Honestly, go off on holiday for a few days and you miss all sorts of stuff. Tsk. Anyway, a couple of things have happened on the UK trailbuilding scene recently that probably no longer fall into the category of breaking news but are interesting and important so we’re going to mention them anyway.

First up is the news that the long-awaited Wall Trail at Afan Argoed is now officially open. It’s the first part of the major Afan Trails project designed to revive the fortunes of former south Wales pit village Glyncorrwg. The trails project is one of those things that depends on a whole bunch of people. Central to it all is local community group Glyncorrwg Ponds Co-operative, along with Forest Enterprise, the Welsh Tourist Board, the Welsh Development Agency, Cydcoed – Woods For All and the local council.

In charge of building the trails, which will eventually include two additional Glyncorrwg loops, is Russell Burton, who was also responsible for the popular trail at Cwmcarn. The Wall is the first part of the project to be completed and it’s a stormer. It’s 24km long (15 miles in old money) and traverses up, along and down the steep side of the valley opposite the Penhyddh (formerly 9feet.com) trail. We’ve ridden the Wall a couple of times and it’s very, very good. If you’re not a fan of overtly “built” looking trails, then The Wall should be to your taste, and a lot of it is on very steep side slopes with a really exposed feel. You have to pay a fair amount of attention to go fast…

The other splendid thing is that the Wall and Penhyddh trails link up so if you’re so inclined you can do them both as one big 40km loop. If you’ve got an iron will you might even be able to do them back to back without dropping into the caff in between…

We’ll bring you more details and a fuller description of the Wall soon.

Further north, trailbuilders at Dalbeattie, part of the Seven Stanes project in the south of Scotland, have been hard at work incorporating handy rock outcrops into their new trail. 40 volunteers showed up the other weekend to carve out a new technical section towards the end of the trail. The 300m section follows the Dalbeattie builders’ motto, “Why build around it when you can ride over it” and includes, well, big rocks and stuff. Which we very much like the look of. The Dalbeattie trail is planned to open in the Spring.

If you want to get involved, there are more trailbuilding days planned on Sunday 23 February and Saturday 8 March. Contact William Montgomery.