I’m down that way for work this week.

My sense of direction is poor in flat forests and I’ll get there between 4 and 7pm depending on work.

Stick to the waymarked trails or go exploring?

Waymarked as there’s plenty of scope for going around in large circles if you go off piste. Stay High Lodge side and do both red routes seasoning The Beast and the adjacent singletrack.

From your description, I would stick to the waymarked trails – at least to start with.

I have ridden there on and off for years and still get lost and go round in circles on the off piste stuff…

I’ll stick to the waymarked trails for this visit!

Cheers!

I did 50 miles my last visit 🙂 https://www.strava.com/activities/184215796

and two 48 milers 😉
https://www.strava.com/activities/6342804
https://www.strava.com/activities/77196552

It’s a great place to get lost and follow your nose.

I think the official car park may be locked at 7pm (I seem to remember a sign as you exit) bare that in mind if you are roaming late. But if you park in the unofficial little parking spots along the road you will be fine. If you head to brandon lodge car park you can stop in a little parking spot in the right and head into the beast and follow a trial to the main centre and crack on from there.

This is the parking spot (52.426336, 0.634494) at the bottom of the Beast where you can pick the trail nicely back to the trail main centre and explore if you are concerned about the car park being locked.

Also if you stick to the red “Lime burner route”” with the beast in it, you will be right back at you car at the end.

As above…..I would park at Brandon Country Park. It’s only £2 and doesn’t get locked.

To get from there to the trails, head back out to the main road & go straight over into the forest. After <50 yards, there is a fairly discreet trail turning to the right. Take it. If you go 100yds you’ve gone too far.
It’s a nice swoopy trail that drops you down to the bottom of the beast, where eb2429 mentions. It splits a few times on the way, but as long as you keep the general direction constant the trails all rejoin at the bottom of the Beast so it doesn’t matter what path you take….

Turn left when you pop out & about 30-50m up, there’s a trail marker taking you back into the forest; this is the tail end of the trail which takes you back to the start…..

Or – for a more direct route to the start of the waymarked routes, turn left when you pop out and head up the fire road (ignore the waymarker). After about 3-400m it bears to the right, but take the trail that goes straight on. (a bit more grassy with some sandy ridges).
Follow this to a T-junction onto a sandy path & turn right. Follow this for 1/4 mile or so and you’ll go past a field on the right. Just after this field, hang a left onto a wide gravel trail. This takes you to the start of both waymarked trails.
I would choose the ‘straight on’ trail when it splits (the other trail goes right).

Both trails are around 9 miles & you can easily get a lap of both done before it gets dark & get back to the car.

Both trails spit you out onto the sandy path near their ends, so heading back to the car is easy. Just keep an eye out for that, then turn left – finding the left turn for the ‘t-junction’ I mention above is a bit trickier, but if you go steady you’ll see it.
Then just keep going until you get to the car barrier at the bottom of the beast & turn right back up the trail you started on (this is well hidden by bracken and is closer to the barrier than you’ll remember it being…..)

I rode there whilst staying down the road at centre parcs. Only rode the way marked routes but ended up doing the two reds in one go as a figure-8. It was lovely, perfect on the singlespeed.
If like me you don’t look at a trail map, on one of the red trails (not the Lime Burner, can’t remember the name), you’ll come to a sign pointing out long and short loops – if you follow the long loop, you eventually come back to the same sign – to complete the trail, you now follow the short loop.
I got all confused.

That was a bit wordy, so I made a pickcher…..

[/url]Brandon car park to trails. by STW stumpy01, on Flickr[/img]

EDIT – as bullandbladder says, one of the trails has a long/short option. The long basically goes round in a circle and takes you back to the sign. So the full loop is the long loop, then next time round, take the short option which takes you to the end of the loop….
This is the trail that turns right at the very start.

The Beater. Yes, the short/long sign really could do with a map showing you what is happening in case you didn’t pay attention at the start!

A timely thread as I am going to give it a go on Saturday, since we are down for my nieces wedding on Friday 🙂

cheers for the info

Thanks again for the answers, especially the bits about parking 🙂

Well me and my bro had a great ride there on Saturday afternoon. Parked roughly where suggested (actually just near the start of the Beast) and did the complete double loop in a couple of hours, including some messing about in the bomb-holes. Got some good advice at the start from a lad in a VW Golf who had just done the double. Anyone off here? Thanks if so. Was hot out there and fast. Quite a contrast from our normal riding here in Mid Wales 🙂