MBSwindon North Wales Trip August 2010

This was a four day trip to North Wales.
Google map of routes with links to more information..

Friday 27th Aug 2010

Most people arrived at the Llyn Gwynan camp site near Beddgelert on Friday. An evening trip was made to Coed-y-brenin for a ride. We had 12 happy campers by midnight.

Sat 28th

We had a 30 mile epic ride planned. This combined the well known Llyn Cowlyd killer loop with the Marin Trail at Betws-y-coed. See Google map for details. After some serious sausage sandwich action, some general faffing and then some van starting issues we were on the bikes by 11am. The route began in the car park behind the Pinnacle Cafe at Capel Curig. It had been raining off and on most of the morning and this turned harder as we walked up through knee deep boggy sections on the hill up to the reservoir. Mechanically things didn’t go too well, with a puncture within quarter of an hour of starting. Then we had a rider whose legs were turning but the wheels were not. He’d got a permanent freewheel, which isn’t much use on a hilly ride. We tried using cable ties to connect the hub to the wheel, but this was a much use as a chocolate teapot and lasted all of 10 seconds before failing.

Luckily it was all downhill back to the car park, so we sent Chris off to go and fix his bike.

After a major road descent we made it to the Glanrafon Cafe at Trefriw for about 2pm.

In the afternoon we did the Marin trail. This starts with a brutal fire road ascent that a few people commented on. Half way round the trail most opted to do a road return to the start point, leaving three of us to madly try and complete the original loop. This involved hammering the rest of the Marin trail as quickly as possible. It seemed a lot better that way. We then had a big climb up lanes to Llyn Geirionydd, then a harsh fire road climb and descent to the next valley. We hit the bottom of the final ascent at 7pm. This was a walk up 200m of mountain path. We were rewarded the other side with a descent back to the Capel Curig. The route gave us 35 miles of riding.

Then we went to the pub. In an area that has more than its fair share of ropey pubs with a “take it or leave it” attitude then the Bryn Trych offers a beacon of hope. Tripadvisor reviews. It’s not the cheapest, but the portion size is generous and I’ve never left feeling hungry. They’ve been doing a lot of renovation work over the last few years. Good company, beer and food.

Sun 29th

The weather hadn’t improved on Sunday, so we started the day with a trip to the legendary Pete’s Eats in Llanberis for breakfast.

In the afternoon five of us went to Coed-y-Brenin whilst the others walked up Snowdon. We rode The Beast (of Brenin) trail. This combines the MBR route with most of Dragon’s Back. The Dragon’s Back is 30km, whilst the Beast is 38km. We cut out the 6km pointless loop section (see Google Map). This then gave us 32km of technical trail to enjoy.

I noticed that there had been further improvements to the trail since my last visit two years previously. A few new berms, a bit more singletrack (Beefy section) and some decent sized rock steps on the MBR (Abel section) route all made the visit worth it. I’ve always been a bit saddened that the original steep rock slab section was replaced with a swoopy section (Gomez). I never found out why. Maybe it was sustainability, or maybe it was health and safety stuff. The route was just over 18 miles (30km), taking out total to 53 miles so far.

We had a big feed at the bungalow cafe half way round and then paid another visit to the Bryn Tyrch.

Mon 30th

We visited a favourite trail of mine: Penmachno. The rain had finally gone, giving us Blue skies and sunlight. We rode both loops, giving us another 18 miles (30km) of decent trail. Everyone agreed that the trail was far more fun than the Marin trail.

After that we all had to return to the mundane reality of our sad little lives back in Swindon.

Google map

Forum posts.

Tags: 2010, august, camping, club, coedybrenin, cowlyd, llyn, marin, north, penmachno, ride, snowdonia, wales

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Many riders will be going on the MBSwindon North Wales Camping Trip. this weekend, so they won’t be round for the regular Friday evening trail ride at the Croft Trail.

If you’re still in Swindon then consider going to see the The Faux Fighters. Two club members play in this Foo Fighters tribute band. They’ve got a free gig in Swindon on Friday 27th August at the Fox and Hounds in Wroughton.

