Sussex-MTB

Day 1

The alarm woke me at an ungodly 5am on the Friday morning, I crawled out of bed and got dressed with my riding gear under my usual clothes. Half asleep I had a final check around the house to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything before climbing in to the fully laiden car for the short trip to collect Jim from his home. He was ready to go when I got there and it wasn’t long before we were underway, next stop Maccy D’s Arundel. We arrived at just before 6am and found Mullet & Mike already there waiting to get their coffee fix and we were soon joined by Chard & ASBO followed closely by CTD. By then Maccy’s was open and it was time for coffee while we waited for Bobster, Martin & Damo to show up. After 30mins of hanging around consuming coffee and breakfast Jim decided to find out when Martin & Co had got to, Southampton. They had forgotten to stop at Maccy D’s so we bundled in to our cars and hit the road with the idea of meeting them at a services on the M4 before heading on to Cwm Carn.

We arrived at the trail centre after meeting up with Martin & Co at the services where we sold our souls in order to afford coffee & cake. By the time we pulled into Cwm Carn trail centre car park Tony & his mate Kev were already there getting ready as was Dougal and by the time we had finished fettling Tony, Kev & ASBO were already heading for the uplift service which was to take them to the top of the downhill course. The rest of us would make our own way up the mountain by following the Twrch Trail.

On the climb

We headed of up the marked route and it wasn’t long before we started to gain some serious altitude and had our first mechanical of the day with Mikes gold bling chain letting go but, powerlink installed, we were quickly on our way again.

The climb to the top took the best part of an hour and by the time we got to there the sun had burnt most of the early cloud away and we were left with some magnificent views of the Welsh hillsides. At the top of the Twrch Trail is a freeride park with 3 ladder drops of various heights and a short freeride course. We spent about an hour or so playing on the ladder drops, well everyone else did except for me who just couldn’t bring myself to go off even the small one despite a couple of aborted run ups. One thing that I did learn while watching everyone session the ladders is that a tubeless tyre sounds like a 12 bore shot gun when it explodes as ASBO’s front tyre exploded off of the rim and showered a bystander with Stan’s juice, quite amusing.

Send it

With ASBO’s wheel back up and running we headed off down the freeride course with me bringing up the rear, not feeling comfortable with the tabletops and loose surfaced berms where it felt like the front end was washing out all the time. At the bottom of the freeride trail I dived straight into the Twrch Trail again and headed off as fast as I could after the others who by now were out of sight, or so I thought. I rode for a mile or so of typically sweet Welsh singletrack without a break before stopping, realising that maybe the rest of the group had not gone on ahead.

I waited for about 10 mins before the group caught me up and after refuelling on energy bars and Jelly Babies we set off for the long final decent round the side of the hill to the trail centre. The final decent is fantastically quick with switchbacks linked together with nice long flowing bits and I found myself riding at the limit of my ability coming out of the bottom with a huge grin on my face, next time I go to Cwm Carn I will book the uplift so I can ride the decent a few times it was that good.

Mouth full of jelly babies

By the time we had finished the Twrch Trail some were ready for a late lunch and the rest of us decided to hike up the DH course to the road crossing section before riding back down. We waited for the uplift riders to all come down with various degrees of success and witnessed a couple of decent wipeouts before deciding to roll down the bottom part of the DH Course which is bigger than it looks on the videos you will find on the internet.

All safely back at the bottom we packed the cars up and went for some well deserved cake and coffee at the trail centre café before heading off to the rather grand accommodation that Damo had sorted out for us at Afan, nice one Damo. We arrived at our digs unpacked and checked the bikes over before heading off in to Port Talbot to find the local Tescos, why is it that 90% of welsh women under 40 are orange? We stocked up on supplies for the weekend and returned to the house.

The Friday evening was spent chilling with a few beers and some banter before we were joined by Hoops & Marko who had driven up after work for the Saturday & Sunday’s riding.

Bottoms up

Day 2

This was the day I had really been looking forward to, Brecfa. Having seen the internet videos it looked awesome. Situated in the South East of Wales it takes about an hour to get to from Afan so after a quick breakfast we hit the road and arrived at the car park for The Raven Trail around 10ish and to my surprise it was almost empty. Shortly after we arrived we were joined by Deadly, Chris & Jo who had traveled down that morning.

Crew

The Raven Trail is graded as a black run and is the most technical trail I have ever ridden and am ever likely to, it really made me ride out of my comfort zone at times, it is bigger than it looks on those videos but great fun if you have the guts to just go with it. There are several seriously large switchbacks sections which corkscrew at insane angles down the mountain as well as some massive table tops to catch out those riders who have more balls than skill, I decided not to fully commit to them having landed front wheel first on one of the early ones which made me realise that this place will bite you if you are not careful.

The Raven Trail is one of those where it’s difficult to describe individual sections so I won’t bother other than to say that it seems to go on for ever with some long climbs and equally long technical singletrack decents which had one or two of us off and/or walking.

Chard

All too soon we were back at the car park where we found some of the others who had gone on ahead chilling out eating lunch before heading off to ride the Gorlech Trail. I myself was really feeling the physical riding of The Raven along with Cwm Carn so along with some of the others decided to head back to the house to chill out, eat the cake that Jo’s mum had made (I still think she should adopt me) and drink tea all washed down with a healthy slice of double entndre courtesy of Deadly, Bobster and Dougal for the rest of the afternoon safe in the knowledge that I still had two further days riding in front of me.

