|
A different take on the forests of Wales Andrew Davies reports from an area of South Wales that's great for riding, whatever your wheelie-board... This is not your normal mountainboard write up as we don't use four wheels but two... There are a group of us riding Dirstsurfers, 2 wheel inline boards, on beaches, at centres, and through forests. When looking for a location to go riding our needs are a bit different to a mountainboarders, we need a lot of space due to the large turning circle and speed we pick up! I've been living in Cardiff for a few years and have started looking for Firetracks around south Wales to ride down. Last Saturday a few of us went on an exploration into the West! I'd had a recommendation to try Pontrhydyfen which it turns out came from this site originally (thanks to Tim Davies and the location map). It looked absolutely immense on Google maps, so we loaded up the car and headed off. Finding the start of the track took us a few goes but the guys at Skyline cycles pointed us in the right direction. They were surprised that we were going up the "big hill with masts"! Parking spot here We parked up and put our armour on and started the long walk up. It took us over an hour to get to the top, but the views from there were spectacular, overlooking Aberavon, Port Talbot and Swansea. The ride down was pretty quick. I think we were at the bottom again in less than 10 minutes. As we didn't know the track we couldn't go flat out and the trail itself was pretty slippy with all the rain we'd had, my top speed was about 39mph. There are tracks going through the woods which it looks like bikers use, they look pretty technical and a lot of fun, that'll be one for next time. Instead of trekking back up the hill we decided to go to Llantrisant Forest as we'd been there before and it is wickedly fast! The carpark is here, and these pictures are of riding Llantrisant Forest: I love this track. It's pretty much flat out from top to bottom with a couple of tight right-handers to keep you on you toes. There are quite a few mountainbikers there who have started building some North Shore obstacles in the woods. The bikers have also been building trails through the woods which look like they would be good on a regular mountainboard... ;) Get a taste of it by checking out one of our videos here "a run through the woods" It was a good day, some of it spent exploring new places and some spent revisiting old favourites. This is the vid we made of the day, please enjoy! http://vimeo.com/10536248 We will be going to Redhill Extreme in Gloucestershire next month (May) if anyone fancies a go, if not hope to see you in the mountains soon! If you'd like to know any more about Dirtsurfers in the UK visit http://www.wing`surfer.co.uk/ and there's a forum for meet-ups & more info too. For more on surfing dirt 2 wheel-style, check this: Thanks to Andrew & all at wingsurfer |
| Latest Waffle | Most Read Babble | Random Piffle |