Back in time - Coed-y-Brenin - Part 1

Second day of my week off and the sun was bright in the sky as I drove through Snowdonia to reach Coed-y-Brenin.  The views once you pass Blaenau Ffestiniog are incredible every time.  

As the satnav told me I was getting close, I saw a sign to the visitors centre on the left of the road. Confused, I pulled in but then thought better of it and carried on down the road a couple of hundred yards to where I knew the entrance was.  More like where the entrance used to be! Coed-y-Brenin has a sparkly new visitors centre, correctly signed with the obligatory high ropes course and children's adventure playgroud, cafe, and bike shop.  Very bling.

I decided to hit a couple of easier sections out of the car park as a warm up and rode the Badger and Pinderosa sections of the Temtiwr trail before heading back to the trail head.  Flowed pretty nicely, fairly rocky, quite good overall.

Red Bull trail head - through the horns!
The trail for the day was going to be the black graded 20.2km Tarw trail, better known to most people as the Red Bull trail from days of yore.  Like the nearby Marin trail but with better facilities, this was one of THE trails to ride around the early 2000s when trail centres were still finding their way and figuring out what people wanted.

Because the car park has moved to the other side of the road there were a couple of short sections to get back to the old visitors centre and car park, where the original Red Bull trail once began.  On more than one occasion the Tarw trail made me feel like a time traveller: seeing the old centre and car parks all boarded up, remembering when I had parked there the best part of 10 years ago.

The initial climb seemed less severe then it once had as it followed purposed built trail from the abandoned car parks up to the fire road.  The surface was loose and seemed like slate chippings until the fire road took over.  The old dual slalom track that had paralleled the first climb seemed overgrown and utterly out of use.

Awesome views to the north
At the end of the this very long, uneventful climb you reach the start of a singletrack section named Heart of Darkness.  So named as it used to be a very tight section that wound its way between closely spaced trees. No more however.  In another time-traveller-like experience since the section had been utterly deforested resulting in a length of trail that felt more like a game of tree stump pinball and one that is not suited to its name at all.  The section didn't flow very well and left me hoping the next bits of singletrack would be better.

Heart of... lightness?
The next three sections, Snap, Crackle, and Pop were rocky and fairly straight downhill runs.  I'd imagine they'd be an absolute nightmare on a hardtail, but my full sus rig allowed me to smooth out the worst of it while picking the best line.

Another fire road climb loomed so I took the opportunity to eat some food and tighten up my shoelaces (shoes being eaten by chainstays is not a good thing).  So much fire road.  I mean, I understand that complaining about fire road is one of my pet mountain biking hobbies but I could not believe the amount of dull riding on this trail.  

Rocky Horror show about two-thirds of the way round was the first section that was genuinely fun to ride, and even that ended with a horrendous rocky gulley at which I just hopped off and pushed - far easier.  A further  million years of more or less flat fire road later led to a huge fire road descent.  I mean, so much height is lost on fire road, it's almost criminal.  All the effort put into gain that height for what reward?  A high speed blast down a featureless wide path?  Thanks.  

Unusually, I'd taken a print out of the trail map with me and was sorely looking forward to the Pins and Needeles and Flightpath sections, as they looked like they may hold some downhill delights.  Underwhelmed and lacking flow, both sections disappointed.  A long stretch of Pins is clad with the ubiquitous rock seen all along huge amounts of the trail.  What I think the trail builders have not realised is that while riding over jagged rocks is fun occasionally, it should really form interesting obstacles, or be used to reinforce a trail section, not provide the main trail surface for what feels like kilometers on end!  Again, spare a thought for the unfortunate hardtail riders on this stuff.

Felt like miles of this stuff
Flightpath (which despite its name offers no chances to get airborne) spits you out onto a familiar track to the old centre site, and provides a short cut back to the new centre that probably shaves 10-15 minutes off the duration.  Not being one to quit half way through, I took the longer option and was glad I did.  There was a 5 minute or so climb on, your friend and mine, fire road before covering exactly the same distance in the opposite direction on surprisingly good singletrack.  I don't remember ever having ridden this section in the past so can only assume it's a more recent addition.  Gratifying though it was, it did not make up for the the trail overall - I was actually bored while riding much of it.

Considering the Tarw trail when I got back to my car, I could understand the name change.  The Red Bull trail was seen as extreme and a decent blast a decade ago.  By changing the name, the Red Bull moniker can retain its legendary status linked to being one of the first purpose built trails while the Tarw trail gets to take all the criticism (which a score of 5.3 on moredirt.com as I write this shows it is receiving).

I don't have a set way of assessing a trail, but generally it has to have a good amount of singletrack, reward the rider well for their climbing effort and be fun to ride.  Even  with the sunny rays of a beautiful spring day to brighten my mood I can confirm that the Tarw trail does none of these things.  The black graded Beast and MBR trails are on my to do list too so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Coed-y-Brenin can redeem itself in terms of proving a quality, exciting mountain biking experience!

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