FAYETTEVILLE - While it may not have horses (they were moved months ago), cows, pigs, or any barnyard animals for that matter, the new Arrowhead Bike Farm, located at 8263 Gatewood Rd., does offer cyclists in the New River Gorge a place to ride, refuel and relax.
"To me, a bike farm is a place where you can base your ride," said co-owner Adam Angelona.
"If you're a day user, you can come here and you have a place where you can wash your bike and clean up and ride from. I think a bike farm is just a place where you can come and there's trails, a campground, a bike shop and a little restaurant/bar area. It's that simple."
Angelona, a bike enthusiast who owned Company Bicycle in Charleston for about seven years, teamed up with Charleston Gazette-Mail Beers to You columnist and fellow rider Rich Ireland to open Arrowhead.
Angelona said the two would often get together for rides and - maybe more importantly - a post-ride beverage.
"We'd ride, and then we'd go get a beer, and then be like, 'What are you doing tomorrow?' and we'd ride and get a beer," Angelona laughed.
The two had been toying with the idea of a bike farm or something similar for a while, but they didn't decide to pursue it until they visited Pisgah National Forest and The Hub, a bike shop-outfitter-tavern combination in Asheville, North Carolina.
"We were talking about how we wish we could do this all the time and that we wished we had something like this," Angelona said. "That's when we said 'We've gotta do the bike farm.'"
Angelona and Ireland have spent the last six months fully renovating an old farmhouse and the surrounding 40 acres of land to make Arrowhead a "hub" that includes a bike shop, 1.5 miles of on-site trails that open into the Arrowhead Trail System, campsite ($12/head), shower-house and biergarten.
"You can ride from here, that's the key," Angelona said.
"When you leave the shop, that trail is right there. Eventually the trailhead will be off the deck. I'll be able to fit you up right here on the deck and then just shoot you off it. You can do 40, 60 miles from right here. You can stay here, you can camp here, you can eat here. It's a hub."
While it's free to actually ride at Arrowhead, Angelona said they ask riders to wear a helmet and check in. Those without a bike can rent one of the farm's fleet of Kona bikes. Prices range from $35 for a rental and $55 for a demo (a higher-end, more expensive bike).
"The coolest thing about mountain biking is that you do not have to buy a lift ticket," he said. "Once you buy the bike, you can ride. That's what we want to maintain."
In the future, probably next season, the bike farm should have some skills parks set up for those wanting to learn or test their abilities. There will also be a pump trail, a combination of a pump track and mountain bike trail.
"It's a place to learn skills with man-made features," Angelona said.
On-site, Arrowhead has a "WV-craft beer oriented biergarten" that will serve items like brats and pretzels.
"We're trying to make it real low-key," said Ireland. "We're not trying to be a full-service restaurant."
As for beer, they currently have four taps and other beers available in cans.
"We'll have whatever I can get local," Ireland said.
"We're making sure that we bring the real feel of a biergarten. On purpose we kept that German spelling. The German mentality, you know, bicycling and beer go together. Of course you know mountain biking and beer go together in our country, but in Germany it's always been that way. People make weekend rides. They call it trekking. They'll go out in the countryside and ride from one biergarten to another. There is a very high association with biking and biergartens, so we thought we'd do it."
Angelona and Ireland plan to have Arrowhead open this weekend through Bridge Day (Oct. 17) at the very least. "We'll see how it goes after that," Ireland said.
While plenty of area adventure companies try to branch out, providing rafting, rock climbing, cycling and other activities, Angelona said the plan for Arrowhead is to keep it specialized.
"We're not doing anything but one thing," Angelona said. "That's bikes, and we're doing it right."
Ireland added that there are plenty of opportunities for races, bike swaps and other related events.
"We think there's a lot of cool things happening in cycling for West Virginia and we think we're at the cusp of it," he said. "Not that we're trying to be, but we could wind up being a catalyst."
Posted hours are Monday to Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Visit www.arrowheadbikefarm.com, call 304-900-5501 or email info@ arrowheadbikefarm.com for more information.
Reach Dawn Nolan at dawn.nolan@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1230 or follow @DawnNolanWV on Twitter.