The second stop on the Welsh journey was for many the birthplace of the UK trail centre idea. Coed Y Brenin on the edge of Snowdonia was the first of the Forestry Commission centres to embrace mountain biking, and it now has routes to rival any in Wales, for all standards.
Our first choice was the old Red Bull trail, now renamed the Tarw Trail but still black-graded. It’s only a standard 20km long, but was brutal in places on hardtails, climbing and then dropping through rocky singletrack sections and never really allowing you to relax into a downhill by keeping you on your toes all the time. It works its way back and forth across the hill leaving you a little disorientated before it dives back to the valley bottom on paths made up of large slabs of rock that test your suspension to the full if you ride them fast.
After a recovery lunch we split up and I rode the short but very fun Temtiwr trail as a warm down. At only about 7km and red graded it was a chance to let the bike flow and enjoy the last of the centre without running out of energy for what was left in the week.
Coed Y Brenin might be the oldest of the trail centres, but that makes it no less fun and challenging than any other. It deserves its place in mountain biking history and I only wish we could have ridden more there.
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