Old School! – The Marin Trail

The oldest purpose built trail in the country?  Perhaps not, but it must be one of the more famous early mountain bike trails built in the UK that is still in regular use.

It’s fair to say I’m pretty familiar with the Marin trail, build in the edges of the Gwydr Forest at Llanrwst in North Wales.  It was the nearest trail to where I grew up and I’ve ridden it on a variety of bikes with a bunch of different people in all kinds of weather over the years.

As trail centres go, it barely qualifies.  Originally the car park was more of a layby although today the facilities have expanded to include a proper purpose built car park and... and, well that’s about it.

The evening before, following Llandegla and Delamere, I’d had to do some emergency surgery to my rear wheel using a vice.  Brutal but effective. It completely held up all day too with not so much as a hint of my brakes rubbing. 

The heavens opened as I was approaching and I sat in the car for a few minutes in the car park hoping the rain would go away.  Just as I’d built up the resolve to get soaked and had started assembling my kit, the rain gradually stopped and the sun tentatively peeked out.  It turned into a lovely day.

I love this view!
I may have moaned a bit about the first climb at Llandegla, but nowhere I’ve ever ridden has a climb like the fist one out of the car park on the Marin.  I’ve always ground slowly up it but it really is a killer, sit there and spin sort of a climb.

But, the reason this is all good is that the quality of the single track at the end of each section of fireroad climb is excellent.  True virtually all the singletrack is downhill, but is that such a loss?  Around 2000/2001 I’d ride this on a Marin B-17 and it was a great choice for this trail, light enough to climb but enough suspension to make the descents super fun.

I don’t think much maintenance is carried out on this trail but you know what?  I don’t think it has really suffered.  Other trails seems to get ruined with braking bumps and pot holes but the singletrack on this beast just seems to survive and it’s as rideable today as it ever was in my opinion.  It’s like some primal force is keeping it going, ready to welcome more riders.

This day, there were some signs that forestry work was being carried out and that a section (called Blue) was closed.  Being a Sunday I decided that I’d follow the original trail anyway and was rewarded by seeing the changes that have happened to this section.  The fir trees had really closed in over the last few years, giving the section a completely different feel, and likely helping with the drainage too.  Another big shock was the amount that the woods have grown in around another deforested area, just before a section called Endor.  In the past this areas was quite open with just some young trees.  I've seen birds of prey perched on the taller remains of old, larger trees in this section but today it felt similar to some other parts of the trail.

Aside from the final descent, my favourite section is the Dragon’s Tail; an undulating section with incredible views to the South West, built to follow a rocky ridge.  It can be a back-breaking ride on a rigid bike, and duly my back felt a bit worse for wear after.  If anything though I rode it just as fast as ever.

Same view, no face(it was camera phone only today, sorry for the pics!)

As usual I was glad to see Llyn Parc toward the end of the ride, knowing that just one killer climb lay ahead before a superb descent to the finish.  Had a really sketchy moment when my mind wandered and I got caught in the wrong place on some crazily muddy double track and nearly caused a high-speed close encounter between my face and a fir tree. 

All was good though and the last descent was just as good as ever.  In fairness some corners need maintenance but in the grand scheme of things the trail is technical in an old school sense so some deterioration almost adds to the charm.

Three centres in two days had made for a pretty full on weekend.  Back to the Midlands for a rest and work on Monday!

New School! - Llandegla

One of the newer trail centre in the UK as far as I’m concerned, Llandegla is somewhere I’ve ridden a few times on both a fully rigid hardtail and a big freeride bike.  It’s an odd place in that respect for me since I feel either way you miss out on something you would get from the other option.

It was a short drive from Delamere to Llandegla’s visitor centre.  The car park was rammed full and the sun was out.  Not bad for the beginning of April!  A chap was taking money for parking at the gate, he mentioned it was nearly always really busy these days.  That’s what comes of building proper trails in easy reach of some of the country’s biggest cities I suppose.

Chatted to a really enthusiastic guy in the car park while I was fitting my new cassette (bling!) who said he rode there a couple of times a week.  He had a pretty nice Trek full sus ride, probably quite well suited to the trail.  I was also told that the blue trail was worth a ride, something I’m still not sure about, as the red / black I was intending to ride isn’t what I’d call a tough trail.

Bike fixed, big smiley face in wonder of my now working gears, it was time to charge up the first slope out of the car park for a quick session at one of the skill centres.  These are new sections built at Llandegla to give people a taste of the skills they may need.  The first one featured some nice lines with small drops and some fun corners, and further along were a few sets of nice dirt jumps. 

The first part of the red / blue is a more or less uphill 4 or so kilometers.  Most of this used to be in the woods and could get really bogged down in the winter with mud.  Massive areas of the hill have been deforested though so in the spring sunshine the gravelly trail surface was spot on as I hauled myself to the start of the red / black single track. 

Looking East from the end of the first climb, awesome clouds!
The red is a trail in its own right, with black extensions throughout the forest.  Aside from the dirt jumps just about half way round I hit all the black sections, as they’re not tech, but really fast if you let the bike go.  Tech in a different way I suppose as the challenge comes from letting the bike go and taking the obstacles the singletrack throws at you.

Without trees, I couldn’t tell how much of the trail was new since the last time I’d ridden there, the view was great and the trail was good too, although ludicrously rocky with my hardtail.  You see, while a hardtail is definitely best for the hills, a full sus is by far better for the black descents as you can lap up the speed and go even faster.  Each time I go there are people on big bikes pushing up the hills.  Lets just say they do not have smile on their faces at that exact moment!  Can’t say I envy them.  A short travel full sus rig would be right on the money.

