Off to a holiday cottage/barn thing on the 20th July for a week on Lake Bala. Its a family holiday but taking bikes for me, my son and my nephew (20 and 23). I have seen there are many MTB centres in the area and I wondered if anyone has ridden the Clwyds or Hiraethog centres. If so any good? Had permission of the boss to go and do plenty of biking so it would be rude not to!
Cheers

Nobody??

Pleeease can anyone help?

Personally I’ve never heard of those spots, are you guys fairly experienced on bikes? There are a lot of other trail centres around there, check out Betws-y-Coed and Coed-y-Brenin for starters.

See if you can get some rafting in up the road at Canolfan Tryweryn.
Not heard of those places sorry, but Llandegla isn’t a million miles away, or maybe Penmachno/Marin trail.

As far as I am aware there are no trails beyond fireroads in Hiraethog Forest and none are specific bike routes.

Cloclanog (sp?) has some trails but not sure what they are like.

The Clwyds are somewhere I keep meaning to ride as there looks to be some interesting stuff – must remember to stop driving through on the way to somewhere else.

Quick google brings up this:

Clwyds

Must be some locals on here somewhere.

Marin / Penmachno / CYB obvious ones if at Bala, take insect spray

I’ve ridden the Llyn Brenig area of Hiraethog, but it was a few years ago now.
It’s a beautiful place, well worth a visit. The trails aren’t very technical though and the hills non-too severe so don’t go expecting much gnar-radness.

Llandegla trail centre in the Clwyds is a good laugh, but not everyone’s cup of tea: all man-made with berms, jumps etc. I’ve not yet ridden the natural stuff in the Clwyds, but there are some great trails there I hear…

I haven’t ridden the Clwyds but plenty of folk on MBNW the local North Wales bike forum do. Probably best to ask there and search the forum for routes.

Never ridden the places you mention but did manage to pull in both the Marin and the Penmachno a couple of months ago.

On a nice sunny day the Marin is excellent in my opinion, we really enjoyed the route, there is some fire road climbing but it’s worth it.

The Penmachno we did on a howler of a day, cold and serious sideways rain had us caught out a tad, and even though only 31k it had us a tad defeated on the open moorland section. On a nice day (or even non sideways rain day) I imagine it would be ace, the views are supposed to be great, not that we could see anything.

Enjoy

Cheers all. Will try as many as I can while there. Hope the weather stays like this!

ive ridden the clwyds a few times and i quite like it. not that techinical tbh, just in small parts, loads and loads of sheep crap, be prepared to be covered in the stuff. but a really good xc ride, something different than the usual stuff i do. still loads of riding like everyone said with in an hours drive. (coed y brenin, snowdon, cadair idris, penmachno etc)

http://www.mbwales.com/en/content/cms/Bases/Betws_y_Coed/Betws_y_Coed.aspx

As said, the Clwyds and Hireathog areas aren’t “trail centres”, the web sites were set up to point out MTB routes on natural trails and bridleways in the area. I’ve done a few of the Clwyds routes. They are more days out on the bike in the rolling hills with views, rather than purpose built technical stuff, although some bits are challenging depending on the weather and how rutted up the bridleways are! There is a difficulty in linking up good bits of singletrack, but the MBR route takes in a lot of the good bits around Moel Famau, although I haven’t ridden to south-western link-up bits but I think they are mostly road.

Or for an epic route, you can loop around the Berwyn mountains, but thats a big day out.