I have the dubious privilege of knowing a reasonable chunk of the Sennybridge training area and thought I’d have a look at this route – but the GPX of it seems to have a lot of sections where it just departs from any marked routes – footpaths / bridleways / metalled roads etc and takes off across open moorland, which would seem to present both navigational and oh-no, I’m knee deep in a bog issues.

Anyone had any experience of the route?

Bookmarking. I know the ranges pretty well (rallying) so might be able to work some bits out. I’m keen to ride it too. There are lots of paths/tracks that probably aren’t mapped.

Shamelessly bumping this just this once to see if anyone has ridden it.

I am pretty certain that MTBMatt has done it, I’ll ask for you.

Are you local? Maybe pop over to the Mynydd Du MTB facebook page and ask on there.

Just had a thought, I reckon Ian Barrington is your man, was a local, has now moved to Scotland I believe.

Googled him, here’s his website with Epynt mentioned on the first page: https://ianbarrington.com/

but the GPX of it seems to have a lot of sections where it just departs from any marked routes

That often happens. Whoever plans the routes (the ones with diamonds on the map) must be getting permission from landowners. Or if it’s open access then they might not need to bother.

Cross-check with the Strava heatmap.

Matt has ridden it, says ‘it’s pretty crap, It’s mostly for horses’. The western part is the best. Crychan on its own is better.

Anybody else tried this route? I fancy giving it a go. ‘it’s pretty crap’ is a bit vague – one person’s ‘crap’ can be another’s ‘brilliant’ – just depends what you’re looking for. The route appeals because of the challenging distance and the chance to ride MoD land that was out of bounds for decades. If ‘crap’ means it hasn’t got perfectly manicured trail centre style singletrack that’s fine. On the other hand if ‘crap’ means it’s a knee deep bog-fest with squaddies taking potshots at you I might give it a miss!

Regarding the routefinding I think the best advice is to ignore strava and GPS etc – follow the waymarkers on the ground (the bits I’ve seen are very well signed – after all it is a live firing range so they’re quite keen to stop people straying off-piste!). If you want to know exactly where it goes beforehand – buy the guidebook.

I might try to do a couple of recce rides on bits of it before attempting the whole thing – in which case I’ll report back.