So we’re in north Wales all week and would like to ask you lot of your thoughts.
Rode Snowdon on Saturday ,penmachno yesturday and going CyB tomorrow.
The online reviews bang on about to much fire road, but is it more about spinning and taking in the views.
I feel it needs to be ticked off the list tho.
Not sure about Thursday so if anyone has a nice 20mile loop gpx file they could email me.
Cheers

It is one of the oldest trail centres and does suffer from a bit much fire road but the singletrack there is is good. It’s worth doing in my opinion. It’s also easy to nip back up the first climb and repeat the last descent which is probably the best bit.

I liked it, The views are ace on a nice day and the area is fantastic.

The old fire road issue is a strange one, I thought there was a fair amount at Brenin myself.

I second everything Mad Pierre said
Descents easy in the dry, more of a challenge in the wet, quite rough so take an extra tube if you’re a heavy rider
Absolutely loved the final descent

It’s good, it’s crap, do it, dont’ bother, etc…

On a serious note, it’s one of the best all-weather trails I have ridden, the little snippets of single-track are good if not always balls out fast. The last one (descent) is a corker tho.

As you may have gathered, I like it, whether you will or not no one knows but you should definitely do it to find out.

I really like it… I get all the criticism, it does seem to have more climbing than descending, a weirdly large amount of the singletrack is flat or up even though some of the descending is on fireroad… But the good bits are fantastic, absolutely perfect singletrack. Not massively tech as you’d expect, just flow for miles, brilliant stuff.

Oh, and it’s a lovely location as well- take the time for a bit of a break by the lakeside, and for an explore of the mine workings, if you can.

What a great trail rode at a nice leisurely pace.
Nicely eroded like cwmcarn before they repaired/f**ked it up.
Dragons tail was ace and the final decent was awesome much like BKB at peaslake.
Great day out and now for food and a Gold at Stablau.

Dragons Tail got me smiling for sure. The rest OKish. The fire road/single track climbing stuff doesn’t bother me as I enjoy a little stretch of the legs in that sense. I would happily ride it again if in the area but I wouldn’t visit the area just to go there.

It’s one of my local trails (lucky me). I always like riding it, I find the fitter I’m feeling and the better the company, the less I notice the fire road. As already said the single track is great.

Enjoy.

Yeah, I think to be fair if I’d ridden it a couple of years ago when I was newly back into riding, I’d have probably hated it- the fire road stuff would have been properly miserable, instead of just annoying.

If the weathers good, how about Cadair Idris from the Chapel?

Sorry for thread hijack but how was Penmachno riding ? Looking for a venue for a Sunday ride, and I usually enjoy Pen but the last time a couple of our group went about a 3 weeks ago the report was that it was so overgrown that it was no fun at all ! Hopefully it has been cleared.

Loop 1 was fine last week, didn’t do loop 2. Wear long sleeves and waterproof shorts and you’ll be fine.

Both loops were dry on Monday with no rain all week.
Loop 2 was a little overgrown but OK

Possibly been cleared then. Apparently some of the early downhills on loop 1 were totally covered in overgrowth. Sounds like things have improved. Oh yes it’ll be wet under foot, never known it to be any different on loop 2 especially