Sweet natural singletrack

Rode the Doethie Valley today. MBR described it as some of Britain's sweetest natural singletrack. They may well be correct!! We started from the Llyn Brianne reservoir carpark (by the dam). We were greated by a vista to die for.

Then across the dam into a nice gradual main climb out of the Llyn Bianne valley - the perfect warm-up. Then we left the forestry for a lairy "screaming downhill" gripless gravel road down to Soar y Mynydd Chaple at the head of one of Llyn Brianne's tributries.

For some reason this sparked a decidedly Japenese moment as we all got the cameras out and went mad!!

From Soar y Mynydd a tough climb up and over the hill to the Doethie valley. At the top we were afforded a stunning view again and a look at the steep sided precipitous Doethie Valley ("we're riding down that!")

Then an excellent floaty rocky track downhill to the junction into the Doethie (I think I snapped a couple of teeth off my big chainring here :-( ). Then the main event - flowing singletrack interspersed with natural challenges like streams, boggy patches, washed away tracks etc. even the odd natural rock garden and jump. If it were trail centre they'd have designed it to be predominantly downhill, but as it was natural there was the odd short sharp climb chucked in, which just killed me flat!

Finally a horrible climb back over to Llyn Brianne. A really good day out. We NEARLY went mad and did Cwm-y-Rhaiadr trail centre on the way home :-/ !!

I'll be back!