Newbies heading for Brecon Beacons/South Wales, any advice?

timmys

My girlfriend and I are off for a week staying in the Brecon Beacons. We are both pretty new to mountain biking and this will be our first 'biking' holiday. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations of routes to definitely do or avoid in the region. I have the pack of routes from the Brecon Beacons tourist people and have the appropriate OS maps on the way. (Links to GPS files would be much appreciated though!)

To vary things a bit I also fancy heading to one or more of the south Wales Trail centres (Afan/Glyncrrwg/Cwmcarn), but all the trails seem to be at least reds. Which would be the easiest trail(s) to tackle do you reckon? We don't mind walking round overly technical bits, and we are both reasonably fit, but things like massive near-vertical drops beside the path are what I would like to avoid!

therealboyjones

I don't know all the trails that well but would advise that you pick a route that you can shorten if necessary. As they're trail centres, you won't face anything that falls into the category "unrideable by normal humans" but obviously if you pick a massive loop, it's a long way to get back once you're halfway round.

Afan offers a good variation in terms of the length of the trails and the technicality of them. There's one that's about 18km that's pretty single-tracky and friendly. Should take about 2 hours to get round at a low/moderate pace. If you like it, you can hit a longer loop the following day! If you're reasonably fit, and chances are you're fitter than me, you should be fine.

Remember to take a first aid kit just in case, a mobile, plenty to drink and plenty of snacks!! And have fun!

therealboyjones

This one in fact:

http://www.mbwales.com/en/content/cms/C ... nhydd.aspx

timmys

Cool, thanks for the advice. I think that one (Penhydd) was the one I thought was probably the best bet based on something I had read previously.

therealboyjones

Just as a comparison, I did the Marin trail in Wales as almost a complete novice on my unmodified rockhopper and apart from being tired at the end (I think it's about 25km so 3 hours), I found it a great experience and it really kick-started my passion for riding. Didn't have to get off to push or slide down on my arse at any point and it was a red route. As long as you steer clear of DH tracks, you'll be fine. Promise.


Famous last words........

joshtp

if your new to biking iant recomend Brechfa enough, it has a black and red trail, which are both quite hard for beginers, but the green and blue routes are great! normaly green and blue are forrest roads and no more, but at brechfa they are out and out trails, loads of awsome singletrack thats perfect for beginers and a blast for pro's too. defenatly worth a look, if you dont enjoy it, then i'll eat my shoes. Go there, NOW!

timmys

joshtp/mbukman wrote:

if your new to biking iant recomend Brechfa enough, it has a black and red trail, which are both quite hard for beginers, but the green and blue routes are great! normaly green and blue are forrest roads and no more, but at brechfa they are out and out trails, loads of awsome singletrack thats perfect for beginers and a blast for pro's too. defenatly worth a look, if you dont enjoy it, then i'll eat my shoes. Go there, NOW!

Thanks, that looks like a great idea. I hadn't spotted Brechfa before!

iajo

Ive only been going mtbing for about a month and have been doing the talybont forest route from the beacons pack. Parking is easy and the route is varied. The brinore section is littered with rocks and is good fun. Most others sections are on forest roads and trails so pretty easy. The hardest thing is the climbs, they are steep and can be up to 2.5km long. Ive had to push a few times but im not particularly fit. There are also three or four different ways to go. You can take main roads as short cuts back to the car or ride the smaller forest trails to lengthen and increase difficulty. They are all on the map. Its also quite sheltered from the wind so great in all weathers and its clearly defined even in bad visability so would be hard to get lost on!

timmys

iajo wrote:

Ive only been going mtbing for about a month and have been doing the talybont forest route from the beacons pack. Parking is easy and the route is varied. The brinore section is littered with rocks and is good fun. Most others sections are on forest roads and trails so pretty easy. The hardest thing is the climbs, they are steep and can be up to 2.5km long. Ive had to push a few times but im not particularly fit. There are also three or four different ways to go. You can take main roads as short cuts back to the car or ride the smaller forest trails to lengthen and increase difficulty. They are all on the map. Its also quite sheltered from the wind so great in all weathers and its clearly defined even in bad visability so would be hard to get lost on!

