I should have know better when the weather man said “light rain”. It’d been pouring down all week, but I thought “Light rain? That’ll do, beats heavy rain any day of the week”. So I chucked the bike into the van and off I went towards Rhaeadr. I hadn’t been riding long before Light Rain had brought along some friends and I found myself riding in the company of a lot of water. There’s a trail on the route that has a number of stream crossings. Getting your feet wet is expected under normal circumstances but last weekend it was something else. I’ve never seen the river so swollen, so much in fact that it had overflowed onto the trail on some sections. Fording them was impossible, as I tested the depth with a fence post to discover the edges were waist deep… If I wanted to get that wet, I’d have gone swimming. After a bit of a bog-hop and a sneaky bit of footpath that probably hadn’t seen any feet in a good while, I was back onto the fireroad and back to comparative safety.
Yesterday was another story all together. I picked Al up in the morning and we headed out to Abergwesyn to ride Doethie Valley. A cool breeze made us think twice about leaving the waterproofs behind, but it wasn’t long before we’d shed the extra layer and found ourselves riding beneath a bright sky. I’ve always done Doethie Valley via the track over from Soar y Mynydd, but the bridleway past Nant-llwyd provides a stunning entrance into the valley where you can see a couple of miles of sinuous singletrack stretching out in front of you.
Alan descending into Doethie Valley
There was still plenty of water about from the deluge of the weeks that have gone before us, but trails were a delight to ride – the sort of trails you can just keep coming back to and never get tired of, whatever the weather.
Middle Ring All The Way 
