theres a walking trail that runs from above big doug to the fire road 🙂

Votchy, you don’t need big bikes. I did it on a singlespeeded Soul. Perfect. And Pete Sampras won his first Wimbledon when I was 40.

I hope your not encouraging people to ride on footpaths Jedi? 😉

im not encouraging anyone, just pointing it out 🙂

I did some walking between Big Dug and Gomez though. But it wasn’t on a footpath. 🙁

BigJohn – we aren’t proper mtb’ers though, we all only have 1 do everything on it bike each

wait a sec, am i reading this thread right? herman, pink heifer and the adams family trails have gone? :/

Gone, or are unrecognisable from what they once were.

Votchy – I’m not and so do I
Richtea – All still there and still worth riding.

Yeah if only I had more than one bike, then people wouldn’t laugh at me on internet forums when I ride on the tarmac like surface of CyB on my 6″ travel Pitch.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry.

Maybe next time I’ll take my full-face helmet and pads as well.

Yeah if only I had more than one bike, then people wouldn’t laugh at me on internet forums when I ride on the tarmac like surface of CyB on my 6″ travel Pitch.

I’m not laughing at you at all. There’s no need to take any of what I’ve said personally, it’s not intended that way at all. Debate, the exchange of opinion. amazing…

Sorry I was only joking really, forgot the 🙂

I might feel the same as you if I had been riding it for years, it’s just that from my perspective it’s still really good, and I would love to have a big trail centre like that local to me.

And apparently the rocky new sections like Pins and Needles are waaaay to hard. I want my money back… oh, wait. 😛

That’s the thing, it’s a pretty amazing facility to provide basically for free – even if it’s no longer to your taste I think being so negative about it is a little harsh.

Think of how much you would have to pay for any other purpose built leisure facility on that scale.

Now if you were slagging off the North Face Trail in Grizedale however… 😉

OS map anyone?

Even better than that – download the pdf of all the trails

http://www.mbwales.com/en/content/cms/Centres/Coed_y_Brenin/Beast_of_Brenin/Beast_of_Brenin.aspx

even if it’s no longer to your taste I think being so negative about it is a little harsh.

Fair point. Just annoyed at the cynical way it was done focussing on H&S and £££ – somewhat contrary to the original ideas of the people who gave the FC the opportunity to make their £££ from the trail centre concept throughout the UK in the first place…

Anyway, I may pay it a visit again – if nothing else a long catch up with Adam in the bike shop is probably long overdue anyway!

100? 😉

Pins and needles to hard?!

I’m surprised at that – where did you hear that?

This topic came up on the old forum more than once, and there were a couple of pretty vocal people saying that the new rock slab sections were too hard.

Crikey.

I had the best Welsh Rarebit I’ve ever had in the Cafe at CyB last year

Started MTBing about 14 months ago and have ridden Tarw (inc Pins and Needles) ~5 times over the period. Had to walk and push bits first time, rode with a few dabs second and then ridden completely with increasing confidence since.

Similarly on other rocky sections at CyB.

Seems to me that they have it exactly right. The route descriptions, advice and ‘qualifiers’ all match up to the trails.

Though obviously all *way* to sanitised for some…
🙂
Paul

PS Have always found the tea and cake at the cafe very nice..

Dunno if they still do it but I like the Italian Depth Charge (hot chocolate with a shot of espresso). The cafe is pretty naff compared to the old one, but a bigger space has obvious advantages in the Welsh dreich, and the food and service could be a lot worse.

I think a four-word summary of this thread would be “there’s no pleasing everyone”.

Trail centres have to cater for the “average” biker as they represent the largest market.As mountain biking has got more popular the skill set of the “average” biker has naturally gone down.If you were an “average” biker 10 years ago (as long as you still ride the same) you’d be regarded as an expert now!!

As promised, bit of feedback from my weekend up there, rode Tawr on Friday afternoon and other then one rocky downhill section I thought it was pish, poorly signposted (missed 3 turns so added about 5 miles of fireroad riding), most of the sections lacked flow with rocks haphazardly strewn around for the sake of having rocks, lost all your speed to pick a line through then dab because you have no speed to carry you over the rocks hidden around the bend. Did Pont Scethin on saturday, nice proper ride, some of the ups turned in to hike a bike and there were some instances of sense of humour failure, however the downs and the scenery more than made up for it so would thoroughly recommend the route to everyone. Sunday we rode MBR before coming home, made Tawr seem even worse, found MBR better signposted (apart from there being no warning at the start that the final descent was closed which was a shame having to fireroad it back to the visitors centre) otherwise the climbs were more interesting and the singletrack was an absolute blast, nice and swoopy and flowy, able to pump the trail and carry silly amounts of speed through sections that were wet enough to keep you on your toes, the 2 CyB trails were like chalk and cheese.

Sits back and waits to be put in my place by experts 😉

Ooooh, one question about Dolgellau, is everyone in the town related?

And why is there only one taxi driver? And is he from the same gene pool as Aryton Senna?

…