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I’ve started work on compiling a Google map listing all the main trail centres in the UK. We’ve visited a lot of them already and hope to visit all of them over time.

If you can think of any we’ve missed then contact us via email or on the facebook group.

The progress so far (link to article).

Tags: google, map, places, ride, to, trail, uk

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We did a 30 mile route over the ridgeway, starting and finishing at Barburry Castle. We expected rain, but got nothing worse than a bit of drizzle. It was really warm anyway.

Tags: 2010, aldbourne, august, barburry, club, ride, ridgeway

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MBSwindon have been shortlisted for the “Most Innovative Club” category
in the 2010 Wiltshire and Swindon Sports Awards!

Since starting up in February 2010 we now have 60 signed up members and 379 on the Facebook group. It’s quickly become a fun club with a good social scene. Our motto of “get on with it” has hopefully been inspiring people to get out and ride.

Tags: 2010, awards, club, sports, swindon, update, wiltshire

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The original plan was to go and cut a new line in area 4 on the map below. We’d discussed this a few months ago. Well, we spent half an hour looking at the route options and a decision was made to leave it as it was for now. We would then fix it by building a proper berm on the corner at the bottom of the hill and filliling the boggy secion with rubble on a day with the power barrow.

As an alternative job we cut out and started digging the new link to the triangle.

We had a great turnout. Thanks to Gary Yeates, Jamie, Jamie’s mate and Mr Anon. Phil and myself (Tom) made it to six.

Tags: 2010, august, build, evening, trail, triangle

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Wyre Forest is located West of Kidderminster. It has a lot of really good natural bike trails on the steep sides of the valley. We first visited the area a month or so earlier on a Wyre Forest MTB Club ride. We liked it so much that we asked local rider Sarah Peters if she would guide an MBSwindon ride, and she agreed.

We met at Ye Olde New Inn at Pound Green common . They had kindly let us use their car park in return for us buying food and beer. It seemed like a reasonable arrangement.

We had around 15 riders once they’d all turned up (a few had hurty heads). I had a very sucessful result since I had both wheels with me.

We started at about 10:30am and over the next five and a half hours we covered a series of really good sections. If it wasn’t going down then it was going up.
There were fast swoopy downhills, rocky descents, steep mud, off camber mud, roots, a few narrow bridges and a few really steep sections. A favourite for me was the Secret Garden – a long descent along a river valley. We had some comedy falling off manoevres.

The main group made it back to the pub by 4:15pm and agreed that the riding had been top notch. The route has been about 38km long and around 800m of climbing.

More photos.

Wyre Forest on Wikipedia

Random Youtube video. Another Youtube video.

A route similar to our recent ride there.

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We’ve done a lot of trail building in 2010. Most of this has been rebuilding work, with a significant redesign of the layout. This has been done to remove confusing junctions, make better use of any gradient and to make the trail flow better. Pretty much the first third of the trail is now less than a year old.

You might be interested in what we want to do next.

• 1 – Piper’s Hill. This is the area with the mud pile, log steps, big rock jump followed by a switchback. This had issues with poor soil and the trail sinking last winter. We’re going to fix this with rubble and a new layer of Limestone chippings. This is planned for September.
• 2 – Surface missing section on South Side of pitch (area just before the final berms).
• 3 – Surface an area of trail.
• 4 – Rebuild section with smoother corner and more of a traverse.
• 5 – East side of pitch. There’s space for 3 times as much trail here. We want to retain 90% of the current trail side, so it will break out and back in somewhere along the edge. A few features planned for this area.
• 6 – Triangle. This will become part of the main trail rather than an optional loop. There will be two new bridges. We have already cut some undergrowth and found a decent way of connecting. The route in the triangle will be redesigned. Will be some interesting features to make it worth the visit. Rocks, bumps, sleepers, woodwork.

We’re interested in rider feedback. Which section or feature do you think is the worst on the trail? You can reply to this post, via email or on the Facebook group.

