Chase Cycle Centre runs hire, demo bikes, workshop and a café.

How the network is structured

Cannock Chase functions as a self-pedal trail centre, not a lift-served bike park. There is no shuttle, no uplift day-ticket and no closed season. The two red loops share a common start and a common climb out of the valley, then diverge; both are ridden clockwise and signed throughout. Family and leisure riders have separate green and blue waymarked routes — Ladyhill, Fairoak and the Sherbrook Trail — which keep beginner traffic off the red singletrack. Trail status is published by Forestry England and updated when sections are closed for forestry operations.

Getting there: train beats car

Cannock Chase is one of the few European trail centres where the railway is genuinely the cleanest option. Rugeley Trent Valley and Rugeley Town stations sit roughly two miles from Birches Valley, served by West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern services. From London Euston, the journey runs around 1 hour 40 minutes via the West Coast Main Line and a change; from Birmingham New Street it is under 40 minutes direct. Manchester Piccadilly is around 1 hour 30 minutes with one change. Riders arriving by train can spin to the forest gates on quiet back lanes, making a car-free weekend genuinely workable — a meaningful sustainability win in a sport whose footprint is usually dominated by drive-to-trailhead miles.

Birmingham Airport (BHX) is the nearest international hub, around 45 minutes by road or a train change at New Street. Manchester (MAN) and East Midlands (EMA) are alternative arrivals.

Season and conditions

The Chase rides every month of the year. The engineered surface drains well, and the forest canopy moderates both summer heat and winter wind. April through September delivers the driest, fastest conditions; the cobble roll-in and the rock gardens become notably slick from October onwards, and winter laps reward mud tyres and patience rather than fresh enthusiasm. Spring and early autumn — mid-April to late May, and September — typically combine firm trail surfaces with quieter weekends, when the regional day-trip crowd thins out.

Where to stay

Rugeley and Cannock town centres provide the closest hotel beds, with Lichfield (a 25-minute drive east) offering more variety and a cathedral-town base for non-riding partners. Forest-edge cottages and a campsite at Tackeroo sit within pedalling distance of Birches Valley. Two to three nights is the typical visit: one day for Follow The Dog at lap pace, a second for the full Dog-plus-Monkey combination, and an optional third for skills, off-piste exploration or a rest-day ride on the leisure network.

Why it endures

Cannock Chase will not headline a World Cup. It has no podium history, no Crankworx, no EWS round. What it has is a 20-year-old red trail that has shaped a generation of British riders, a railway station within pedalling distance, and a forest that rides clean in February. For a weekend of red-grade UK singletrack reached without an aeroplane, the case is straightforward.

Full POV lap of Follow The Dog into the Monkey Trail extension, filmed in the Birches Valley forest.