Gwydyr Marin Mountain Bike Trail    Back to: Gwydyr Marin Mountain Bike Trail     Home

Weather or not?
Turn across the famous bridge in the Betws town centre and drive two miles until you see the Forestry Commission sign (confusingly not marked Gwydyr). A short drive up this steep little access road brings you to the small Gwydyr car park outside the Forestry Commission office, empty when we arrived one fine Sunday morning, 10AM. The weather report was as usual, almost, but not quite, exactly unlike the perfect sunshine we found there.
Carniverous insects
Things were really hoting up by the time we bounced out of the car and ripped our bikes from the rack. A pair of happy looking horses snorted at us from the meadow. It dawned on me that they were happy because we were attracting the hordes of local midges from their itchy hides... We went in to a frenzy of repellent spraying till there was more chemical than oxygen in our vicinity and even the horses were repelled, cantering off in apparent distaste. I slipped on the tiny lightweight camera rucksack (Ha!) and we sped off up the forest road climb. After a short while we stopped speeding and just trundled, which soon became a crawl, ouch this is surely a climb of Trans-Alpine proportions. Seemingly days later the climb ends with a pair of characteristic Gwydyr singletracks.
Death of a thousand cuts...
The first forks back from a fire road with a splendid view to help compensate for your flayed calves, almost double wide in places it tempts you to push the speed limits and go for broke. Which you could soon be, the cambered trail surface is higher than the surrounding ground, it's borders fringed with meaty, almost knife edged rocks. So you'd better not lose it down here then. About this point we started meeting other riders and having set off from an empty car park we were a bit surprised, it seems the locals enter the trail from more than one starting point. Crossing a forest road bags the second trail with a more 'woodsy z-bends and switchbacks' feel. Forest roads bring you to a gentle descent through young conifers, short but sweet. The following section of single is Gwydyr's jewel in the crown, the view is simply stunning and it doesn't hurt that it's a rolling, not too technical section so you can take one, or even both eyes off the trail.
Herbal remedy
At the bottom is a huge wooden bench, named Spliff bench by the locals as it's perfect for a chill out session if you haven't already had enough of the fabulous view, we certainly hadn't. We raced on through another section with a good jump then a short tarmac section and fire road climb before a ridge descent. This is really a bit of a beauty, built on the crest of a ridge top it's not steep but cuts dramatically in to solid rock, crossing the ridge itself twice in spectacular fashion. Fast and furious, we found it a bit pedally on the second lap, but it goes to show just how great a trail can be built without losing too much altitude. The middle section of the ride seems to have more forest road than average, there's room here for more singletrack descending if access rights and environmental constraints allow it. Remember that heinous climb at the beginning? Much of that height has been maintained so after a short singletrack climb the massive down turn begins. If you had any doubts about the caliber of this ride they will probably disappear on here. With humps, berms and jumps this is one amazing roller coaster ride and it goes on for a long time, very sweet. It does suffer with slippery mud when wet, we're not sure if the builders intend to add rock to the surface, good luck to them if they do it'll take forever! The course is pretty thirsty work, there are no caf' stops and on the day we were there the sun was taking no prisoners, we were truly glad of our chilled flasks and bottles of water when we got back to the car. Best advice is to take a cool box full of your favorite food and drinks and some of those dinky frozen brick things, you'll be thankful for it. The loop took us a little under 3 hours, the fit and less photographically challenged would make it in a little over two. So this is a two lap ride then, unless you brought the wife and kids along. We certainly managed it, even taking slightly less time for the second circuit than the first. As a bonus the somewhat slippery final descent had dried out nicely and we doubled our speed for even more high berming, aerial thrills.
Rumour has it that three local trails including the Gwydyr North we rode are to be linked in to one mega-trail, we'll be there!