Today after breakie the plan was to head north for the coed y brenin trail centre to ride the last trail of the weekend .
Al recomended the "dragons back " over the "beast " as he reconed it was roughly the same just a few km's shorter in fire road .
At over 30km's and graded black extreme againt it looked just the job .
Jerry had already left for home , Al was not going to join us having a wedding do on the sat , but Ryan was not fit and ready for the next big trail . We left John D to continue chilling on the beach front while we moved off in convoy heading North .
Took a while to drive there but the scenery was great heading up over Cadr Idris with Dave and his Nikon hanging out the van window firing off some shots . Nobby led the way in his "noddy van" and kept pulling away on the hills in his new found power wagon , bring back the 45mph transit I say [
]Eventually we arrive get geared up and get the first little task out of the way , that is power wash the stinky's off and relube , their heavy enough without an extra 2lb of mud to start off [
]Bikes cleaned and lubed up we where ready to go and tackle the "dragons back " trail .
Right from the centre the trail felt good with some really good sections taking you out from the start under a giant pair of forks gently flowing you up and down . Many km's passed by with ease leaving loads of big grins from the switch backs and berms .
All was going well untill exiting out on some tarmac for a big long climb , followed by some more climb , followed by some more climbing fire road , followed by a huge loop out and back all on a fire road bringing us back to roughly where we started climbing the tarmac hill[xx(][
]A few locals told us then that the loop was [xx(]a waste of space unless you wanted fire road and they just come straigh up the hill cutting in all out (next time then) ....
From here on back down the valley was a hoot , section after section of fast flowing single track , all oddly named after adams family members .
Cuaught some more locals up just towards the very bottom who showed us an old unused variant which they decribed as "seat down , and knarly " obviously not cwmcarn regulars !
From the valley floor theres one last mother of a fire road loop back upwards , from here on in it was true
"lets stick together bwa style " and Nobby and Rob pulled away , me and Dave grunted up behind and left the "one armed bandit " behind .
Once the top was reached there was a few more nice little sectons before coming out back at the centre .
Just about caught last orders (sod all left anyway) but it was a good 40 mins before Ryan turned up after taking a short cut back [?]
This was the best trial of the 3 and well worth the trip up.[^]
Time was pushing on and everybody was keen to head home , except Nobby who made one last call to try and camp one more night and take in another trail , but we where all done for and another every man for himself sharp exit was made ...
Trip back was quicker than expected , not shure which way we came back , just followed the nice lady directing on the sat nav [
] to get back in just over 3hrs .Total mileage drivng up and around, including down to Cardiff for Dave 265 miles which averaged out at 34mpg.
Return trip to Cardiff and back home for me 157 at 27mpg which I suppose now bad for an old Fiat aproaching 200,0000 miles young.
Could not of asked for a better biking weekend 3 days of gloriously sunny weather , with 6 other adrenalin junkies for company , some great laughs ..[
]Roll on the 2009 trip [^]