ITERA - Presented by Open Adventure
To Devils Bridge
Rob Howard / 13.08.2014
After leaving Machynlleth teams set off to ride over the hills the Nant y Arian mountain bike centre on what turned out to be a very wet third day of the race. The predicted showers turned out to be very heavy and very frequent and the hills were wreathed in mist much of the time.
There is a group of mountain bike trails at Nant y Arian and if teams wanted to collect them there were 4 checkpoints on the Syfydrin Trail, the hardest of them all. It’s described as follows; “On Syfydrin its the wild, desolate, lonely beauty of the far loops that create its magic. A unique mix of technical singletrack and ethereal emptiness, this genuine mountain route is one to savour, but certainly not one to underestimate."
Teams had to ride around the trail to find the 4 checkpoints before getting back to the main visitor centre which was a hive of activity on a wet, summer season day. The racers from adventureteam.dk/salomon were impressed with the trails. “That was a good route,” they said, “it was just a shame about the weather but it would be good to come back and enjoy them sometime.” That’s been a familiar refrain from the teams.
They’d stopped at the main centre at Nant Y Arian but found no hot food, so moved on to Devil’s Bridge. Here the bike drop was by the Woodland’s café and they had take a short trail run/walk on a waterfall trail for a mandatory checkpoint. Thinking on their feet they ordered 4x hamburger and chips before leaving, to be ready for when they got back 15 minutes later!
Later teams were not so lucky as the café stopped serving hot foot and closed at 5pm, much to many teams disappointment.
Devil’s Bridge is a popular picturesque visitor spot with a very steep and rocky trail descending to the foot of the falls and climbing back up and mandatory checkpoint was on an arched metal bridge at the bottom of the trail. The falls were noisy and full on such a wet day and until mid-afternoon they were busy too so teams had to be patient behind the tourists and families as it wasn’t possible to pass. (It won’t be much quicker when its dark either as it will be a tricky trail to negotiate.)
After returning from the falls it was back on the bikes to ride to the Elan Valley for another foot stage and teams were starting to think about whether to sleep there. Nicola MacLeod, who is racing with Swedemount AR was trying to organise the team to stop before they got too tired. “If we push on,” she said, “we could find it’s a really cold and wet night and we have nowhere to stop, then we’ll have a problem. It’s better to stop and sleep earlier then we’ll move quicker after that, but we have to think about making the cut-off at the paddling as well.”
Her team was leaving Devil’s Bridge just as Team Fans came out of the cafe to go down to the falls. They were lucky, being the last team to get into the cafe before it shut and they needed a warm up and hot brew as they were cold and wet. When I asked how they were they just said, “Suffering!”
SleepMonsters
