Trail options for a day at Afan

Stevo_666

OK, so a couple of us are off to Afan for a day next Monday and we're trying to figure what route(s) to do.

Penhydd is closed, so I reckon the options are:
- Skyline: pretty much an all day job - as in might be tricky to fit anything else in as well.
- 2 laps of White's Level
- 2 laps of The Wall, or
- W2 (White's + The Wall).

What do you reckon?

cooldad

I prefer Whites so would be tempted by 2 laps of that. W2 misses out some bits, so if you want to do both I would do the Wall then drive up to Whites.
Whites just seems to have twice as much fun stuff, and the climb is quite technical too, so can be fun as well. The final bit of the descent is smile making.
The Wall is a fun down, but seems much shorter, and the climb is a lot of fireroad, so boring.

Or drive a bit further and do Gorlech at Brechfa. Best of the lot. You could do Whites and Gorlech in a day quite easily.

IMHO of course.

miss notax

I agree - Whites and Brechfa (Gorlech trail) would be my vote

In my experience Skyline isn't an all day trail though, I think it took us about 3 1/2 hours, so you could easilyfit in an afternoon blast of Whites after that.

Stevo_666

Thanks for that.

I think Brechfa is worth a separate day on its own - fancy doing Gorlech and Raven which is probably a day's worth.

cooldad

True. The blue? at Brechfa is also supposed to be good fun, easy cruise but I've never done it.

It's all fun though, and has to be better than the peaks of Kent aka Bedgebury.

Stevo_666

cooldad wrote:

True. The blue? at Brechfa is also supposed to be good fun, easy cruise but I've never done it.

It's all fun though, and has to be better than the peaks of Kent aka Bedgebury.

Also heard that about the Brechfa Blue - wonder whether you could do all 3 in a day?

Agree - Bedgebury is good (more so for night rides IMO), but Wales is partly why I've bought a runabout car for my time off. Have time, will travel...

Stevo_666

miss notax wrote:

In my experience Skyline isn't an all day trail though, I think it took us about 3 1/2 hours, so you could easilyfit in an afternoon blast of Whites after that.

If my legs could handle it

mikef2

You can get the best of both worlds....overlay the whites map onto skyline first.
When you get to the top of the main climb (& whiz around the black run and back to the top again) DO NOT go off on Whites but head along Skyline......if you look at the map after a few sections there is a short cut down a stream bed that puts you on the finishing bit of Skyline....you can follow this right down to the start, or, at the top of the first section on whites climb, where the forrest road is, turn right to get back onto whites route to complete. That way you get a third/half of Skyline AND whites. If you check out the trail maps it fairly obvious where the shortcut is (it used to be marked as 'shortcut' on the map, dunno if it still is).
Enjoy.

mikef2

..actually..it might be turn left at the forest road on the way down not turn right? Can't remember...but its on the trail map.........

bartimaeus

mikef2 wrote:

When you get to the top of the main climb (& whiz around the black run and back to the top again) DO NOT go off on Whites but head along Skyline..... Enjoy.

Agreed - Whites, and then Whites climb to Skyline descent was very enjoyable. I can send you a gpx if you PM your email address.

Stevo_666

Thanks for the tips. folks

Bartimaeus, you have PM.

welshkev

Stevo 666 wrote:

Thanks for the tips. folks

Bartimaeus, you have PM.

you've forgotten the july trail:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/afan-july-trail

Thewaylander

cooldad wrote:

I prefer Whites so would be tempted by 2 laps of that. W2 misses out some bits, so if you want to do both I would do the Wall then drive up to Whites.
Whites just seems to have twice as much fun stuff, and the climb is quite technical too, so can be fun as well. The final bit of the descent is smile making.
The Wall is a fun down, but seems much shorter, and the climb is a lot of fireroad, so boring.

Or drive a bit further and do Gorlech at Brechfa. Best of the lot. You could do Whites and Gorlech in a day quite easily.

IMHO of course.

What bits does W2 miss out? none i think :S


In my opinion Whites is a junk trail with pretty dull decents that daudle there way down, i prefer the wall decents, But i'd be on Skyline or July probably July twice as the end decent is by far the best at the centre

Stevo_666

That one didn't show up on any of my googling - wonder why? Anyhow, thanks Kev!

welshkev

Stevo 666 wrote:

That one didn't show up on any of my googling - wonder why? Anyhow, thanks Kev!

i don't think it's an 'official' trail, just one that guys have made up to get the best bits 8)

Thewaylander

Basically it started of as local hand written sign someone mnicknamed July, and it became and unofficial trail that is one of the prefered routes for Afan for locals.

