Somehow, when I have stupid ideas people take me a bit too seriously and I
get into trouble!
This weekend was a prime example of this. A couple of weeks back I kind of
made a throwaway remark about riding Snowdon, thinking yeah, maybe next
year or whatever. So my biking mate comes back and says, how about next
weekend, we can stay at my gran’s near there.
So, there I am at the otherwise unheard of time of 10.00 on a Saturday
morning at the bottom of the largest handy mountain. 5 miles of riding
each way doesn’t sound that hard, but the 1000 metres of ascent involved
means that the trip becomes a bit more of a uni-hikle than a unicycle, I
reckon uphill I probably rode about 10-15% of the way.
But on the downhill it was wicked, 5 miles of constant downhill. The
terrain is mostly rocky, with some lovely drop-offs, I managed to surprise
myself by riding over a bunch of rocks into a 1 foot drop-off which is
still a lot for
me. The bit at the very top is full of tourists and is just the right
level to show off riding down without hurting yourself which is fun.
Below that there is a very steep shale section, much of which I
walked. Once you’ve done this bit, you’ve got about 4.5 miles with
patches of rocks and a few smooth-ish sections, this is all quite wide
so you don’t have to worry too much about the walkers on the track and
you can blast all the way down it pretty quick.
Oh, randomly at the top we met someone who knew Roger Davies, or who knew
his brother or something, they were a bit less surprised than anyone else
to see a unicycle riding up the hill.
So yeah, Snowdon, I’d recommend it to anyone wanting a bit of a downhill
challenge, as far as I know the Llanberis path is the longest decent
downhill in England or Wales, what with coming right off the top of the
biggest mountain. Bikers definately aren’t allowed on the mountain railway
that goes to the top so we didn’t check about unicyclists, but I guess
you’d have to ride / push to the top whatever. Oh and you can’t ride it
from the end of April to the start of October, because there are too many
tourists and cyclists aren’t allowed. It’s quite a difficult ride, so
don’t try it unless the idea of climbing a small mountain doesn’t sound
scary to you, oh and bring a fleece for the top, it’s damn cold up there
in them clouds.
Also, on the Sunday, we decided that I hadn’t had quite enough punishment
for the weekend, so we headed to Coed-y-Brenin to ride the Red Bull Trail.
For those who don’t know, Coed-y-Brenin is a forest in North Wales where
several actually rather tricky trails have been constructed. The guy in
the visitor centre said that he’d seen a few other unicyclists riding the
trails there? Anyone own up to this, Leo, Roger? Anyway, there we rode the
Red Bull, a shortish (8 miles or so) loop, which starts off with 2 miles
of solid climbing which I walked a lot of, but has lots of lovely quite
technical downhill through the woods, much more varied terrain than
Snowdon, lots of mud, lots of rocky bits even a great big watersplash
which I ploughed through laughing because I was wearing waterproof socks!
It’s very heavily ridden, so there isn’t anything too amazingly technical,
bits were beyond my ability, but nothing totally impossible. The real
killer bit is the end, where you’re knackered and you can see the end of
the trail and it goes into a bit of the dual slalom course. Riding jumps
is way tooo hard without a freewheel.
Again, definately recommend the Red Bull Trail, I’m not sure if I’d bother
in summer, but in winter going up to Wales to do both of these in a
weekend is wicked fun.
Joe