Another Great Ride at Moel Famau

The Active Brits Possie had another awesome day in the hills on Sunday. Fellow Active Brits member Rico and myself headed up to Moel Famau near Mold/Ruthin to complete a quality up and over 3 hour mad one. The weather was crap with torrential rain showers from the onset but this is what UK riding is all about, you cant let a bit of rain stop you.

We decided to head from our car parking area at Loggerheads up towards the main car park at Moel Famau before heading into the forest. From here, an undulating track took us west to the grassy knoll, a short sticky climb up a well grazed hillside. Out on the moors it was time to blast along the narrow and incredibly muddy singletrack towards the Moel Famau/ Craig Arthur ridgeline. The singletrack is excellent with scattered rocks and gnarly ups and downs. After a short 2 minute break to remove the fusion of thick muddy deposits and sheep turds from our faces (god knows how much we must have eaten on the way) we opted to take the ridge west and over to a byway which links Ruthin to Cilcain. It was a great oportunity to do a bit of cyclo-x, with some steep sections warranting speedy carry ups rather than wasting energy trying to cycle them. It also presented us with an opportunity to let the bike rigs really rip for a while with some quality transitional sections, sweeping grass covered curves and steep rabbit carved embankments.

As the sun began to go down, we began the home run back to the car opting for a steep fast flowing and highly enjoyable downhill to a small trout reservoir about 1km from the ridgeline. The downhill is awesome, not highly technical just fast and furious ending at a serious of small fords across numerous streams before joining a long gravelled road with takes you towards the village of Cilcain. Several kms later it was time to nail the final uphill, a short but sharp road section that rises steeply towards Loggerheads.

The entire day was finished off with a quality bit of banter, a swift carbo boost in the form of a chilled pint of lager and a proper brunch in the local boozer. Another excellent afternoon out.