Faintly floral

Glyncorrwg in South Wales isn’t, perhaps, high on your list of places to visit. It’s an old mining town at the end of a road that goes nowhere else and there isn’t really a great deal going on there. But what the town does have is White’s Level, the latest trail in the increasingly-impressive Afan Forest Park.

Unlike the Penhyddh and Wall trails at Afan, White’s is best accessed from Glyncorrwg rather than the Forest Park visitor centre. It’s about another five miles up the valley – follow the signs for Glyncorrwg Ponds. The Glyncorrwg Ponds Co-operative have had a lot to do with the development of the trail, sorting out funding in an effort to rebuild the area as a leisure destination. And if good riding is what you’re after, they’re definitely on to something…

White’s Level is described as “very difficult”. Trail gradings are always subjective things, but White’s is certainly among the most challenging of the Welsh purpose-built trails. Some new trailbuilding techniques have been used to make an all-weather trail that’ll take a lot of traffic without falling to bits yet still offers enough tricky bits to keep pretty much everyone thoroughly entertained.

Some bikes not up to the job

The general layout of the 15km trail is fairly simple. It kicks off with a 6km singletrack climb, complete with everyone’s favourite challenge, the uphill switchbacks. It’s a long haul, but it’s generally a fairly mellow gradient. Most of the trail’s 525m total height gain is in these first few kilometres, so once you’re at the top you can look forward to a general downwards trend for the rest of the loop.

There’s a pleasing amount of variation on the way around White’s. It’s easy for forestry trails to get a bit samey, but White’s features a bit of everything: fast, flowing traverses with gentle curves; tight, twisty singletrack with dips and swoops; bits of fireroad descent to spin your legs out and get your breath back and some extra techy challenges to keep you on your toes…

Extra techy challenges? In a word – rocks. The trail builders have introduced a couple of interesting tricks here. Some stretches of trail feature angled rock slabs or steps, with more slabs armouring the trail in the landing zone so that repeated touchdowns don’t wear a big hole in it. There’s nothing that you can’t just roll, but if you’re feeling like it you can open it up and jump them.

Wide open space

And that’s not all. In a few places the trail meanders its merry way down the hillside but presents you with an optional rock staircase or drop-off positioned to one side. Ride round it or ride over it, the choice is yours. And fans of Cwmcarn or the Wall trail at Afan will find enough of those slightly scary exposed stretches to keep them happy, too.

Chuck in some lovely, almost Alpine-meadow-like open stretches, a handful of great views and a whole bunch of fast-and-swoopy splendidness and you’ve got a fantastic trail package. It’s probably our favourite Welsh purpose-built trail at the moment…

And there’s more to come. Work’s ongoing on the Skyline trail, a 46km epic running from Glyncorrwg, right around the head of the valley and back again. We’ve had a sneak preview of the final 6km descent (which is great), and the open mountain-top stuff in the middle of the trail promises a real “out-there” feel and staggering views. So there’s one to look forward to.

What Glyncorrwg doesn’t have at the moment is much in the way of facilities. The basics are covered, with a car park and toilets and a campsite, but we dropped in at the Afan visitor centre for post-ride nosh. But an all-new centre at Glyncorrwg is in the planning stage, and if it all comes together you can look forward to something a bit special…

The car park at Glyncorrwg Ponds is here – there probably ought to be more information on www.mbwales.com but at the time of writing it wasn’t quite there yet.