Warning: Very long rambling description of my two days out. Look at the pictures for a summary.
So I finally plucked up the courage to go to a trail centre, but not before I found a happy solution to being worried about holding faster folks up and possibly getting stick about being electric. My answer... to go out to remote mid Wales to a mtb trail in a forest in the middle of nowhere! Destination : Coed Trallwym (west of Builth Wells, in the southern portion of the Cambrian Mountains).
Sure enough, when I turned up the car park was deserted and I had the place all to myself. Sadly the cafe was closed but the owner was outside doing some painting. The forest is privately owned and you pay £2 to park and ride the trails. There's a short green, one blue, red and black. Reading internet reviews people think the harder ones are somewhat overgraded. The guy was very friendly and helpful, opening up the toilet for me specially and pointing me in the right direction to start.
I thought green would be too wimpy so I had a go at the blue. It starts with a stream splash. Which I got down to alright but couldn't get right on either of my 2 attempts, much to my frustration. Not a good start. But it was nothing to dwell on as the trail was immediately beautiful, winding gently downhill though lush moss covered ground with a stream running by the side. Then came the slog up forestry tracks. This was made easy by the KTM.
One of the forestry climbs in a beautiful setting
The climb led to a large area that had been cut in the fairly recent past. I always feel that freshly felled forest looks a bit like a nuclear wasteland and not is as attractive to pass through than full forest. The trail wove in zigzags through the stumpy devastation with a grand view over the valley. There were a couple of points that had me thinking 'eek!', a drop off that I didn't like the angle of the landing and a sharp fairly steep switchback that would have you falling into a stream gulley if you didn't make it! But these things aside, I enjoyed the faster flowing parts of the trail and when it descended back into the mature trees again.
I decided that riding the trail once was enough since my plan had been to charge my battery in the cafe over some lunch, but that plan was off the menu with the cafe closed so I wanted to make sure the bike had plenty of pep for a ride in the surrounding area. With hindsight I should have stuck to my original idea of riding on the roads and taking a bridleway to Llyn Brianne Reservoir, but I got talked into a different plan by the cafe owner. He said I should be on the mountains since I had a mountain bike, that the views up there were glorious and that the bridleway was likely to be muddy. So off I went and as I departed he promised to phone mountain rescue if I wasn't back by dusk.
It was this journey that taught me some fundamental lessons in basic mountain biking...
Number one was that if you attempt a stream crossing and don't make it then you will put your foot down wherever you come to a unfortunate halt. ie. in the middle of a stream! I was wearing waterproof shoes, but even these become ineffective when the water floods over the top and right inside. This was the first flooded shoe incident.
A moody shot of the stream that did for my shoe. It only looks small!
Dusting off my wounded pride I proceeded to follow the forest roads north into the mountains proper. The route I had intended to follow headed across the mountaintop towards the southern end of the Elan reservoirs. I would then cut east to the highest point and come down through another area of forest before heading back along the road. I hadn't thought to load maps to my phone so I only had an OS map to navigate by.
Quite rapidly the tone was set for the mountaintop ride and that tone was BOG! Blooming annoying sucky bog! Lesson number two - I can't ride uphill through bog and that if you try and ride through proper bog on the flat then you come to a slurpy stop in the thick of it and have to put your foot down... in the bog! Flooded shoe number two!
The safety of the forestry left behind - the bog begins!
This was the kind of place that requires walking boots in the summer and was about as dry as it was likely to get. Wrestling the bike through the muck, trying not to get even more bog in my shoes was exhausting, even with the help of my walk assistance button. I ploughed on. Next challenge was a very steep sided stream which was like an ice skating rink of algae on smooth rock when I tried to cross it. I did this part very gingerly indeed!
Phew, I'm across the stream! Now just more bog to worry about.
By now I'm really knackered. I bought this electric bike to make things easier, but it's anything but easy. Off in the far distance I can see the lumps of the cairns I want to pass. But they seem very far away!
I'm trying to get to those two imperceptibly small humps in the distance.
I start dropping height and I'm looking for a left hand turn towards the summit. But the bridleway becomes really indistinct as it crosses a particularly wide bog with steps of peat and I'm not even sure I'm on the path anymore, let alone where the course change I need to take is. I learned the hard way on the Sugarloaf that following what could be a sheep track is a fool's errand as it will peter out leaving you stranded.
With two hours spent already and a lot of ground to cover, I'm seriously worried that making it back before dusk may prove impossible if I'm forced to backtrack if I go further on. I don't want the mountain rescue looking for me! So with a heavy heart I must admit defeat, turn around and face all the boggy and stream related obstacles I've just fought so hard to cross!
