Took a few days off last week to catch up with life stuff and do some riding
Was supposed to be mon- fri , but the weather was shocking so modded it Wed – Sat

Wed . Left sunny Hampshire and drove to Cwm Carn . Was expecting heavy rain but the sun was out so made good progress and did a lap of the Twrch trail. Harder than I rememeber , and alot of puddles. Did a few laps up the top of Airstream which was fun .

Thur. Uplift day at BPW. Now , I cant jump , I ride a 100mm xc bike without a dropper . But by heck its fun.
10 runs , all the blues as jumping or drops to steep are beyond me. Drops to flat of up to 50cm Im ok with , but bigger or faster . nope. Yes I have had a 1-1 with Jedi, no , it didnt go well . So we’ll leave jumps to the kool kidz. Very well organised, dry and sunny and Rob Warner doing some filming . Would recomend , even for an xc rider

Fri.- The Gap. Staying Merthyr we drove up to Brecon . Then off we go out along the canal where my xc bike was in its element , and up into the mountains. Hampshire does not have either mountaains or rocks so to encounter both was different. Got lost and added a few hundred meteres by climbing the tramway before dropping down to the resevoir and up to the road. Weather closed in after the hideous drop and push / hike a bike bit , then it was up to the saddle in mizzle and a cross wind . Minced the decent then winched our way along the road back to town. Alot of time in the saddle but great to be out in the mountains proper.

Fri night in JDW in Merthyr was an experience .

Then we stopped in at the FOD on the way home sat. Rode the Verderes trail, which needs more roots imo, then the blue . By heck thats a giggle, busy place . Queues for bike hire, queueus for food , queues for the jump line. My mate had a stent fitted last month so not really fit at all, so didnt make a good effort on the blue
I could see that a few laps of that would pick up your fitness and bike handling skills quicksmart. Thats alot of type 2 road chippings gone in recently. and no rain .

So a nice few days away . Stayed at the Travel lodge who were great with the bikes in the room. Only 20mins of rain , in Wales , in October which was lucky. No crashes and no punctures.

Sounds like a good trip and you rode a lot of my favourite places!

If you decide to make a trip over the Severn again, based on what you enjoyed this time, I’d suggest Brechfa. If you’ve not been before it’s a long way down the M4, in fact past the end of it, but it’s a great ‘centre’ (the centre being limited to a few portable toilets, but there’s a great pub) the red sounds right up your street. It’s still ‘new’ in my head, but I think it opened more than a decade ago now. Slightly old-school with narrow singletrack with some nice features built into it.

Sounds great. I did the Gap route a few years back and am keen to go again.

Rode at Cwmcarn the other day too. One lap of Twrch and two laps of Cafall plus some dh bits, but that was on an eeb.

Like it there 👍

Good stuff.

If you are ever back over that way, check out Barry Sidings. A jewel in the Rhondda valley!

Although it is pretty steep and technical, so might not be your jam.

Good stuff, CwmCarn is not too bad, improved lately as well so runs better, BPW is just fun whatever you’re there to do, you can do flow or tech, loads to keep you going all day without getting too repetitive.

FoD has loads, but the two trails are Verderer’s (Blue) and Freeminer’s (Red), verderers has had a fair bit of work overall, freeminers is a bit of a mess these days and not improving unfortunately, it’s the one with loads of roots at the start.

The Freeminer’s Trail has been receiving some love from DTV recently, but I’m not sure which sections.

Yeah, last time up i saw the extended bit was getting a little TLC at the start, to be fair i rarely touch the trails at the centre these days though as it’s a bit of a slog to get over there from other places.