Tags: 2010, august, map, new, plans, trail, upgrade

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Some statistics from our recent trail building sessions.

• 340m built.
• 90m of old trail filled back in.
• 41 hours build time.
• 10 days from start to finish.
• 14 volunteers involved.
• 150 person hours.
• 8m of new trail per hour and just over 2m per person hour.
• Approx 25 tonnes of material dropped using a 250Kg barrow.
• Hence about 100 barrow loads over 4 days, meaning 25 per day. An average of 3 loads per hour.
• Each power barrow load of 250kg covered 3.4m of trail.
• So about 10m per hour on the weekends.
• A normal barrow of 100kg would cover 1.4m of trail.
• That’s about 70kg of material per metre.
• At £13 per tonne (inclusive of VAT and delivery etc) it cost 92p per metre in material.
• Taking a density for crushed stone of 1,400kg/m3, a width of 800mm and 70Kg per metre implies a depth of 62mm. ie: a depth of 2.5″.
• 1.8 tonnes of material per volunteer. That’s equivalent of 18 normal barrow loads per person.

Whichever way you look at it, the power barrow makes a massive difference to the rate at which trail can be surfaced.

Tags: 2010, august, build, july, stats, trail, video

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MB Swindon Biking/Social Camping Trip

We’re organising a long weekend away in Snowdonia for the August Bank Holiday weekend.

The approximate plan is to call in at a trail centre on the Friday afternoon and arrive at the camp site on Friday night. Saturday and Sunday will be used for cross country mountain rides from the camp site. On Monday we’re visiting Penmachno, a decent trail.

However, it doesn’t have to be all about riding – we’re hoping this will be more of a social riding weekend than an all-out riding holiday. We might even squeeze in a walk up Snowdon. It’ll be a good way of visiting some of the North Wales trail centres, and also spending time in one of the nicest parts of the UK.

This event is open to members and non-members alike. Obviously we will need an indication of who is likely to be attending so we can arrange the camping pitches and keep you informed of the plan and where to meet. If you are interested in joining us then please email phil@mbswindon.co.uk with “camping trip” as the subject.

Event information.

Club Ride – Wyre Forest (Kidderminster)

Sunday 15th August 2010 @ 10:00

Wyre Forest is located West of Kidderminster. It has a lot of really good natural bike trails on the steep sides of the valley. Local knowledge is really useful in an area like this, so Sarah Peters from the Wyre Forest MTB Group is going to lead us on a ride taking in the best bits. We’ve been there recently and there’s loads of really fun sections, including a river crossing, rocky descents, steep mud, roots and fast swoopy single track. We spent 5 hours riding and still didn’t cover all of it, so there’s loads to do.

Event information.

Novice Friendly Club Ride – Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire)

Sunday 5th September 2010 @ 11:00

The Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire provides a really large area with a choice of mountain biking routes. Natural single track, a 10 mile cross country race route, the FODCA trail, downhill sections and some scenic cross country.

This trip is going to be aimed at new riders, though everyone is welcome. It will be possible to form two groups if enough people want to go and do other things. There is also a pub that could be added to the route for a lunchtime stop.

Event information.

More details of these, and all of our other events, can be found on our events page.

Friday Evening Rides

Our ever popular Friday evening rides continue throughout summer and right into winter. We aim to start at 7:30pm, although this might get moved to 7:00pm as we get closer to winter. Optional (but recommended) visit to the local pub afterwards. We’ve just about been squeezing three laps in before we lose the light. Which brings us neatly to the subject of…

Lights

Quite a popular subject this, and something to think about with winter approaching. Rafe is in the process of writing an illuminating article on the subject of lights which will be appearing in the articles section sometime soon.

GB Plumbing – MB Swindon Membership Discount
Bit of a blatent plug this (yes, pun intended) for one of our mbswindon club members discounts. Chris at GB Plumbing Services is offering a 10% discount on plumbing and bathroom services to club members. You can get in touch with Chris here.

Tags: 2010, august, news, newsletter, update

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