New Trail Centre Planned

Pogo

Retrobike Rider
Just heard about a new trail centre planned for the Moelwyn area of Snowdonia. Currently the Welsh Assembly are asking for tenders for the trail works-

XC Trail - Antur ‘Stiniog is a not for profit organisation limited by guarantee, and its’ aims and objectives are to develop the Ffestiniog area as an outdoor activities destination.

A major element in this is the construction of a mountain bike trail on land under the ownership of First Hydro, around Llyn Tanygrisiau in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

The trail is approximately 8.4km long and ranging from 750mm to 2000mm wide. Operations will include full bench cut and raised camber trail construction, surfacing with crushed aggregate, rock breaking and extraction, revetment, supply and fit of small timber bridges, abutments and piped culverts and the supply and fit of gates.


Downhill - Antur ‘Stiniog is a not for profit organisation limited by guarantee, and its’ aims and objectives are to develop the Ffestiniog area as an outdoor activities destination.

A major element in this is the construction of downhill mountain bike trails on land under the ownership of W G Greaves and Son, Llechwedd, Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Scope of Supply

There are four proposed downhill trails and site linking trails with a combined meterage of approximately 7500m

The work will include bench cut and raised camber formation, stone pitching, surfacing, surface compaction and finishing, the creation of suitably designed features to include jumps, doubles, table-tops, berms and grade dips, and the construction of wooden boardwalks and bridges.

Experience of "down hill" construction is important.


The deadline for tender submission is 14th January 2011 and the tender requires the work to be completed within 5 months of the tender being awarded. Depending on how long they take to award the contract we could be looking at a new centre by the end of next year.
 
I heard about the plans for this a while ago. Good to hear that it appears to be progressing well.
What's the riding like around Ffestiniog at the moment?
 
Retro in a word.

There are plenty of routes taking in old mine access roads, very technical boulder strewn footpaths, sheep tracks and boggy moorland trails.

The Moelwyn range is sub 3000', steep sided valleys and a high moorland plateau with good routes, especially if you plan a route from a small village called Croeso.

The planned development is slightly away from this area and intends to use Blaenau Ffestiniog as the hub. It's obviously being developed for economic reasons, to improve the dire state of opportunity for the locals. They certainly have the potential environment to create great trail centre riding given the landscape.

By the looks of the tender the emphasis is on Downhill, another tender I didn't mention was for provision of an access road to serve the Downhill runs. It looks like some effort has gone into providing what the modern full susser wants to do on a weekend... barring providing a chair-lift ;)
 

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