Sounds good! Really looking forward to it - hope the weather holds for next week!

Stu T

Brechfa all the way but be aware no cafe there so take grub

craker

+1 for afan, nice scenery, can be a bit of a slog but the downhills aren't as fast and technical as Cwmcarn. Cwmcarn's ace btw, have a go at it if you fancy the challenge.

If you're more into cross country riding the Taff trail cuts through the Brecons (I spose some of it is on those routes you can download), but there are nice loops to be had from north of Merthyr to talybont reservoir.

Also check out Crickhowell - I did the Crickhowell red a couple of years ago (25 miles or so) right into the heart of the Black Mountains. It's a tough ride though.

timmys

Thanks all for your help. We arrived in the Becons Saturday afternoon and did the Talybont Forest Blue route yesterday and are planning to head to Brechfa for the Green+Blue trail today.

joshtp

what did you think of the green and blue at brechfa? did you like it? or will i be eating some smelly footwear? hope you had a good trip, and are now officially converted to mtb-ing!

timmys

joshtp/mbukman wrote:

what did you think of the green and blue at brechfa? did you like it? or will i be eating some smelly footwear? hope you had a good trip, and are now officially converted to mtb-ing!

You were bang on, can't thank you enough! Brechfa was the highlight of our trip, we even ended up going back there at the end of the week on out last day which we had originally intended to be just for travelling back to London!


If anyone's interested here's a quick run-down of our week:

Sunday - Talybont Blue XC route
Nice route, very rocky in places where the tracks have been washed away.

Monday - Brechfa Green + Blue
Awesome! We both really enjoyed it. Only slight trouble was it pissed it down with rain right when we reached the top of the blue section which made the blue descent rather slippery as there is lots of slate about (also bear in mind this was our first trip to a trail centre of any kind, and therefore our first experience of any kind of man-made single track!). I think our tyres had far too air in them which didn't help. Had a bit of a play around on the end of the black run (I assume that's what it is) near the car park which was fun.

Tuesday - Afan - Penhydd Red
Well I enjoyed myself but my girlfriend wasn't such a fan of the step up to a red route! She found the Hidden Valley section in particular too much for her, she's not a fan of very narrow singletrack yet, particularly if they are rocky/rooty with a bit of a drop at the side. In the end she ended up bailing out at the end of the Dead Sheep Gully section and heading back to the car park via the main road. I tried to carry on to the end but I think I must have missed a route marker (I let her take the map!), as after crossing the stream at the end of the Argoed section as I never saw any arrow pointing off the forest road and ended back at the Visitor Centre very quickly.

Wednesday - Day off from biking!

Thursday - Sennybridge Blue & Usk Reservoir (Green) XC routes
The blue route was good fun with a good mixture of roads, rocky tracks, muddy tracks and grass, but I don't think I've ever open and closed so many gates in such a short period of time in my life!

Friday - Brechfa Green + Blue (again)
We had originally planned just to head back to London on the Friday but couldn't resist another trip to Brechfa, Even better the second time round with a little more confidence and more appropriate tyre pressures. Both times we were at Brechfa we got talking to people in the car park who were experienced bikers and both of them said that they pretty much prefer the Green/Blue as you can go so fast on it compared to the Red/Black!


So the next step is find some more confidence inspiring Green/Blue routes elsewhere in the UK for the girlfriend that are actually fun and not just forest roads (any ideas?). She's also interested in doing some kind of training course to get her confidence up which sounds like a good idea.

joshtp

thats good, glad you had a nice time. brechfa is awesome, just recently got my cousin into mtb-ing, took him there and he loved it, it really is the perfect place for beginers, and as you mentioned, those in the know, prefer it to the black, and even some of the ones at afan, due to its all out flowing speed. anyway, glad you had a good trip!