Colour v's B&W

I dedicate this post Colour v's B&W, its a topic some are very passionate about and take it a bit too seriously. I have contacts on Flickr who only shoot B&W and others that never do and its always colour but is one better really better than the other ?
 There are countless groups for both yet the largest are for B&W yet there are far more groups for colour and even more that let you upload both. Its one of photography's never ending battles like Cannon v Nikon or Prime lens v Telephoto they all have very little between them its just a matter of choice and personal opinion.
 I personally love both and use them frequently when processing images, in general i start to process a shot in colour and then try a b&w conversion just to see how it looks, sometimes i can work on an image and think nothing of it colour yet a quick change to b&w and it can transform the shot to something i love, yet some shots i think will be best in b&w and its in colour they blow me away.
Here's and example of a shot i was processing recently it was taken in Knockmany forest and is of some old Douglas fir trees with a stream running through.
I started my processing as normal changing bits and bobs and doing a bit of dodging and burning and got to a point that i thought looked good.

This shot was about to get uploaded when something i stopped and thought to myself id not looked at it in b&w, so went back into Lightroom and converted it to b&w.

I instantly loved what i saw, i still like the colour one but i think the b&w has more depth and contrast and so the trees pop more but again its just personal preference, some of you will think the colour one is by far the nicer of the two but without me doing both you wouldn't have had a choice and nether would i .
So what do i think colour or b&w ? for me they go hand in hand in a good processing system and could save a shot that maybe doesn't work in one from sitting redundant filling up your pc's hard drive and giving it a new lease of life by processing it in the other.