Group of 5 travelling up for a couple of days Thu/Fri. All fairly fit, experienced riders, and happy to spend 5 hrs+ riding each day. Based on my previous (limited) trail centre experience, I’d imagine we’d be totally comfortable riding the reds and looking for some interesting black bits to raise the challenge level. A combination of fast and flowing with slower and more technical would be ideal.

What would you suggest?

Penmachno.

Just got back Saturday 🙂

Would highly recommend the MBR. Out of all of them I felt this was the most ‘fun’. Mixes red with a few black trails.

There is the Beast, but to be honest I don’t feel the amount of uphill riding warrants the downs. MBR had a good mix of both.

Tarw – Very tame in my opinion, good for a quick 1-2 hour morning ride, but not really a challenge.

I’ve only done the Beast, which I really enjoyed. The MBR which is part of it has some reasonably techy bits. You could easily miss out a load of the fire road bit of the Dragon’s Back, though if the weather is nice the views are pretty good.

Wouldn’t take a while day if you are fairly fit though. Not ridden any of the other bits.

MBR is good, Tarw is alright too. Nip down to the Dyfi forest for a day 😉

I thought the 9/10 minutes of downhill on The Beast was worth all the uphill fireroad!

The MBR is a good balance though. I like the Marin Trail at Betws y Coed too

I thought the 9/10 minutes of downhill on The Beast was worth all the uphill fireroad!

Yeah but there’s a bit where you climb on fireroad then descend on fireroad that can be missed out without missing any downhill singletrack.

I know they charge for them now, but if you get the route maps, you can just join plenty of the routes singletrack sections up, and miss lots of fireroad. I personally wouldn’t say that there is any technical difference between their black and red ratings there. The section straight from the visitors centre is probably the most technical, and most the routes start from there anyway 🙂
I’m off back to wales next week for a week long trip, and will probably have another day there, but there is plenty of better riding elsewhere. It is an easy place to ride as its so well designed for traveling riders.

The Beast
Dragons Back
Tawr

are all good and you can’t go wrong really

also take a look at this link 🙂 http://www.mtbbritain.co.uk/pink_heifer_new_route.html

I thought the Beast was just superb. Worth mentioning, you can do the very start and finish of the Beast as a short 40 minute loop with a fun climb, a fireroad climb and a load of daft rocky descending, should you have a bit of time spare.

Tarw I thought was lovely but needs a bit of pace and effort to get the benefit of it I think. Also I reckon it might have been a wee bit dull on my hemlock but on the hardtail it needed some attention and that R74 descent is bloody awesome, I pedalled my little heart out and almost died but it was worth every palpitation.

The key to any of the routes at CyB is knowing the short cuts to cut out as much fire-road as possible.

My memory is rubbish but if you head out from the visitor centre on the rocky trail sign posted for The Beast then when you get to the fire road instead of turning left and climbing up you go straight over, that bit is great. Dreamtime perhaps?

Do the Beast on one day (this includes the best bits of the mbr and dragons back – you can cut out the top forestroad loop if you want) on one day, then head up towards Betws y Coed to do either Penmachno or the Marin on the other day.

Alternatively head south from CyB for 20mins (by car) and do the ClimachX in the morning and do the Tarw at CyB in the afternoon.

Oh yeah Penmachno is definitely worth a visit too.

Alternatively head south from CyB for 20mins (by car) and do the ClimachX in the morning

+1 for Climachx. Great stuff.

Penmachno was as much fun as pulling teeth. Sorry to disagree, but I found it rather dull.

Thanks folks. Lots of good suggestions.

If your fit (you said you were :wink:) you can ride everything at CyB in a day.
Beast in the morning, about 3 hours. Lunch. And then the Tawr which is just over 1 hour ride.

Then for your second day, Betws y Coed, lunch, then Penmachno.

Not everyones cup of tea, but it works. And they are all quite different trails so why have to pick.

That sounds good!