Coed y Brenin in North Wales was the pioneering purpose-built MTB trail centre. But as trail building has progressed and other centres across Wales and Scotland have come on stream, good old CyB has lost a little of its lustre. The influx of mountain bikers (87% of visitors to the forest park are riders) has stretched the existing facilities to breaking point, and the trails themselves have felt the pressure too.

But now Coed y Brenin looks set to retake the mantle of Wales’s Leading MTB Centre. A £1.6million cash injection has gone into a brand-new visitor centre and enhanced facilities and attractions – it’s being described as an “outdoor recreation complex”. We recently had a sneak preview of the new centre and trail developments – nothing was quite finished but you can see what it’ll be like.

Centrepiece of New Coed y Brenin is the visitor centre. It’s a three-storey wooden cylinder positioned on the east side of the Afon Eden (the opposite side to the existing centre) with views down the valley towards Cadair Idris (a decent ride in its own right, if Proper Mountains are your thing). One of the shortcomings of the original centre was that it had developed in a fairly arbitrary and reactive fashion over the years, leaving it with a somewhat disparate collection of buildings but still lacking in key areas – no showers, not enough cafée seating, insufficient parking and so on.

The new building benefits hugely from being purpose-designed from the ground up. It’s built as far as possible from local materials – the timber cladding, window and door frames are all from Coed y Brenin itself. And the heating system is powered by wood chippings from sawmills. From the new, larger car park, access to the centre is over a bridge to the first floor level. This’ll have a small gift-type shop and of course the café, with the seating occupying the double-height area towards the front of the building. There’ll be extra seating on the terrace overlooking the valley, and the considerable roof overhang means that the outside seating won’t be limited to fair-weather use only.

Downstairs will be toilets, showers (£1 for five minutes – we like to bring you these important details), bike shop and bike wash. The upper storey will contain offices and a classroom area. All floors are connected by stairs and there’s a lift for disabled access.

The new café, Bwyd y Brenin, aims “to provide high quality food and drink to support the range of activities taking place at Coed y Brenin”. As well as lunches (table service, so you won’t need to ask any more of potentially weary legs), there’ll be a takeaway counter and from August the plan is to offer three-course evening meals. It’ll certainly be a top spot for post-ride refuelling.

The terrace will also overlook the all-new children’s playground, while forest walks, a puzzle trail and riverside picnic area all help to make CyB a proper family destination. For other non-bikey types there are “all-ability” walking trails, orienteering courses, running trails and so on.

But what you really want to know about are the bike trails. The network has been tweaked and redesigned so that the various loops all start and finish at the new centre. Two specially-commissioned sculptures – one pair of copper horns, one giant pair of forks – mark the trailheads from which the six loops emanate. Only the Tarw Trail (formerly known as the Red Bull) is situated on the “old” side of the valley. It’s been redesigned to incorporate all of the singletrack sections on the same side of the road as the old centre – access is via a new singletrack descent and the existing bridge/underpass. On the return leg there’s a short fireroad climb bringing you back to the lower floor of the visitor centre.

The other five trails cover most of the difficulty/distance spectrum. Easiest is the Afon trail, a 13.1km (with a 7km short option) low level forest road route along the River Mawddach. It’s family-friendly and passes picnic sites and things.

Next up is the Temtiwr trail, an 8.7km “sampler” ride with five sections of singletrack to give the CyB newcomer an idea of what to expect on the bigger rides. The existing MBR trail is next on the length heirarchy, followed by the ex-Red Bull, now Tarw trail. The old Karrimor trail is now known as the Dragon’s Back trail, while top of the tree is The Beast, a 38km combination of the MBR and Dragon’s Back routes.

All of this rerouting has involved the construction of several new stretches of singletrack, and there’s more to come – a lot of the older sections of trail are showing their age and will be rerouted and rebuilt so that they ride better and stay together longer.

We had a quick spin around bits of the new network in the company of MTB Ranger Tony Griffiths. The differences in style between the new and old sections are pretty clear. There’s a lot more rock armouring on the new stuff, particularly in braking zones and where streams cross the trails – there are no gullies any more, it’s all about “armoured fords” now. You need to watch your speed on some of them, they can have a bit of an appetite for front wheels. There are also a lot more bermed corners in evidence, and there’s plenty of lumpy-bumpy twisty stuff. As ever with freshly-constructed trails, they need to run in and they’ll benefit cosmetically from some plant growth along the edges, which won’t take long – some sections still had diggers on them a matter of weeks ago but look like they’ve been there for years already.

So all in all the new centre and revised trail layout looks set to boost Coed y Brenin back to the top of the pile. The added family-friendliness will be a welcome bonus for many, giving the opportunity to combine a couple of rides with family stuff. The target date for opening the new centre is the beginning of July. In all honesty we’d be surprised if everything was up and running by then, but the revised trail layout and waymarking should in place and basic facilities ought to be available.