Just in case anyone is thinking of trying the STW ‘Between Trail Centres: South Wales’ route http://singletrackworld.com/trailguide/uk/wales/between-trail-centres-south-wales/ thought it might be useful to know what we found when three of us rode it at the weekend, after hankering for some South Wales riding within reach of Bristol / Bath in a day which is not the Beacons or Trail Centres (nothing wrong with those, just done them loads).

(it was posted in 2009 at the above link, but I can’t comment at the page itself as I’m not a premium STW member … nor do I seem to be able to message author Ben Haworth, so am posting here)

First thing to say is that IMO, and having constructed a GPS and used OS height data at a 5m horizontal resolution it’s actually 45ish km and 1,400ish m of climbing.

It took us around 7.5 hours with not much stopping. We started at around 9.45am and rode last hour-ish with lights. The three of us were a mixed-ish group fitness and technique-wise but overall all pretty solid riders. Maybe we could have done it in 5 hours if absolutely hammering it and with ground bone dry (ideally we’d have done it after a prolonged dry period, maybe summer time as there are sections across fields).

A truly epic big, big day out for us clearly put together by someone at STW who is both a skilled rider and a racing snake! 🙂

IMHO it’s definitely a ‘Hard’ graded ride, in terms of the distance, climbing and since for short sections it is very technical. For example some of the singletrack descent off Garth Hill, toward lower reaches, is tricky stuff (though majority of ride is not very technical, where the technical stuff is weighted toward the start).

In the mud a fair bit of the climbing was at the limit of do-ability for any of us. One section below Garth Hill plus a couple of other bits were a push.

Ref the below suggested route change see the arrow on the OS 1:25k map here http://www.streetmap.co.uk/idld.srf?x=319386&y=185724&z=115&sv=319386,185724&st=4&ar=y&mapp=idld.srf&searchp=ids.srf&dn=804&ax=319386&ay=185724&lm=0 and also consult the route map from STW, i.e. http://singletrackworld.com/trailguide/files/2009/10/swaleshard.jpg though note that the STW map is OS 1:50k & is a bit blurry … I spent a couple of hours reconstructing the route using that and OS maps for the area. We found using a GPS with OS 1:25k basemaps installed on it very useful since nav in some of the woodland sections is tricky with a multitude of criss-crossing routes. I’m not sure we’d have finished the ride without resorting to GPS if we’d had to nav by paper maps only, unless very familiar with the route.

Note that the section in east of Coed Coesau-whips woods is very hard to get through as bridleway has disappeared and not been reinstated, so maybe stay on track 50m to south instead then bush-whack through forestry to join the following suggested footpath. Bridleway from those woods across fields through ‘Spout’ on OS 1:25k (see streetmap.co.uk link above) suffers from same problem and is a bog-fest so suggest avoiding that. Suggest might be better to push down footpath at East edge of woods, heading NNE, to then join the valley bridleway higher up.

Would I do it again? Probably not the whole route, though really glad we did it – a great day out. Definitely given us some ideas for more riding around Castell Coch, off Garth Hill and in the woods to the south of Machen (eastern part of the ride). Nice to pick up two castles along the way too. Maybe too much on Taff Trail but at least it allows covering of big-ish transfer between off-road stuff pretty quickly – as it was the first 10km took us by far the longest – steep, muddy, pushing a bit, tecchie off Garth Hill – and we were a bit worried about making the whole distance but zooming along the Taff Trail sped things up a lot. The open vistas around Abercarn (north-eastern part of the ride) seem like they would be nice … if we hadn’t been in and out of mist!

Good luck!