To be continued...
So I finally plucked up the courage to go to a trail centre, but not before I found a happy solution to being worried about holding faster folks up and possibly getting stick about being electric. My answer... to go out to remote mid Wales to a mtb trail in a forest in the middle of nowhere! Destination : Coed Trallwym (west of Builth Wells, in the southern portion of the Cambrian Mountains).
Sure enough, when I turned up the car park was deserted and I had the place all to myself. Sadly the cafe was closed but the owner was outside doing some painting. The forest is privately owned and you pay £2 to park and ride the trails. There's a short green, one blue, red and black. Reading internet reviews people think the harder ones are somewhat overgraded. The guy was very friendly and helpful, opening up the toilet for me specially and pointing me in the right direction to start.
I thought green would be too wimpy so I had a go at the blue. It starts with a stream splash. Which I got down to alright but couldn't get right on either of my 2 attempts, much to my frustration. Not a good start. But it was nothing to dwell on as the trail was immediately beautiful, winding gently downhill though lush moss covered ground with a stream running by the side. Then came the slog up forestry tracks. This was made easy by the KTM.
One of the forestry climbs in a beautiful setting
The climb led to a large area that had been cut in the fairly recent past. I always feel that freshly felled forest looks a bit like a nuclear wasteland and not is as attractive to pass through than full forest. The trail wove in zigzags through the stumpy devastation with a grand view over the valley. There were a couple of points that had me thinking 'eek!', a drop off that I didn't like the angle of the landing and a sharp fairly steep switchback that would have you falling into a stream gulley if you didn't make it! But these things aside, I enjoyed the faster flowing parts of the trail and when it descended back into the mature trees again.
I decided that riding the trail once was enough since my plan had been to charge my battery in the cafe over some lunch, but that plan was off the menu with the cafe closed so I wanted to make sure the bike had plenty of pep for a ride in the surrounding area. With hindsight I should have stuck to my original idea of riding on the roads and taking a bridleway to Llyn Brianne Reservoir, but I got talked into a different plan by the cafe owner. He said I should be on the mountains since I had a mountain bike, that the views up there were glorious and that the bridleway was likely to be muddy. So off I went and as I departed he promised to phone mountain rescue if I wasn't back by dusk.
It was this journey that taught me some fundamental lessons in basic mountain biking...
Number one was that if you attempt a stream crossing and don't make it then you will put your foot down wherever you come to a unfortunate halt. ie. in the middle of a stream! I was wearing waterproof shoes, but even these become ineffective when the water floods over the top and right inside. This was the first flooded shoe incident.
A moody shot of the stream that did for my shoe. It only looks small!
Dusting off my wounded pride I proceeded to follow the forest roads north into the mountains proper. The route I had intended to follow headed across the mountaintop towards the southern end of the Elan reservoirs. I would then cut east to the highest point and come down through another area of forest before heading back along the road. I hadn't thought to load maps to my phone so I only had an OS map to navigate by.
Quite rapidly the tone was set for the mountaintop ride and that tone was BOG! Blooming annoying sucky bog! Lesson number two - I can't ride uphill through bog and that if you try and ride through proper bog on the flat then you come to a slurpy stop in the thick of it and have to put your foot down... in the bog! Flooded shoe number two!
The safety of the forestry left behind - the bog begins!
This was the kind of place that requires walking boots in the summer and was about as dry as it was likely to get. Wrestling the bike through the muck, trying not to get even more bog in my shoes was exhausting, even with the help of my walk assistance button. I ploughed on. Next challenge was a very steep sided stream which was like an ice skating rink of algae on smooth rock when I tried to cross it. I did this part very gingerly indeed!
Phew, I'm across the stream! Now just more bog to worry about.
By now I'm really knackered. I bought this electric bike to make things easier, but it's anything but easy. Off in the far distance I can see the lumps of the cairns I want to pass. But they seem very far away!
I'm trying to get to those two imperceptibly small humps in the distance.
I start dropping height and I'm looking for a left hand turn towards the summit. But the bridleway becomes really indistinct as it crosses a particularly wide bog with steps of peat and I'm not even sure I'm on the path anymore, let alone where the course change I need to take is. I learned the hard way on the Sugarloaf that following what could be a sheep track is a fool's errand as it will peter out leaving you stranded.
With two hours spent already and a lot of ground to cover, I'm seriously worried that making it back before dusk may prove impossible if I'm forced to backtrack if I go further on. I don't want the mountain rescue looking for me! So with a heavy heart I must admit defeat, turn around and face all the boggy and stream related obstacles I've just fought so hard to cross!
To be continued...
