We are heading to South Wales this weekend and will have a full day riding on Sat and up until early pm Sunday, but can start early. I figure that will allow us to get 3 or 4 of the below trails in (depending on location), but which ones are a must do?

Brechfa – Gorlech (19km)
Brechfa – Raven (18.5km)
Afan – Blade (24km)
Cwmcarn – Twrch (19km)
Cwmcarn – Cafall (14km)
Bike Park Wales (no uplift available, but not afraid of riding up a few times)

Thanks!

Trouble is Brechfa is a bit of an outlier if you want to maximise your riding for the weekend.
I’d be tempted to do cwmcarn Twrch (Cafall isn’t a techy) then onto BPW and get a couple of rides up and see if I could cadge a couple of uplifts as one offs (good chance at the end of the day).
Then off to Afan and ride W2 on sunday. The only reason I’d choose W2 is that it’s longer being whites level and wall in one ride.

Wyllie, Machen, Castle Coch and Smilog.

what Phil said with Ochy thrown in

I’d go to Afan on Saturday and have a day there riding 2 or 3 trails with lunch at the cafe then head to Cwmcarn on the way back, dinner on the way, camp there and do one or two loops there in the morning. Minimal driving for max riding. I wouldn’t say there is any ‘must do’, it depends on personal preference but if you like trail centre riding they are all pretty good. With the recent weather the ‘natural’ stuff would be in good shape too but you need to know your way or be handy with a map.

We have done the old Skyline and W2 before at Afan, hence only listing Blade as it is new. I appreciate the local trail tips guys, but probably going to stick to trail centres, mainly due to navigational laziness and planning ease!

If you do go all the way to Brechfa, it would be worth popping over to Cwm Rhaeadr as well since it isn’t too far away.

all of afan trail alone can easily eat your weekend and not waste petrol and time jumping one trail to another

Philwarren11 is Machen worth a visit for a day? How much is there?

The green/blue/black/red/black/blue and green loop at Brechfa on Saturday and then Cwm Rhaeadr on Sunday morning.

philwarren11 – Member

Wyllie, Machen, Castle Coch and Smilog.

Brilliant. Do you think it likely that someone coming to South Wales for the weekend will have sufficient local knowledge to find this in any way helpful?

Easiest would be to do something like Whites and Blade on Saturday, Penhydd and Y Wal on Sunday.

Just in case anyone doesn’t realise – Phil is making fun of how some posters appear to think that trail centers are the only kind of MTBing, and that Wales is only trail centers.

Machen is a village, there are some natural trails on the mountain above it, as there are on most of the hills in Wales 🙂

Crap joke though and completely unhelpful as samcheese points out.
An offer to guide would have been a lovely thing to do…..l

maybe we don’t want loads of people coming from miles away to ride the cheeky trails…

I’d offer, but I can’t really guarantee times and days lately 🙂

molgrips – Member

Machen is a village, there are some natural trails on the mountain above it, as there are on most of the hills in Wales

Those jumps and berms above Machen are ‘natural’ are they? How extraordinary.

Or is this another ‘joke’ that no-one with a normally functioning brain could find funny or indeed identify as intended to be a joke?

Natural as in not a trail center. You know what I meant smartarse, no trails are actually natural are they?

Why are you snapping at me anyway? I was agreeing with you – just a little less arsily 🙂

To be fair, I did google them and found a few bits of info on what are possibly better locations than centres, and with some time i’m sure I could map something out, especially with some strava segment research. However with busy jobs and babies, despite pinning a date down months ago, so far we haven’t figured out where we are staying or where we are riding. Therefore turn up and ride trail centres it is!

I’d agree actually – planning good rides on ‘natural’ aka non trail centre trails takes a bit of time, local knowledge, and some trial and error. Especially down here.

After doing all the sums we have decided on Cwmcarn (Twrch) then Afan (Blade) on Sat, staying near BPW to ride there Sunday until early afternoon.

The other option was Cwm Rhaeader then Brechfa on the Sat which looked great, but was quite a bit of extra driving, and all on backroads instead of the motorway.

@bacon – have you booked the uplift for BPW ?

If I were you I’d do both at Cwmcarn. You’re missing out 🙂

jambalaya, not booked, happy to ride up or see if they have day tickets.

molgrips, I think something would have to give on the schedule for Cafall, the map claims it takes 2.5 hours+

Cafall might take 2.5 hours if you were on foot 🙂

Takes me about 1h20 and I’m well off form. I’d imagine a trundler would do it in 1h40 or so.

Ok thanks for the heads up, I’ve added it to the plan as it also looks like Twrch is a bit overstated on the official maps too compared to Strava distances and times.

I can do both in 2.5 hours if I get a move on. Your times may vary mind, I don’t know how fast you are 🙂

I got a Strava KOM once, so I can only assume that I am very fast. 😉

I may be wrong, but isn’t one of the trails at Cwmcarn closed for a while?

Both trails at Cwmcarn were open. There was one diversion on Twrch but I think we actually recovered a lot of it by getting lost and doing the airstream sections anyway.

It was easy to get on the single ride runs at BPW, although the climb was quite good fun and only took 20 mins on my sb66. Your experience may vary on a DH bike!

All the trails were great fun, been eating cake all week to recover!

Glad you had a good time, thanks for the info about Twrch – I’d asked Bob the Ranger about the airstream sections and he gave me the standard “they’re closed” answer – but as they’re ‘tree less’ I assumed access was the only issue.

You come to a carpark which is at the bottom of the airstream parts, we rode through and up a fire road full of aggregate until you take a right and rejoin the trail. We thought that was the proper route!