Later in the afternoon those that had ridden the Gorlech returned at which point it was time say farewell to Tony & Kev who headed off home before the rest of us headed up to the Glencorrwg cafe for dinner and a beer.

Day 3

It had been decided that we would stay local for Sunday despite my offer to drive back to Brechfa as I fancied trying out The Gorlech and I have to say that I am glad we did as Sunday proved to be the best days riding as far as I was concerned.

The group decided to split up in to two rides with some opting to ride up to the Whites Level climb at Glencorrwg while the rest of us spun down to Afan to tackle The Wall and it wasn’t long before we were on the long fireroad climb towards the first singletrack section with Deadly winding up a local lycra boy. The climb up to the top of the Wall is not the most thrilling but is pleasant enough with a mix of singletrack sections and long fireroads which give you the chance to take in the views and have a social chat.

Once at the top of the climb you meet up with the road which links The Wall to Whites Level and forms the W2 trail. Rather than heading off to do the Whites Level Black Run and Windy Point descents we decided to carry on with The Wall trail and so headed off into the singletrack for some swoopy lushness and a couple of photo ops.

Deadly

After a couple of sections we came to The Graveyard which I guess gets its name from the huge slabs of rock that litter the trail and make this a real challenge but massively fun when taken at a decent speed. At the end of this section of trail we stopped for a breather and it was at this point that the group which did the Whites Level climb caught us up having come across the W2 link before coming down The Wall.

So as one large group of about 15 riders we headed off down the final section of The Wall which is aptly named Zigzag as it is a series of switchbacks linked together by long open singletrack sections that take you down the hill at a fair old pace before diving into the wood for the final run in. I had made the mistake of not taking up my normal place towards the back of the group for these sections and found myself setting of after Mullet who is no slouch downhill and being closely followed by Dougal & Deadly who are both easily quicker than me especially downhill but I pushed on determend not to hold them up and came out of the final gate with them both seeming surprised at how quickly I had been going which I was quite chuffed about. I’m never going to be as quick as some downhill but feel that I rode that section about as well as I could.

Once everyone was back together we headed off to the Afan Trail Centre for a spot of lunch before some of us headed out to ride Penhydd in the afternoon and others headed off back to the house to pack their stuff ready to head home that afternoon.

Scrapheap challenge

I rode Penhydd last time I was in Wales in December and have to say that, although I enjoyed it, I did struggle with it a bit as I was not used to riding on frozen trails and so was quite cautious as to how much grip there would be. As a result I was looking forward to riding it in dry dusty conditions.

With the climbs out of the way and the first section of trail dispatched we soon arrived at Hidden Valley which I wasn’t looking forward to as there is one section of it which is like riding along a 3ft wide ledge dropping about 20ft straight down, not good for someone who doesn’t like heights but it was dry and fast so was out of the way quickly.

After the fear of Hidden Valley is one of the best sections of trail that I have ever ridden and I knew that Sidewinder wasn’t going to disappoint being that it had been dry and sunny for a good few days now and the surface was going to be nothing other than fast and grippy. I went ahead to get some photos of the guys hooning along and with the shots safely in the bag set off after the group. It wasn’t long before I had caught and passed Chard who I think was suffering from a lack of brakes to be fair to him but I was really going for it wanting to ride this section as fast as I could rather than just sitting and spinning. At the end of Sidewinder is Dead Sheep Gulley and Chris had pulled over for some reason so I nipped in front of him and set of at the same speed I had ended Sidewinder with. Much to my surprise I soon caught sight of Bobster who was not riding as quickly as normal and passed him to continue along the trail coming out at the end of it with a massive grin on my face and hands shaking from the adrenaline I was feeling.

The rest of the trail was ridden at a similar pace as the last 2 sections and a comment was even made by Bobster about how far I had launched a certain slab drop at the start of one section of singletrack.

Back at the café we pulled in and chilled out with a well deserved Magnum before heading off to the house to say fairwell to Deadly, Jimbo, Jo & CTD with Mullet having already headed off home. It wasn’t long before we were relaxing with a Vodka & Tonic and settling into our final evening.

Day 4

Knowing we had to be out of the house by 10am we woke early and started to sort our stuff out. The house seemed very empty having had 16 people there the day before. We packed our stuff quickly and headed off up the valley to Glencorrwg to ride Skyline which involves the Whites Level climb and then some. I wouldn’t say that overall Skyline is the best trail I have ridden as there is a lot of fire road riding, most of it climbing. However, the sections of singletrack that are there are very sweet and go someway to making up for all the climbing. After 3 days of solid riding some of us were feeling it in our legs so it was decided that we would head for the cars at the first short cut rather than continue round the trail which, given that it started raining as we reached the cars, was just as well.

My overriding memory of Skyline was the final 2 sections of singletrack which take you down to the car park and features some small rock garden type features which I have to be honest and say that I walked as the front of the bike seemed very low and kept pitching me forwards. Having been over the bars already on an earlier rocky section I wasn’t keen to repeat the feat. I later realised that I had my forks wound right down which may have explained a thing or two.

Safely back at the cars we loaded up and pilled into the café to stock up on food before the long journey back home.

All in all this was a fantastic weekend of riding with blue sky on most day’s. It stayed dry ALL weekend, which for early April in south Wales must be rare so the trails were fantastically quick and grippy. The company was also top notch and the accommodation first class. I know I am not alone in saying a huge thank you to Damo for arranging and paying for the digs.

Hopefully it won’t be too long before we head back to Wales and a must ride for that trip will be Brechfa, its better than it looks in the videos.

BigSi

(More pics here)