Which south wales off piste

I’m planning to get out in South Wales on the Monday 3rd July, I’d quite like to go and explore some of the less trail centre sort of stuff. But I’ll be on my own, so somewhere easy to navigate would be a bonus so I don’t spend the day bimbling about lost!

I’m thinking places like Afan Mast, Barry Sidings, Risca, Cwmcarn off-piste. Steep tech is preferred, the more challenging the better! I’ll be on my SC Nomad.

Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations? Bonus points if you’re up for a ride/guiding me 😀

all the places you list are good.

i have a soft spot for Barry’s. So would head there, but as mentioned, its all good!

Thanks! How about in terms of ease of not getting lost?

+1 Barry Sidings is best for your brief.

Really easy to navigate if you have Trailforks.

I’ve not been since September, so I’ll let others recommend what’s riding well at the mo.

Barry Sidings would be my suggestion as a nice compact area with easy climb, loads of steep tech and a brilliant cafe. Also loads of free parking too. Also worth considering as lots of people around so if the worst were to happen your chances of getting some help would be higher than at many of the other off-piste areas like Machen or Afan masts.

EDIT

Also well documented on Trail Forks so you will actually find the trails worth riding.

As a curveball you can spend a good few hours at Deri. Very well built trails with jumps and drops and steep stuff. Definitively a place for your BigBoy pants but very enjoyable., Short easy tarmac climb and all withing a square kilometre of woods. You will be confused and probably never ride the same trail twice. I can PM you details if it sounds interesting. Possibly more for an afternoon than a whole day.

Risca is easy to find, and Afan masts not too bad for that either.

You can park at the Cwmcarn trail centre car park and go up the red trail marked Twrch (or use the tarmac road to the right of it where the cafell and Twrch trails diverge) all the way to the top. Ride a bit of the trail centre from ‘airstream 2’ as a warm up. When you get to a steep concrete ramp after a straight / bumpy section you are right by a tarmac road. If you follow this up the hill (watching for cars coming down as it’s one way and you’re going the wrong way) then at the top the off piste is all to your left and it’s on trail forks. It’s about a 300m drop / climb back up and it’s quite brutal though.

A mate and I rode it earlier in the year and with a lunchtime stop back at the trail centre cafe and then back up I think we did 30k / 1450 ish metres of climbing.

As well as that official off piste there is a load more scattered over the hill – if you find say ‘Conda’ not steep enough then there’s an area called ‘Network R’ that has some steeper stuff with some interesting chutes onto a fireroad. From the concrete ramp I mentioned if you look left there’s a large hill there – the tree section that starts halfway down on the right hand side of it is network r. You can see the mud across the fireroad where the chutes come out.

Also monitoring this because with my new trail bike I want to explore these more.

I went to Cwmcarn on Saturday and found that the off-piste stuff crossing the last section of Twrch before the final downhill was all clearly labelled with ‘Off-Piste – is this for you?’ and an explanation of what that means. Which is great, it constitutes acceptance. I think NRW know which side their bread is buttered on.

When you get to a steep concrete ramp after a straight / bumpy section you are right by a tarmac road. If you follow this up the hill (watching for cars coming down as it’s one way and you’re going the wrong way) then at the top the off piste is all to your left and it’s on trail forks.

That’s where the DH course starts/started isn’t it?

I think you’ve nailed it with masts, barry sidings and risca being the easiest to navigate and very good fun. All very similar in terms of steepness/technicality, with all 3 having mellow and very full on trails. Whichever one is nearest to you would be my recommendation.

Honourable mentions would go to Wentwood, Wyllie, Smilog, Deri, Merthyr Vale, Pontypool, but most of them are harder to navigate than the top 3.

That’s where the DH course starts/started isn’t it?

Most of the Risca off-piste starts off the tarmac road that goes up to the dh track, you’ll see 4 different starts that all branch a couple times.

As above, network R is the steepest stuff at Risca and if you get to the viewpoint at the top of the concrete slab where the Twch meets the road after the first couple descents, go down the steep rocky path in front of you, and its the woods on your left as you’re going down the rocky path.

Thanks gents, this is brilliant and I’ve got a bit of research to do now- Barry Sidings is sounding like the most promising I think but I need to get over for some more day trips and explore some of these other areas!

