We headed up for a weekend in North Wales with the Avon Mountaineering Club, however given the poor forecast we elected to take our bikes as a better poor weather option than walking in the cloud and the rain.
Coed-y-Brenin
On the way up we stopped off at Coed-y-Brenin for some quick trail centre action. We started off on the Minotaur which is a fantastic blue. Nothing too hard, but plenty of fun for all biking abilities with lots of little jumps, berms, interesting climbs and brilliant scenery.
With the short daylight hours Katherine and I then decided to do a short route in order to make the most of the remaining weather. So we headed off to do Temtiwr which was a serious step up from the Minotaur, but was brilliant fun right from the start with plenty of technical rock sections. The climb in the middle was a chore, but the final descent was well worth the effort!
We made it back in good time and go to our accommodation before the deluge started. The same cannot be said for everyone on our trip.
The Snowdon Ranger
My aim for the trip had always been to ride the Snowdon Ranger, the classic technical descent from the summit of Snowdon. However when we left Bristol I had assumed that it wasn’t going to happen because of the weather.
Katherine and I formulated our plans while watching the disastrous rugby world cup final, and we elected just to go for it! After quickly getting ready we were soon on our bikes, and I was regretting the beer from the previous evening.
We started at the bottom of the Snowdon Ranger path, which we followed up until the branch off towards Llanberis, and then headed up the Llanberis path to the summit of Snowdon.
The initial climb was up an excellent path, but it was unrelenting and fairly steep, or at least that’s what it felt like! Eventually we got to the start of the descent down into Llanberis, and what a descent it was. It was certainly a great way to warm up, and we were both glad we did it this way around, rather than warming up on the technical descending on the summit of Snowdon.
The climb out of Llanberis was difficult, with some of the route ridable, but plenty not. This was made even worse by the unrelenting rain which had us soaked. After questing my judgement about this being a good idea multiple times, we eventually made it to the top.
After a quick summit selfie we started the long descent, the initial section from the summit of Snowdon was very technical with lots of rock steps, but it was easier to ride than we were expecting having just pushed our bikes up it.
Unfortunately due to the conditions, and the fun of the cycling there are no photos on the interesting sections of biking.
The rest of the Snowdon Ranger was simply divine. Drop offs, loose sections, fast sections, rocks & steep sections just to name a few of the attributes. It was over unfortunately fast, with just a few sections which were rolled rather than ridden.
All that was left was then the fast decent down the good track back to the car.
Rhinog Fawr
On the last day, despite the bad weather forecast we headed off on a group walk up Rhinog Fawr which was planned by Becky. Given the conditions there were no photos, but it was an enjoyable day out with some lovely autumnal views.
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