Wales – North to South, is this a real route?

This vid claims to be an off road route north to south, but I’m struggling to see how and where the bits are in north Wales / Snowdonia.

What route are they taking?

I’m pretty sure they’re on footpaths* for a lot of it.

I sat down to watch it a few days ago with high hopes, but quite quickly got annoyed with them. I did see a shot of the route and had intended checking it out with a view to using it at some point, but my brain decided they were w£nkers and I couldn’t watch any more.

I also felt it was a mistake to call it ‘The hard way’ when you’re on flippin’ electric bike with a backup crew bringing you spare batteries…

*Not against riding footpsths, but don’t do it like dicks in a sensitive area and plaster a video all over yoochoob.

(Somebody will probably now point out that it’s a perfectly legit route – in which case, “Woo hoo” and “Sorry” 😀 )

Watched that a couple of days ago. I agree it does start badly, so understand not watching it all, but I thought it got better as it went on.

There’s almost certainly a bit of fakery but I think its mostly real. Especially following bridleways that don’t exist on the ground, that happens a lot in the bit if mid Wales I’ve been exploring recently. You can definitely put a good, fully off road route together in the middle. I’m not so familiar with the North or the South but if its anything like the middle then it’ll be possible.

So similar views to me. I was watching it thinking I wasn’t familiar with these BW’s they were riding. When they got to Blaenau Ffestiniog I’m almost 100% convinced they were on private land, and certainly there is no BW in sight.

Doesn’t set a very good example, especially for the brand

They have previous. They did a route starting at my neighbours place. Started straight across his fields (*not even a footpath) and then followed a route we know well, none of which is PROW for bikes. Looked fantastic (it is) but of course every man and his dog was baying to know what the route was and it has definitely seen a lot more traffic since.

There are a couple of gpx files for a route in this thread https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wales-coast-to-coast-buchanan-route/

I had a look at this twenty years ago. I couldn’t see a decent offroad route that avoided dangerous sections of tarmac so I dropped it. BTW I invented the TCW route, when I was working on contract to Powys researching and checking their unsealed roads.
If this route is illegal Chipps should delete the GPX file or he’s an accessory after the fact. No criticism as it’s pretty impossible to keep on top of this sort of garbage.

South Wales part is easy once you get to Talybont by the way, let me know if you want advice on that 🙂

The most MTB-like route down through Wales that I know of is The Cambrian Trail https://cambriantrail.wordpress.com/ I’ve not checked for the exact percentage but there’s very little road most of which are minor lanes.

Dave Buchanan’s c2c route is a cracker… did it over 3 days with a bunch of mates … camped and drank a bit much every night! Particularly interesting evening in Devil’s Bridge when our visit to the pub coincided with school PTA mums meeting/session 😀

“The Hard Way”. Oh dear.

The Snowdonia bit looks like Llanfairfechan up on to Drum then along the Carneddau and along the top of Craig yr Ysfa, the narrow ridge bit at about 7m30 which is definitely footpath. Then it looks like they head down into Ffynnon Llugwy but I’m not sure of an off-road way out of there, just the service road to my knowledge. (Just checked Strava heatmaps and there’s no recorded activity there other than the road) The video then jumps to Blaenau so no indication of how they got between those two points.

Also looking at areas such as getting to Machynlleth from Dyfi Forest would be extremely (as in dubious) interesting to avoid roads.

Apologies I’d assumed the Buchanan route was the subject of the thread

Whitestone is correct.