The comparison of handbags and bicycles is nonsensical on utility grounds alone.

A handbag, no matter how expensive, has no more utility than a 10p ASDA bag-for-life.

Divorce your wife immediately.

Fill your boots…

[list]https://www.jejamescycles.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=trek+bolts+suspension[/list]

Your pointing out the lads in hoodies were “Eastern European” is very telling.

I find it absolutely extraordinary that a Cardiff-based MTBer would be unaware of Van Road.

Have the people here arguing against stopping on a fixed brakeless bike ever ridden one for a number of months and have any experience in stopping one?

This is the same lack of self-awareness that leads people to think “I can see they set this variable motorway speed limit to 40mph because of this blizzard but that’s for all the shit drivers, not an awesome driver like what I am.”

Is there much singletrack on this sportive?

If no, who gives a ****.

Samcheese endorses this post.

I’d recommend the Twrch too. You can slack off most of the singletrack climb by riding up the forest road running parallel to the left of the official trail. Ride up about 1km from the tollbooth and take the first junction on your right. Keep an eye out on your left (about 100m from the junction) and rejoin the singletrack.

If you build or ride in managed woodland, sooner or later your trails will be ruined by forestry operations.

You might as well whinge about the rain deliberately eroding your trails.

So, in conclusion you don’t ride other peoples routes and your plan is to ride other people’s routes at trail centres and are asking other people’s advice on routes between the centres which you will reject as they are other people’s routes.

Too easy, and I do my own routes, not other people’s.

You are awesome, obviously, but isn’t it going to take a lot of effort to build your own trials at all these trail centres you’re planning to visit?

I’m running a 32T Superstar NW and a non-clutch XT rear mech.

I installed a chain device ‘cos I had one but I’m pretty confident I don’t need it. Might be a glad of it once stuff starts to wear I guess.

Recently bodged up a 1×9 to get an old bike running while another was in the bike hospital.

Turns out 1×9 is absolutely fine.

That’s a great ride – I can never make the right hand at the top of the quarry climb though – its always to eroded. Is the flat bit along top of quarry accessible now – it was impossible to get through cos of the security fence last time I was there (over a year ago)

It was open last night!

That right-hander’s not too bad at the moment – the gully’s filled in a bit.

Seeing as this is apparently a MTB forum:

Ty Nant to Garth Trig

Cefn Onn Climb

Here’s a tidy loop for you:

Minehead Cream Tea Loop

Done it hard tail but I’d go FS.

Yes.

I have.

To be accurate – or pedantic – neither Cafall or Twrch are ‘fully open’.

Once you finish the initial singletrack climb out of the car park, you are diverted onto a double track down to the road. Until it reopens I’ll be riding up the road to the start of the ‘proper’ climbs.

This ride would be rigid-friendly (perhaps leaving out the Cwmcarn loop)…

Cardif > Cwmcarn Loop

I come down the Taff Trail to the bridge at Blackweir..its the same every year in September with students..

The students on the Taff Trail twist my fricking melon. Walking 6 abreast all looking at their bloody phones, resentful that a bicycle might be travelling toward them on a cycle path. Bunch of turnips.

I appreciate that Wales is a small country but Snowden or Sintog are a 4 hour drive from BPW. Even Nant y Arian or Rhayader is a couple of hours in the car.

It like suggesting people heading for the Forest of Dean pop over to the Peak District for a quick spin.

Stick to Afan, Cwmcarn or one of the Beacons / Black Mountain classics.

Check out the “seller’s other items”. Bloody hell.

This is the wrong way, but it is a mostly off road route.

It’ll be a horrific climb out of Mach mind.

jekkyl – Member

I’ve ridden a great deal of ncn8 (lon las) and you. are. punished. for hills. I actually rode from dolgellau to machynlleth yesterday and it’s hellish, honestly it is a nightmare. Straight out of Dolgellau it is almost a vertical up for at least 3/4 miles and the downhill isn’t that rewarding. I’ve also done Welshpool down to cardiff on ncn 8 too and the hills are punishing. I pictured the sustrans staff having a wicked laugh between themselves as they pick the biggest hills to route the path on. It’s the annoying kind of Up down up down rather than the up up up and down down down.

You’re not wrong.

