Reviews for Coed y Brenin Mountain Bike Trail Centre

Summary:
Impressive length but give us more width!

Review:
The Dragons Back route starts on the Badger section which is shared by almost all the CyB routes. The trickiest bit of this section is picking your way round the occasional bikers who tend to stall on the rock steps usually as you are behind them trying to get up momentum to get up the same feature. Once past this section though things quieten down. Dreamtime is a nice flowy bit of single track. Next up is Big Dug which has the potential to flow nicely but is just a bit too narrow for you to cut loose. Another foot dug into the bank would make a lot of difference as you have a drop to your right and in wet conditions you have to err on the side of caution.

Herman is a nice flowing section there then follows a pointless 5km or more trek before getting to Gomez, Morticia etc. These sections are excellent, the best at CyB by a long way I think. After that it is the familiar round of Pink Heifer and the Beginning of the End sections (familiar if you have done the MBR anyway) which are good but not stand out.

All in all, the route is good but overly long for the amount of downhill. The 5k or so after Herman is a lot of peddling to no real point as it is entirely on forest track or road and goes nowhere. Maybe there is a magnificent view somewhere but in the welsh mist I was in it was impossible to tell. Big Dug is decent but it could be much better if they gave you a bit more room which was a criticism I had of one or two of the sections. Don?t miss Gomes, Morticia or any of the Adams Family sections if you can help it they really are the best at CyB. If I was to do it again I would just head for these sections.

Summary:
Seriously good fun!

Review:
This is easily one of my top 3 trails! Yes, there is some up-hill stuff, but you gotta go up to come down! And boy, is it fun coming down on some of the MBR's single track! Prob my fav part is the final section called Seven Sisters. Well worth the of all that uphill stiff effort! Just be aware of Brutus!

Summary:
Nice run challenging in places

Review:
The MBR route tends towards the technical rather than the flowing . No bad thing but my preference is toward flowing tracks. The Cain section especially had a series of progressively larger rock drop offs culminating in one probably about a couple of feet high. No great trauma , the route is graded red after all, but just be aware that you do need to be able to ride technical features with some confidence.

Bugsy and Pink Heifer are probably the flowiest bits of track. These are decent sections but very little by way of jumps and berms unfortunately.

My criticism would be that there are a couple of poorly thought out elements that hold the trail back. For one thing do we need such massive boulders lining the trails? On the bits where you can open up they hold your speed back because you are aware that if you got it wrong and stacked it would be a bad one. Whats wrong with logs? Also twice on the last sections there are largish rock drop offs on a corner as you approach a road crossing. Alright they keep your speed down but negotiating a drop, on a corner, as you check for traffic, whilst lining up your bars to get them through a width restriction seemed a bit much.

Summary:
Short but pretty sweet

Review:
The Temtiwr is a short taster (8.7k) of what Brenin is about and as such shares all its sections with other routes. Badger is the section that nearly all the routes begin on, Dreamtime is shared by the Dragons Back and nearly all the routes finish on the Beginning of the End sections. It?s a nice little run to blow the cobwebs of a long drive out of the way. Dreamtime especially is nice and flowy and certainly brought a smile to my face.

Summary:
poor, down hill fireroad whats this about?

Review:
Really looked forward to riding this after all the epic reviews mags gave it. sadly was left so disapointed all climbs fireroad and when you get to the top of them looking forward to a great singletrack descent only to lose loads of height on down hill fireroads, thought we must have missed the turns but have been told by other people they found the same thing. never rode the old redbull run but people tell me the new trail has lost its zing.