Away from the sea at the weekend, we did a few miles in Mid-Wales. A mixture of trail centres and some cross country. The Gorlech trail at Brechfa is a nice 2 hr run with the usual exciting downhill at the end to make certain all the memories are good. Coed Trallum at night, like kayaking everything is at least a grade higher in darkness, proved tricky with extensive logging and nasty erosion of the black trail certainly making it 'severe', even the blue trail was hard enough to follow, a wallow of mud and broken branches in places. We were the only visitors.
The Syfydrin trail at Nant yr Arian ticks all the boxes, taking in all the downhill at Nant yr Arian plus a nice cross country loop with some interesting rocky bits on the tracks and fine scenary. Plus the red kites of course.
Syfydrin -Nant yr Arian
Photographs cannot capture the adrenalin and fast moving attraction of the downhills, you are always too busy staying upright to get the camera out. However, a quick search on YouTube will give a flavour of the runs mentioned.
Then for some proper cross country; the Doethie valley and surrounding hills. This proved to be hard work, and the bridleways roundabout not always obvious, untraceable in places with farm yards, fences and forestry, but a very rewarding area as well. Altogether, we had managed to complete about 3,400m of ascent, and no doubt the same amount of downhill over the weekend. So had good reason to feel a little stiff on Monday morning.
