Faobam is where we ride. It's the local spot — the trails just outside Clonmel that I've been on more times than I could count. Most clips on TikTok are filmed here. Most sessions with friends happen here. It's home turf.
It's not a trail centre. There's no car park with a map on a board, no café, no green-blue-red signage. It's singletrack in the hills above Clonmel — the kind of trail that a group of riders have shaped over years of use. You learn where the good lines are. You learn which sections get slick after rain and which ones drain properly. You learn it over time and then it becomes yours.
You learn a local trail over time and then it becomes yours.
The terrain is what you'd expect from Tipperary — rolling, with sections of loose soil over hard ground that punishes lazy braking. There are rooty stretches where you have to keep the bike moving or the front washes out. There are fast, open sections where you can actually open it up. And there are the bits where you're working your way through tight trees, picking lines on the move, which is honestly the most fun kind of riding there is.
Most of the drops on the trail are natural — rock features, exposed roots, small ledges rather than built wooden structures. That's fine. That's actually better for learning on a hardtail because you have to read the ground before you commit. You can't just hammer into everything and let the suspension sort it out.
The section the group talk about most is a drop into a left-hand turn at the bottom of one of the steeper descents. The drop isn't massive but you're landing and immediately turning, so the timing matters. a friend cleaned it first. Then a friend. I was third which I'm not happy about but I got there. a friend still rolls it off the side which is his own business.
After school on a Tuesday, maybe 5pm, bikes out, an hour on trail before the light goes — that's the standard session. Not every session needs to be a big trip. Sometimes it's just this, and it's exactly what you need.
It's not as dramatic as The Gap or BPI. It's not going to make a rider's bucket list. But it's where I actually learned to ride — not just ride, but read terrain, make decisions fast, get comfortable with being slightly out of control and trusting the bike. That all happened here over hundreds of sessions before I ever rode a proper trail centre.
That's what a local trail does. It teaches you without you noticing.