Cubist
Still wavin'
- Location
- Ovver 'thill
Cubester and I took ourselves off to N Wales on Monday for a couple of days' fishing and MTB'ing. Great little campsite, shout up if you need a recommendation to a smart, clean, quiet mixed campsite on a working farm.....
Absolute highlight of the break was riding the Marin Trail
http://www.mbwales.com/en/content/cms/bases/betws_y_coed/marin_trail/marin_trail.aspx
on Tuesday afternoon.
It's billed on various sites as a good 'un, but both Cubester and I have voted it one of the best we've ever ridden. It has some truly long dull climbs (the start is about 20-25 minutes of granny grinding on forest tracks
) but the rewards are great long sections of truly challenging singletrack.
Pigs might fly is the first section after the opening climb, and it was a bit of a surprise to be launched down steep, rocky, slate strewn singletrack. I was riding the 140mm Canyon for the first time on anything fast and loose, having only really ridden it locally up to press. Needless to say I overcooked the third bend and missed a line around a large boulder in the middle of the trail. I am pleased to say it's possible to unclip both feet and swing them forward as the back wheel rose up behind my head, the front wheel planted solidly in a large rock. I'm not sure frame makers measure stand over height from headtube to a point in front of the front hub but I ended up standing on the rock with the bike vertical behind me, bars across my knees. If nothing else it's taught me to moderate my braking more than before.
The complete trail is a treat, with very much a "saw-tooth" profile, climb followed by tricky descent, followed by climb, followed by rocky descent. It was tight, it was technical, and the bike behaved impeccably. Cubester reports that although it was well within the capabilities of his hooligan Ragley, the length and sheer amount of rock meant he was pretty beaten up by the end. It's probably best ridden with a bit of travel, not exactly hardtail heaven. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to take the Cube round it.
Pandora's Rocks, Dragon's Tail, Pixies' Paradise, all named sections where the trail builders have managed to incorporate rocks in extremely entertaining ways, with some sections of "brake here and I'll die" and "how the hell did we make it through there alive" but all exhilarating stuff.
I love berms and there were some which incorporated slabs of rock, and some steep sided hardpack ones. I was amused (and occasionally horrified) to see tyre marks heading off on completely the wrong line off the middle of the berms themselves, where hapless souls had launched off the apex into the undergrowth/trees/oblivion!
The climax is the last big descent where the trail had, according to locals, been washed out over recent years. Now however there are a series of rock steps, doubles, triples, all perfectly rideable but where speed rewards the brave. A series of switchbacks and some more berms, followed by more rocks...... we ended up in the car park grinning from ear to ear, all the horrible grinding climbs forgiven if not forgotten.
Absolute highlight of the break was riding the Marin Trail
http://www.mbwales.com/en/content/cms/bases/betws_y_coed/marin_trail/marin_trail.aspx
on Tuesday afternoon.
It's billed on various sites as a good 'un, but both Cubester and I have voted it one of the best we've ever ridden. It has some truly long dull climbs (the start is about 20-25 minutes of granny grinding on forest tracks
) but the rewards are great long sections of truly challenging singletrack. Pigs might fly is the first section after the opening climb, and it was a bit of a surprise to be launched down steep, rocky, slate strewn singletrack. I was riding the 140mm Canyon for the first time on anything fast and loose, having only really ridden it locally up to press. Needless to say I overcooked the third bend and missed a line around a large boulder in the middle of the trail. I am pleased to say it's possible to unclip both feet and swing them forward as the back wheel rose up behind my head, the front wheel planted solidly in a large rock. I'm not sure frame makers measure stand over height from headtube to a point in front of the front hub but I ended up standing on the rock with the bike vertical behind me, bars across my knees. If nothing else it's taught me to moderate my braking more than before.
The complete trail is a treat, with very much a "saw-tooth" profile, climb followed by tricky descent, followed by climb, followed by rocky descent. It was tight, it was technical, and the bike behaved impeccably. Cubester reports that although it was well within the capabilities of his hooligan Ragley, the length and sheer amount of rock meant he was pretty beaten up by the end. It's probably best ridden with a bit of travel, not exactly hardtail heaven. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to take the Cube round it.
Pandora's Rocks, Dragon's Tail, Pixies' Paradise, all named sections where the trail builders have managed to incorporate rocks in extremely entertaining ways, with some sections of "brake here and I'll die" and "how the hell did we make it through there alive" but all exhilarating stuff.
I love berms and there were some which incorporated slabs of rock, and some steep sided hardpack ones. I was amused (and occasionally horrified) to see tyre marks heading off on completely the wrong line off the middle of the berms themselves, where hapless souls had launched off the apex into the undergrowth/trees/oblivion!
The climax is the last big descent where the trail had, according to locals, been washed out over recent years. Now however there are a series of rock steps, doubles, triples, all perfectly rideable but where speed rewards the brave. A series of switchbacks and some more berms, followed by more rocks...... we ended up in the car park grinning from ear to ear, all the horrible grinding climbs forgiven if not forgotten.
