ALL-WEATHER EPICS
THE BEAST-COED Y BRENIN
As both the oldest and most extensive trail centre in the UK, Coed y Brenin in Snowdonia is an essential destination. The ultimate prize is The Beast, which combines both the black-graded MBR and the red-graded Dragon’s Back routes into one 35km epic. Ascending a total of 1,100m, you’re sure to earn your dinner that day, and with all that uphill comes loads of descending.
The trail itself is really varied with lots of different terrain, from technical rock sections to arcing manmade berms where you can release the brakes and let rip. Highlights for us have to be the fast jumps and pump-track rollers on ‘Adam & Eve’, followed by ‘Abel’, which awaits at the top of the next hill. In our opinion this is one of the best natural-feeling rocky descents you’ll find at a trail centre. As you slice along narrow traversing singletrack cut into the side of the hill, the views off to the right are pretty impressive, but
