“We're heading up to Radnorshire again soon and if anyone from Gravel Union would like to join, we'd love to have you come with us and show you the area” said a line in the recent email from John Heard, founder of Wild Cycles. We suspect that “Radnorshire” would generate barely a flicker of recognition among the vast majority of gravel riders, but to me, it meant two things – mind-blowingly good riding and a chance to revisit the hills and trails of my youth. I grew-up around 30kms to the east, just over the border into England and one set of my grandparents used to live on a hilltop overlooking the area where Wild Cycles were planning on heading. A trip to Radnorshire meant essentially going home for me, so I jumped at the chance to tag along.
How it started...
How it's going...
After checking my schedule and clearing it with my boss, I got back in touch with the team at Wild Cycles and told them I’d love to come and join their reccie trip and that I hoped that my local knowledge of the area might be of help in highlighting some of the fantastic gravel riding there. The exact dates are slightly hazy, but I reckon my first trip to ride the trails of Radnorshire was back in 1992 – I had just passed my driving test and that meant I could venture further afield than my local woods and hills. The trails haven’t changed much in the intervening period, but how we ride them certainly has. When I compare what I rode back in 1992 to now, it’s not much competition about which is the bike more suited for Radnorshire’s incredible network of gravel trails – my Trek #monstercross bike won hands down, so that was what I packed for the trip.
Our mission for the time we had in Radnorshire was to fine-tune the selection of trails that John would use for a
gravel riding festival that he and his team are going to be running in June. The
Wild Cycles crew had already been on an initial reccie trip back in January, but they wanted to make a second visit to confirm the final routes that participants would use during the event. “
The strange thing about the riding here is that distances don’t seem to work like they do elsewhere” said Hamish,
owner of Hangingheld Farm, where the event is going to be based. We were standing in the kitchen of Hamish’s ancient stone-built farmhouse looking at a selection of Ordnance Survey maps spread out on his kitchen table. “
We’ve stopped talking about rides in kilometers”, he continued “
as sometimes it can take all day just to ride 40kms here. The terrain is on a much bigger scale than many gravel riders will be used to and the network of trails is incredibly varied. You can ride almost entirely off-road for days on end”.
Image courtesy of John Heard/Wild Cycles
Hamish and his wife Nell have an encyclopedic knowledge of the local trails, but we had a little trouble convincing them that including sections of ‘fire road’ through Forestry Commission plantations was considered perfectly OK by gravel riders! The couple ride Shand Bahookies fitted with 3” wide tyres and they typically seek out trails and terrain which make the most of the steamroller-esque traction and sofa-like comfort of their big tyres. Hamish wheeled out a couple of other pretty special bikes for us to ogle, including this mint condition 1980s Colnago road bike and his
beloved touring bike which had survived a horrendous sounding traffic accident when it was strapped to roof of a bus in Somalia that rolled over, killing a number of the passengers. Miraculously Hamish and the bike survived to tell the tale (although the bike's frame needed some agricultural-grade straightening afterwards!) The story of Hamish and his family is pretty incredible and definitely worth a read, or better yet, head there with your gravel bike and ask him about the portion of his life that he spent working as camel herder in the deserts of Somalia….
The Wild Cycles campout is going to offer three route choices on the Saturday and a gentler “hangover” route for the Sunday and during the time we had available we had to ride all the routes we had selected. John and his team had worked with Hamish and Nell to put together a set of routes based on their January reccie trip and I then offered to use my local knowledge to help give them a final polish. But even using all the amazing route planning resources we had available, nothing can beat physically checking each of the options before agreeing on the final choice. There are multiple questions that an event “pre-ride” can answer – do the route choices work; are all the trails 100% legal; are they fun to ride; do the different routes flow properly; is the balance of road versus off-road right; where can the riders find mid-event food and water; what’s the access like for emergency vehicles; does the scenery have the right wow factor and most importantly will the design of each route mean the participants return to the overnight campsite buzzing?
When I arrived at Hangingheld Farm, after a very warm welcome from Hamish and Nell, I chucked my mountains of luggage into a small straw-strewn trailer hitched to the back of their trusty quad bike and Hamish drove me down to the campsite, which John and his willing assistant Vincent had spent the afternoon preparing. Even though I consider myself a country-boy at heart rather than a townie, the shock of how stunning the location of the campsite was pretty big. John and Vincent had set up a couple of bell tents and a tarp-covered kitchen/dining area on a flat section of grassy meadow close to a babbling brook. The only noise was that of Hamish & Nell’s newly born pedigree Lleyn lambs bleating for their mothers and the occasional mewing of a passing buzzard or red kite, both of which are found in significant numbers in the area. The freshly-born lambs were so noisily demanding to be fed they woke me up in the early hours of the morning on the first night in camp – not a common occurrence for many of us I suspect!
Image courtesy of John Heard/Wild Cycles
Despite having arrived in relatively decent weather, when we woke up the following morning, the view up the valley beyond the shower block and up to the 646m high summit of Great Creigiau was obscured by a heavy mist which descended rapidly and filled the valley. As we set off for our first reccie ride the hilltops were entirely obscured in low cloud. Luckily my planned route took us initially across the flat valley floor, but as we climbed up the other side visibility reduced dramatically and we had trouble at times spotting the numerous gates which crossed our trails. The first section of our route neatly encapsulated why it is so critical for event organisers to do proper route reccies and not just rely on digital mapping for their planning – what appeared to be a perfectly rideable vehicle width trail from the mapping and aerial images turned out to be indistinct and lumpy on the ground and would have been a rubbish first trail section for the event participants. We made mental notes as we continued and then later adapted the route to bypass this part of our planned route.
