Christmas Eve Voyage of Discovery (with too many trees)

I've been to Llandegla when the puddles have been deeper (the deepest was about 1/3 of a wheel, been there before when the puddles were hub depth), I think the tidying of the trails just after the top of the climb have put paid to the deepest puddle, but I've never ridden it when there was so much flowing water on the trails.  So today was definitely a voyage as a boat would be more useful in places and perhaps it shouldn't have been the red route, but the red river ride today.

Due to road riding commitments and mountain biking being constrained to the green and blue routes through the summer and autumn as son Callum makes his first moves into the sport, I haven't ridden Llandegla's red since last winter.

And what a surprise!  How did I not know that 30% of the trail has changed?  And very much for the better too.  Lots of lovely new Northshore (although some of the short uphill bits are a bit difficult to maintain momentum for), some screaming downhills that had me laughing out loud and some steep descents hidden behind crests that had my heart in my mouth and some involuntary exclamations of shock (not repeatable here).  The sting in the tail are the really steep climbs which are a challenge this late in the trail though.  Overall I found the new stuff very exciting, challenging and hard work, but also an inspiration to get out there and try them again very soon - the red has become a bit of a challenge again, which is great news.  Not sure about the grading though - there is much here that is borderline black, as I see it.

Oh, and if you ever needed convincing that its a bad idea to ride in high winds, there are 6 trees lying within 0.5 metres of the trail up near the top, and there are fallen trees lying fully across the trail in 2 places near where the red and black split by the downhill bridge.  Plus there are other trees down where their roots were partially under the trail, eroding the surface at the edges.

Downside today - when I finished about 10:50, the cafe was closed - no cake!

Marin's Very Slippery Under Leaves

Well I must admit a bit of a soft spot for the Marin mountain bike trail in the nearby Gwydyr Forest - a very challenging Red rated route for those who are reasonably competent in off-road riding. It's 25km long with 450m of climbing and way more technical, hard work and, with the extra challenge of wet deciduous leaves on wet rocks in mid-autumn, needing significantly more concentration that the Red routes at Llandegla. At 7:30am even on a Saturday, it seems that many riders were giving the ride a wide berth that weekend as the trail was very quiet, even by the time I got around at about 10:15 - possibly many are already aware of the problems with wet leaves at this particular time of year. Many of the singletrack descents were as slow as the climbs, in order to stay on the bike, which I did most of the time! A 4km ride to the start of the trail from Hafod Farm is 50% on cycle / footpath alongside the main road, with work underway on what looks like an almost complete run of such path from Betws through to Llanrwst. So Hafod is a good place to be based if you are keen on tackling the Marin