I’ve just done a very similar trip Thursday to Monday instead. Rode Cwmcarn on Thursday doing Pwca and Cafell which I thought were excellent probably some of the best trail centre riding I’ve done (it was sunny and I was riding on a weekday so I might be biased). Had a day at Black Mountain Cycle Centre, that was an amazing experience having been to BPW before as well as more DH orintaited uplift places I thought i knew what I was in for but I don’t think I’ve ever been so fast on a mountain bike, rapid doesn’t cut it berms for days and the jumps were fun even for me who isn’t the worlds greatest jumper felt like progressed loads. Had a couple of days riding at Afan saturday and sunday trying to dodge the weather which was fun felt more standard trail centre if a bit oldschool some really good sections and some forgettable ones but good none the less rode Blade on saturday and Blue scar with a bit of Penhydd tacked on on sunday when the rain stopped.

went to the forest of dean on the way home yesterday, rode Free Miners and there wasn’t much sign of love being shown, though we may have given up on it before the extension bit to be fair the rest of the trails round there were looking very good! did the blue which was fun in the way you expect blues to be and some of the DH stuff which was also a lot of fun even if I did bin it on Ski Run. Thought the skills park was really good and would like to see that replicated at other trail centres one of the thing I find frustrating is the lack of places to practice skills on drops and jumps at most trail centres as you rarely have the opportunity to hit features more than once unless you make quite a big effort.

Anyhow in conclusion riding bikes in new places is fun.

Sounds like you had a good few days, @singletrackmind.
Next time you are in South Wales and fancy doing The Gap there is a good clockwise circular route that starts in Talybont-On-Usk and goes up to The Gap via the Brinore Tramroad (parallel to Talybont Reservoir) and the Roman Road above Pontsticill Reservoir. It then drops down and you can take the lanes for a few miles and get on to the canal at Pencelli for the gentle ride back to Talybont-On-Usk.

Edit: just reread your post and it sounds like this is the route you did. The bit about getting lost and having to climb up the tram way confused me as that is the usual way up as far as I know.

I’d also recommend a visit to Mountain View Bike Park just outside Cardiff. It’s a new venture that is currently quite small but has plans to expand. There are few short blue and red trails there, a red jump line and a black jump line and a couple of practice jump lines next to a good pump track.

Getting off island (Guernsey) after 18 months, for some real riding with 2 Friends!
Thursday (4/11) @ Cwmcarn – guiding/company appreciated, if anyone is around 😉
Friday BPW (pedal up, as uplift fully booked)
Sat (6/11) @ Afan – skyline or other suggestions 😉

Come rain or mud 😜

Without trying to state the obvious, the struggle to jump and do drops could be something to do with the 100mm xc bike with no dropper! A lot of the red trails at BPW aren’t a whole lot more extreme than the blues, they add a few little drops and the odd root or rock.

GET A DROPPER!

That is all.

Not for jumps and drops, but simply to allow you to corner properly, and once you can corner properly, you will find suddenly the trails flow much better 🙂

Hopefully I’ve attached a few pic’s from our trip, was great to get out in some new (old) areas after so long only riding locally (Sussex + Surrey).
After having heart surgery my fitness was lacking even more compared to singletrackmind’s, plus my extra 20kg of body…..But having 150/160mm of suspension on my Ripmo helped keep some balance on the way back down 🙂

Cwmcarn was a nice ride and def want to get back and ride the other bits we skipped this time around.

My 1st time to BPW (I know!) and loved it, especially the blues which we did 10 runs on. I tried to ‘push’ myself a bit more and went for a red (Insufficient Funds) and predictably failed and hurt my already damaged shoulder.

At least doing the gap the next day was nice and gentle on the upper body!
We went a fair way up the tramline, but should have stayed closer to the reservoir, looking back on it later we could have carried on and crossed a peak and then re-joined the route, but were were playing it safe. Next time!

Shame about FOD red, was very natural for sure but having spent 5 years clearing my local trails, we both ended up wishing we had brought tools out with us to clear some of the mess…
the Blue was great fun.
I have done some stuff over Mallards Pike but we didn’t want to do “Winch / Plummet” type stuff (That’s what my e-bike is for) and wanted to keep the flow XC feel. Plus they were advising to avoid the area due to forestry works / tree disease.

I know what’s on the Xmas list this year…..A dropper for Singletrackmind!