Night Riders

This post is especially for Graham as he wanted me to post the route we did the other evening on our night ride.

It may sound odd, but now that the days are shorter and the nights longer and colder, there seems to be renewed interest in our Mountain Bike Night Rides that we do each week. Over the summer there has usually only been two or three of us out, but last week there were seven of us tearing around the hills and forests of mid wales on our bikes.

I met Graham, John, Tom and Andy halfway up the hill between Penrhyncoch and Pendam at 6.30pm and we set off without the need for lights, up the forest trails to Pendam. Here we met Dave and Pete who had cycled up separately and hung around waiting for Dan and Gaz who never quite made it despite saying half an hour earlier on the phone that they were on their way!

By now it was pretty dark so the lights went on and we headed off for our ride. Rather than stick to the way-marked routes of Nant-yr-Arian we wanted to show the newbies some different trails, so headed off towards Nant y Moch on the Syfyddrin Trail. After the first ford though we turned right and took the bridleway. This was a nice little climb through the ruts with the odd slippery rock here and there to catch the unwary off guard. We regrouped at the top and then rode down the fire-road to Nant y Moch and along the road around the reservoir towards Angler’s Retreat. The MXer trails were riding well, but no one managed to clear the climb to ‘Windy Gap’.

It was then back onto the Conti Trail and through the very deep but still quite warm puddles across the top. With very wet feet but smiles all round we then headed back via Sidewinder and the final climb up to Hippity Hop as the moon started to peak out from behind the clouds. We all then rode down the top part of White Fridge before returning to the cars.

Everyone had a good ride, Tom and Andy said they wouldn’t normally ride that far in a whole day let alone a short night ride, but they seemed to have had fun. Graham has caught the night-riding bug and will be buying some lights of his own soon and hopefully we’ll continue to get more people out on the rides. I know of at least 4 other people who want to join us once they’ve got lights etc.

Here’s the route we took:

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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