For example, on the run in to Harlech, to avoid perhaps a kilometre on a ‘main’ road, Sustrans divert you up a sustained and brutal climb: double chevron, single chevron, double chevron. It’s horrific.

GregMay – Member

Yeah…good luck with that. I did it last summer in July…it was still a swamp.

Unlucky. I rode it last June and it was a dust-fest.

molgrips – Member

Machen is a village, there are some natural trails on the mountain above it, as there are on most of the hills in Wales

Those jumps and berms above Machen are ‘natural’ are they? How extraordinary.

Or is this another ‘joke’ that no-one with a normally functioning brain could find funny or indeed identify as intended to be a joke?

philwarren11 – Member

Wyllie, Machen, Castle Coch and Smilog.

Brilliant. Do you think it likely that someone coming to South Wales for the weekend will have sufficient local knowledge to find this in any way helpful?

Easiest would be to do something like Whites and Blade on Saturday, Penhydd and Y Wal on Sunday.

Day 1: Train to Cardiff, then change for local shunter to Merthyr. Do the Beacons Gap Ride (or some variant thereof). Go on the lash.

Day 2: Join the Sarn Helen somewhere near Brecon / Libanus and it’s 90% off road to Neath. Train back to London.

If Day 1 hasn’t destroyed your CX bike, Day 2 will.

Last week, I was riding the W2 at Afan with some mates. On a very fast part of ‘Windy Point’ a nice lady had stopped her pannier-laden bike to have some fun with her three dogs which were leaping around oblivious to the danger of bikes hurtling towards them.

Her bike, which was helpfully left leaning against the banking and partially in the trail, was pointing ‘up’, against the direction of travel.

What can we conclude from this? Nothing.

But I do hate dogs, though. They stink.

What P-Jay means it is easy to slack off most of the relatively tricky / knackering singletrack climbs by smashing straight up the fire road that runs parallel to the Forest Drive.

This applies to both the Cafall and Twrch.

Easy when you look at the cost of parking

How long will it take for you to save up the £3 it costs to park all day at Cwmcarn? Admittedly, this is ruinously expensive compared to the £1 a day at Afan.

My idea’s would be to log on to a road riding forum to get some nice idea’s.

Thi’s i’s a forum for mountain bike’s.

Presumably you could bring yourself to ‘do’ Strava to the extent that you click on the link, look at the map and plot the route it describes onto an OS map?

That ride is a nightmare.

This is the Strava of another – much better- ride that used to feature on the MBWales sire referenced above. I’m not sure why it’s deleted – it’s all still open and ridable.Quite tough climbs but great descents.

It’s pretty exposed up there – as you’d expect – with no scoff opportunities on route.

Link to the ride wot I don

I rode it on Friday.

I thought it was excellent – especially The Rock and Happy Life.

The chap I passed on Happy Life on his ‘first ever mountain bike ride’ looked a little overwhelmed.

This reminds me of the I-Spy books that were all the rage when I was a lad.

I can tick off: mucky book photoshoot, blow-job in progress, illegal rave, filming(Dr.Who) and medieval roleplaying ****.

Can you beat this, though? In a clearing in woods north of Cardiff I see two women enraptured by the crazy-eyed topless man in a kilt who is serending them with a version of ‘Do ya think I’m sexy” on the bagpipes.

We use Moorhouse Campsite in Holford. Excellent location for the hills and great facilities.

I haven’t used them, but they’ve got camping pods too.

My tip would be the Hood Arms in Kilve. The Plough in Holford is much nearer, but the Hood is defintely worth the extra walk.

You cant get any more cycling-friendly than Cafe Velo in Llantwit Major.

https://www.facebook.com/cafevelo.info

You might be in luck at Cafe Velo in Llantwit Major.

Frankly I won’t ride it again until we have a dry spell.

As far as I’m concerned the big plus of trail centres is the surfaces tend to hold up well in the wet. If I want to slog through mud I can ride local trails on Caerphilly Mountain.

On the other side the Twrch and Y Mynnydd were dry, fast and empty.

Try this for a start. I think an ex-cabinet minister would know more than some cycling enthusiasts.

The argument from authority – the UFO nutjob’s go-to logical fallacy of choice.