@welshfarmer,  It’s Joe- one of the old Scouts (going back 15 years now!) who used to camp on your farm, you took us out riding on some local stuff before. I hope you’re both doing well. I’ve not heard of Deri, I’ll take a look but big jumps etc is probably best saved until I’m with a group rather than solo riding!

Barry Sidings is steep and tech enough that on day 4 of a S Wales trip my riding brain could not handle it!

@molgrips – when you get to the top of that tarmac road the left is off piste – to get to the official DH runs you carry on up that road until there is a fireroad on your right. Go up that, past the green metal gate and the start mound is at the top. It drops you straight back to the Cwmcarn trail centre car park. Quite fun that DH run but it’s not steep or wildly tech.

I have done the DH a few times – once on a super light XC race 26er back in the day just to say I’d done it 🙂

These look decent. Look through this guys videos, spoilt for it in S Wales there’s so much!

spoilt for it in S Wales there’s so much!

There is, and more is appearing all the time. It’s insane.

I was thinking, if people are nervous to ride the steeper bits solo, how about a STW day out?

The Garth is good but it’s not as simple to navigate to get all the different good stuff, and it’s not as varied as Barry Sidings which I think best fits the OPs requirements.

As said though, massively spoilt for choice living in Cardiff.

Other places worth a morning and not seen mentioned are Tyn y Coed (both sides of the road) ^ Pentyrch quarry which could be linked into a big ride with the Garth mentioned above.

A personal fav is Draethen woods where there’s a good mix of flowy and steep but unless it’s on trailforks, needs some help to find.

A personal fav is Draethen

Now, do you mean the bit labelled Coed Cefn Pwll Du on the OS maps? Between Machen and Draethen? I am in there frequently! I haven’t seen much steep but it is quite incredible how much flowy stuff they have managed to pack in. I keep discovering new stuff. It’s great now but can be quite greasy in winter.

Yes it looks like it. Signposted Llwyn Hir woods (behind the Maenllwyd pub) at least from the south entrances.

The steep stuff generally comes out onto Rhydyr-y-gwern lane (3 or 4 trails). There are some decent guides to the area on YouTube.

Yeah lots of good flowy stuff in there as well.

how about a STW day out?

Sounds ace 🙂

If I just drive over to Barry Sidings and take any trail I see, will I die?

How steep do you like it? There’s very little there to catch you out, most trails ease in to the steepest stuff except the trails at the very top. Several South Wales places have 1 or 2 that are steeper than anything I’ve ridden at Barry Sidings.

Barry is consistently fairly steep, but has nothing crazy techy. Rossers 2 used to be sketchy but since that was reworked a year or two ago its not too bad.

As above, i think most places have techier stuff than Barry sidings, but the thing with Barry is that every trail is pretty steep.

Network R at Risca, M4 at smilog, Fossil at masts, Garw, and the old side of pontypool spring to mind as being very full on.

I’m heading down to do two days of riding in a couple of weeks. I was going to do a day at bike park wales and then look for some off piste. Is there anything like that close to there?

@dubdubdub Barry Sidings is 12m / 20 minute drive down the A470 from BPW so if your heading home via the M4 it’s only a short detour.

Looks top. I’ll be looking forward to that more than the bike park. Much appreciated

I forgot to update this- I went to Barry Sidings in the end.

Awesome day on the bike, the trails are easy to find and there’s a nice mix- some really nice trails for an enduro bike, a few nice steep techy/rocky bits on the blacks and a good mix of fun but challenging trails on the others. Better than BPW in my opinion, because of the more natural feeling trails.

The chap in the bike shop at the bottom talked me through some of the better trails to get to and gave me a map, although trail forks would have been helpful.

And the cafe does the best burgers in the world!

anyone know these trails? seems to be south wales from the comments but not sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbNMgU8Hc-Y&ab_channel=FlyingMeta

Thosr are the Deri trails i mentioed above. Wasy enough to find and a very compact area. Steep ans can feel quite jumpy though

I’ve seen a few vids on the tube of Deri lately (algorithm’s working) and looks interesting.  Can’t find any location details though.  Is it a secret? Locals or invitation only?

Nah, Not secret or particualrly hard to find. Just locate the town of Deri in the South Wales valleys and then cross reference on Strava heatmaps. There is limited parking at the community centre