“It might sound a bit cheesy, but we measure our riding here in smiles not miles” was one Hamish’s phrases which rang in our ears as we tackled the first of many climbs that I’d planned in for the first day reccie. Our proposed route was only 54kms in length, but we managed to shoehorn in nearly 1600m of climbing including a couple of challenging 20%+ sections. When you reccie a route you spend a considerable amount of time looking at different sections and frequently re-routing ‘on the fly’ to find the best trail option. On your behalf we traversed fields of soggy grass, attempted a loose shaley climb up a narrow gully and at one point ended up having to ‘freestyle’ a route through an ancient quarry after our planned route was blocked by a field of freshly planted crops. As well as route checking, we were hoping to capture some behind-the-scenes images which would be useful for event marketing, but the weather gods aren’t always super helpful and although we had dry conditions, the light on Day 1 was sadly flat and dull.
Image courtesy of John Heard/Wild Cycles
As the reccie ride continued into the early afternoon, stomachs starting rumbling and legs starting tiring. I glanced at the route profile on my bike computer and knew we still had one big climb to conquer before we could descend back down to the farm. I hadn’t ridden this section for more than 20 years and the last bit of our proposed route was completely new to me, so we were relying on a mix of map research and potluck. Sometimes this pays off, other times it bites you in the bum and unfortunately for us, our luck seemed to have run out.
As we summited what should have been the final climb and descended at high speed down one of Hamish’s detested forestry haul roads, we lost height rapidly and thoughts of a late lunch began to dominate. Then, as we rounded a fast right hand bend, disaster. The track was completely blocked by a huge wind-felled tree. The UK was hit by a series of severe storms over the winter of 2021-22 (with wind speeds of more than 160 kph measured in some places) so we weren’t surprised to see fallen trees. We scrambled around the end of one and then over another, but as our view increased all we could see was fallen trees blocking the trail for hundreds of meters in front. There was no way these would be cleared in time for the event, so we had to find a way around.
Image courtesy of John Heard/Wild Cycles
A glance at our digital mapping showed nothing useful nearby, so with legs and brains complaining we pulled a u-turn and retraced our route back up to the top of the track we had just descended. As we climbed, I scanned the map for by-pass options and spotted something which looked like it might work. After more than 15 minutes of climbing we reached the route’s highpoint of 650m at the TV transmitter mast on Black Mixen. I hadn’t initially considered routing our ride this way, but the huge area of tree-fall dictated a re-think. Luckily the incredible network of legally accessible trails in the area meant we were ok and could potentially bring the event
participants on this new diversion instead of my initially planned route. As we set off, the initial section of trail wasn’t that promising – it was quite tussocky and didn’t flow as well I had hoped, but within a few minutes things started to look up. Despite the gloomy light, as we rounded the end of the grassy hillside that we were traversing, a huge steep sided valley opened up in front of us. Initially we just stopped to take in the view, but then when I checked our proposed route against the view in front of us, we looked to have struck trail gold – our route was due to head down one side of this incredible looking valley and from our high viewpoint it was spectacular!
John and Vincent set off first while I maintained my high viewpoint, hoping to capture some shots of them riding this stunning looking trail. The scale of the valley only became apparent once they set off, as they soon looked like ants, lost in the landscape. I quickly clipped in and followed them, rapidly gathering speed on the smooth and flowy hard-packed grass trail. By absolute sheer luck we had found the best trail of the day. In total the descent was nearly 5kms in length, with a goldilocks gradient and surface. It looked like an ancient drovers road, but was now barely used and flowed like silk down from the mountain summit. We couldn’t believe our good fortune and probably looked like small children in a sweet shop, with huge gravelgrinsTM plastered across the faces.
What was remarkable was how long the descent went on for and how well it flowed. Even with rubbish light, the view off to our right was spellbinding and it was actually quite hard to force ourselves to focus rather than just looking at the view. As we descended lower the nature of the trail changed and the last section turned back into a pure gravel trail, rather than being grass covered. The final section of the descent was a narrow, winding paved road which topped 20% in places and spat us out right into the heart of Old Radnor, the closest village to the farm where we were staying. With disc rotors pinging with heat after the epic descent, we stood around giggling as to how our luck had changed so rapidly.
Later, over a cold beer or two and a wood-fired BBQ, we looked back on day 1 of our reccie and despite the tired legs, there was a great post-ride buzz. Our hard work route planning before we arrived had paid off pretty-well, but Lady Luck had definitely been on our side when it came to finding the trail of the day. If this was only the first day of the reccie, what treats lay in store for Day 2?
To find the answer to that, you’ll have to sign up for the event!
Entries are open now and can be booked here. Don’t hang around though – the event is scheduled for June 3rd to the 5th and places are selling fast….
Thanks to the team at WildCycles for inviting us to come and join them on their reccie and to Hamish, Nell and the family at Hangingheld Farm for their amazingly warm welcome and great hospitality.