To keep things simple it would be a trail centre- focussed weekend with Afan and Glywncorrwg making the bread of a sandwich with a bit of natural riding in the ham position. Saturday started, as these adventures often do, on the M4, with a plan to meet a friend on the motorway. This is significantly harder than you might imagine, and it takes a lot of slow driving to link up with someone chasing you down the road at the speed limit, even as you try to coordinate the link by phone. Not far short of the Port Talbot turn-off that we needed I finally saw the welcome sight of the silver car with a bike on the roof in my rear view mirror and I led up to the higher valley centre to introduce a new-comer to Whites Level.
It’s always fun showing someone a ride you love and this was no exception as I pulled him up the climb and then warned him about the downhills. At one point he fell off dramatically and I failed to even notice, which might not have been ideal, but overall I think the ride was a success. It certainly was compared with the second trip out after lunch.
Refuelled with baked potato and lots of cake we cruised down the valley to Afan to have a go at The Wall. Settling into the climb seemed to be going well until I was stopped by a shout from behind. I stopped expecting a puncture, or just tiredness, and eventually rolled back down to see what was up. It turned out the gear hanger had been torn off the bike and there’s little you can really do to fix that out on the trail without a spare hanger and so we agreed to part ways and hopefully meet in the carpark again later. I turned my attention back to climbing as my riding partner scooted off to find his way down the fireroads to the cars.
The ride was fun as expected from a real classic banker of a trail and I got back to the carpark after a small navigation error to find that my car was left alone. This would have been fine apart from my next move. I opened the boot, dumped stuff into it, then closed the boot to get the bike on the roof. At this point I realised my keys were in the boot. And the boot was locked. Cursing the weird combination of actions I’d managed to achieve this and massively grateful that I had my phone in my pocket still, I rang the Audi Assist people, and shivered in the late April afternoon as I waited for them to turn up.
Finally, with my car broken into and me back in warmer and less sweaty clothes I was able to head off and get ready for the next day’s ride. These two had been dry and gave a hint of summer.
The next day was less summery and smashed any idea I might have been holding of a dry weekend in Wales and an early summer. With my brother in tow this time I headed to a loop of Llangorse Reservoir on the Brecons to get a bit of a natural riding fix.
Through the drizzle and kitted up for winter this was a fun, muddy, big-feeling ride. It included rolling singletrack, big climbs, great moorland descents and vide open views. We managed to avoid the worst of the weather and rolled round a fantastic low-level Brecons ride, probably the best choice given the threatening weather on the higher land. It felt like proper riding and a great ride to do with someone else.
The theme of the weekend was definitely deteriorating weather and Monday morning was no disappointment on that front. Which is to say the weather was a huge disappointment. We went back to Afan to give the new version of the oldest trail a go. Penhydd was one of the first trails at the centre and has recently been given a makeover to appeal more to modern tastes. The new version is is easy to love with a rolling start and solid fireroad climb, before serving up fun sections of berms, jumps and rolling fast trails down the hill, interspersed with more fireroad climbing. All brilliant apart from the weather. It went from light bearable drizzle in the valley to a peak of being battered by horizontal rain with visibility down to maybe 50 metres. It was so bad it required a large amount of stopping to check we were still even on the same trail.
We battered down the hill with only the excellent trail keeping any sense of humour around it, getting wetter and wetter and struggling more and more to ride well. Finally back at the carpark I managed not to lock myself out of the car and also managed to get entirely changed in the back of my brother’s van, before pooling our limited cash and swallowing down pasties and cake before the long drive back to London.
The standard was set for the riding this summer, and the weather could only get better.
A
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