Its now labelled as short cut 1 in case your wondereing

Stevo_666

Thewaylander wrote:

In my opinion Whites is a junk trail with pretty dull decents that daudle there way down, i prefer the wall decents,

Waylander, after doing White's I'm with you on your view of it.

That extra pint the night before probably didn't help on the climb, but I kept waiting for this great descent that never came. A lot of the surface is quite 'jittery' and towards the end it just got irritating.

And to cap it off, the flow of the whole thing gets badly broken up by what must have been 20-odd of those f*****g annoying narrow gates that are designed to stop motcrossers from using the trail. How many do they need FFS?

As you can tell I didn't get on with White's Next time I go back that way I'll take Kevs advice and try the Wall, though I reckon I'll do Brechfa first.

Thewaylander

Woop! someone else with taste,

And do July mate thats fairly good fun

AMcK

Bit late to the party on this, but what the hell....

Skyline and another trail are doable in a day - we did Skyline and Whites Level a couple of weeks back, in glorious weather.

BUT - having ridden Skyline (mainly to tick it off the list), I'd be taking the shortcut route suggested above to do the end sections - the best part of that trail for me.

I don't really get on with the final White's Level descent either (Darkside?) but mainly because I'm a bit crap at the rock steps. Much prefer the end sections of Skyline.

And when you're heading back home to Kent (assuming you're doing an overnight stop) I'd recommend a stop off at Cwmcarn and ride the Twrch trail. Can get there mid morning, ride that and be back in Kent by 4-5pm.

njee20

Personal really innit, you can do Skyline and another trail, but plenty of people would be wiped out after that.

The climb on the Wall is dire, but I'm inclined to agree on the descents, I don't really think White's is that amazing. Ideally you'd be able to do some sort of combination of the two, climbing White's then going down the Wall. They should combine the two, with a linking piece along the ridge. They could call it White Wall or maybe W2... :-)

Brechfa is very good, the green/blue are good fun, not technical, but very fast and flowing. The black's not vastly technical either, definitely recommend a trip there.

Thewaylander

Yeh but most are not gonna ride 40k just to do a few good sections of decent that the wall has. so they can keep the slightly less boring climb from whites, particuarly since they have virtually concreted over any slightly challenging or interesting bits of it

My temptation would be ride up whites/skyline, do the black, do Windy point loop back up, chug across to the top of skylines last decent and woop down it, its all the best bits of that side done while ignoring the awful chaff of the rest of the trail the i can go across the bottom and ride the wall if i fancy

This is my advice for people with simmilar taste in riding like stevo to me

Stevo_666

Thewaylander wrote:

This is my advice for people with simmilar taste in riding like stevo to me

Taste but probably not ability :oops: but that what I've bought the 'bruiser' for, to get myself sorted on some of the bigger stuff while I have the time off to venture outside of the flatlands. Mind you, a day like yesterday did have me wondering whether it's worth doing 400 mile round trips, hopefully I'll have better luck next time. My riding buddy seemed to like it and annoyingly was a fair bit faster :evil:

@Njee - agree, Brechfa is next on the hit list, sounds good fun. Saw a bit of it last year but had my 8 yr old daughter with me so couldn't get off the green

@AMcK - Yep, did a stopover but the night before. Went via Cwmcarn on Sunday to meet a mate who had just finished an uplift day there, then went on to the B&B. They're not far apart so that's do-able.

TrailGuru

Hi guys

Very interesting to hear so many different options on a small range of trails. Shows how riders prefer different flavours of singletrack. Everyone I speak to rates Whites Level as a favourite. Personally, I love Skyline!!

Cheers, happy riding!

kerpoise

I'll just point out that the Black, Blue and Green at Brechfa are closed until Feburary as I understand it.

The Gorlech is still open, and well worth the visit, but depends on whether 20km is worth the extra drive for you.

One option would be to do the Gorlech, and pop up to Cwm Rhaydr for a couple of laps of the course (it's very short, but awesome fun).

Stevo_666

kerpoise wrote:

I'll just point out that the Black, Blue and Green at Brechfa are closed until Feburary as I understand it.

Bugger, that's my November trip farked then :evil: Closed until 1st December according to this:
http://mbwales.com/en/content/cms/bases/brechfa/brechfa.aspx

welshkev

TrailGuru wrote:

Hi guys

Very interesting to hear so many different options on a small range of trails. Shows how riders prefer different flavours of singletrack. Everyone I speak to rates Whites Level as a favourite. Personally, I love Skyline!!

Cheers, happy riding!

possibly because people who ride it come from somewhere flat like cambridge or somewhere and people who ride different places more often realise it's not that great?

just a theory....and no offence to anyone who lives in cambridge