My lad is in a rugby tournament at Brecon tomorrow, so I’ve booked myself a B&B near Brechfa for a spin on Sunday. Is the Gorlech as good as it looks on Youtube, or am I missing something?

Check for closures, but yes, Brechfa is well worth a ride.

If you have time, you can link up the Gorlech and Raven in to one big loop. Also, don’t rule out the green/blue. The end of the green loop is a hoot at speed!

Brechfa all open and in fairly good nick. Enjoy.

Sounds great. Must say the YouTube vids make it look pretty good.i had considered coming home via ‘Degla, but one look on YouTube convinced me to go and give it a try.

Quite a long climb up to the start.. just make sure you are awake if you are going to hit the first few jumps.
It was quite puddley on Tuesday but most of it dries pretty fast.
I presumed part of the last section was closed as there was broken tape and a diversion sign.
It’s a really good fun trail and all rollable if you don’t want to hit the jumps. If you have the time and energy, Cwm rhaeadr is about half an hour from brechfa and is one of the best 10 minutes of downhill singletrack fun in Wales..

Cwm Rhaeadr is closer to Brecon and a better downhill – but its only a short trail at 7km (3km fireroad, 4km singletrack).
The Gorlech is ace though, its my favourite trail at Brechfa.

I did the black and red looped together on Tuesday and really enjoyed it. Few puddles, few trees down, some muddy sections on the black but on the whole it was running really well. Great fun all the way, the black climbs were pretty hard though after having done all of the red climbs already. You might breeze it though as I’m not the fittest rider around that’s for sure. As mentioned above it looks like there used to be a diversion, but I carried on round the original trail and although there was a sizeable tree down, it was fine otherwise. The 2 trails together were something like 25 miles with 4400ft of climbing.

I’ll only be doing the Gorlech, as I have to be back home early-ish, and as an arthritic Clydesdale 50 yr old that’ll be enough for me.! Maybe save the Raven for the summer when my lad can ride with me. He’s jealous though, as he has to travel back to Yorkshire with the team on a forces minibus on Sunday.

There is/was a diversion on the forest garden section of the red due to landslide, but people seem to have been successfully ignoring that for a while now (I’m not lawyer)
The big climb on the black is always horrible and muddy, that’s why it’ a black.
Forecast for the weekend is rain, rain and more rain, so the full red&black will be a proper day out.
If you finish up in the Black Lion on Sunday afternoon, I’ll be the old codger in Lycra propping up the bar in the local’s corner- say hello.

Will do!

Well, that was a great weekend. My lad’s team won the national ACFA 7s Championship, winning every pool game and humping the favourites Wales in the final 22-10. 😀 I managed to book myself into a cracking B&B, the White Hart at Llandeilo, and was just settling down with a nice pint of Evans Cwrw to watch Saracens Ulster when a coach party rocked up….. a rugby team on a Stag night for one of the players. Far too much beer all round rounded off by a great rump steak. Decent breakfast this morning, and I was at Abergorlech by 1100. Boy, did it rain.

It was very, very wet. Whoever said the climbing was gruelling at the start wasn’t kidding. How I managed to hang onto my breakfast will remain a mystery. Would I sound heretical to say it was a bit disappointing? The descents are fantastic, but all over far too fast. I enjoyed the couple of traversing singletracks, and the switchbacks and in trail jumps were great, but the singletrack to fire-road climb ratio is on the low side if I’m honest. On balance it was a great ride, but not as epic as I’d been led to believe.

Some of the reviews tell us it’s easy to overcook the speed on some sections, and brown trouser award has to go to the steep, steep switchback that leads onto the chute down to the river bridge towards the end that’s got the grey concrete blocks set into it (presumably to mitigate against braking damage?) . A speed wobble two thirds of the way down nearly put me in the river!

The diversion is still in place, but the only obstacle is a tree that’s fallen onto the trail. Bit of tiptoeing around it required, but nothing life-threatening.

If I go back to ride it again, it’ll be on a dry day on the Soul.

Congrats on your son’s performance. As you discovered, the White Hart is a cracking pub, but maybe not the best place to stay for a quiet night in preparation for a ride.
It sure was wet. I went out on the black in the afternoon when the weather improved (rain went from horizontal to diagonal) and it was more or less one continuous puddle. It’s still chucking it down now.
I suspect that flogging round in the mud and rain on a full suss with a hangover probably wasn’t the best introduction to Brechfa 🙂 Do it again on a dry day on a hardtail and you might find it more pleasant. And if it’s really dry*, the black is well worth trying.

*We don’t know yet which day that will be this year