View to the West in the middle of the deforested area, trail begins to get good here as the memory of the grind from the carpark fades.
A wickedly long black descent later, and a nasty switchbacked climb and the bulk of the trail is over.  There was a super steep, super loose climb at one stage, which had me busting my guts to clean it to the top. The trail finished near the recently build pump track and a 4x course.  The pump track was full of about 10 kids on a mixture of bmx, 24” and 26” jump / 4x bikes.  Some of those guys had some nice style over the jumps and were good to watch.  The 4x track looked pretty big and I’ll take a more jumpy bike to the place soon to ride both, as well as the previously mentioned dirt jumps.

Storming around the very most final last bit of the entire trail, laying the bike down into a massive berm coming out from under the bridge on the 4x track my rear wheel hit a rock (probably it’s hundredth of the day) and made a nasty metallic thumping sound.  I knew straight away something had gone more wrong that it should have for such an innocuous piece of trail and back at the car the rim was indeed quite smashed up.  A 2” flat spot had appeared and one of the braking surfaces was bowed outwards quite a way.

Because everybody loves helmet hair
Becoming a well established trail centre, while it doesn’t have something for everyone, it’s pretty accessible.  Dirt jump / 4x / pump track riders could easily spend a few hours here, and I’d say it was worth an hour or so’s drive in that case.  For me, the trail seems like marmite.  I’ve spoken to people who love it, but I can’t recommend it as much as they do.  The first climb is too long and could easily have some single track sections along the way, the last few k back to the car park are equally poorly thought out.  The black descent in the middle of the ride is a lot of fun but, to me, not technical enough in terms of rocks and roots, size of the “jumps” etc.  Maybe I’m just hard to please?  Will any trail ever live up to A-line and Dirt Merchant?  I live in hope!

A great day out, a lot of miles covered, quite a bit of wrench work already done, and I was already anticipating plenty more before trail no.4. 

Always on the horizon - Delamere

Delamere was somewhere I never got go when I was just getting into mountain biking. It seemed just too far away from where I grew up to be easily accessible, but I occasionally heard stories of the trails there, jumps, mini DH tracks etc. So it feels like I've been meaning to ride here for years and years but for whatever reason never got round to it.

2nd April. A weekend riding lay ahead. Managed to get to Delamere mid morning after installing a new SRAM chain supplied by chainreactioncycles.com. Pretty unassuming car park, nice visitor centre and bike rental shop set up nearby. For an added bonus, the satnav took me right to it!

Parking was a bit steep but the weather was nice so my nicely cleaned bike and I set off to conquer the Whitemoor trail.  I'd barely got 200 meters down the road before I realised something was up.

The Hardrock - a second hand bargain to be thrashed, I'm impressed so far
My old chain was clearly really worn, along with the cassette and chainrings, and the drivetrain was just not going to work with the new chain; it was skipping like crazy, 3 or four times per revolution.

I really didn't want to take another bike round the trail and I didn't want to go and consult with the guys at the bike shop, just to confirm my mistake. But I had no choice really, it was that or give up the riding that weekend and fix the bike at home. I do not like giving up!

The obvious was confirmed and I agreed to take out a rental bike for the morning. It was a Kona Cinder Cone, new with shimano discs, decent kenda tyres, and a soul crushing 90mm stem and almost flat low-rise bars. No amount of adjusting made the bars any more bearable and the stem made the ride super sedate. The rock shox tora forks were incredibly under sprung. Riding with the lockout on full made them bearable (I'm guessing the lock out is really just ramped up compression damping) although brake jack was immense; they'd shoot through virtually all of the travel at the slightest touch of the front brake!

The most "hardcore" waymarked trail is graded white at Delamere and the white arrows on a white background were pretty hard to see, making me have to get right up to the posts to see which direction I had to go. Not the best!

It was 14k or so and all on fire roads. Looked like there was probably some nice singletrack in the woods but the centre desperately needs a proper waymarked mountain bike route. The topography of the place would lend it to some lovely singetrack and short northshore runs, just needs some decent investment in my opinion. As it stands currently there’s little to attract trail centre fans to this location.

The Cinder Cone in its natural habitat
In the northwest corner of the forest is a freeride / DH area which looked pretty fun. There was no way on earth my rental bike was up to this though so I'll save that for another day. Definitely will go back for that too, but not for an XC / trail ride until some waymarked single-track is sorted out. I can't impress enough how much this place needs a decent trail for visiting mountain bikers. I've heard such good stories about Delamere but without some exploring any decent singletrack is going to remain hidden. For me at least the appeal of trail centres is that you can rock up and be more or less guaranteed a decent ride (braking bumps aside!).

Another pretty big issue is sharing the trails with non-riders, whether this means pedestrians, horses, kids with stabilisers, dogs, people who think the best way to walk down a 15 foot fire road is as if they're searching for a murder weapon, 6 or 7 abreast. You forget how nice it is not to have to worry about that kind of thing when you're on dedicated trails like those at Cannock or Coed-y–Brenin and can focus on shredding the trails.

After less than an hour's blast around Delamere, I was back at the visitor centre. I'd been wondering about what to do about my own bike's gears and had after discussing a weekend-long rental, decided to buy a new cassette. Turned out to be 8 speed SLX, at a price that wasn't too shabby from Tracs, the bike shop at Delamere. It doesn't have a spider to reduce weight on the larger rings like an XT model but the rings are quite extensively drilled so I was pleased.

Loaded the orange beast back into my car and it was off to trail number 3!