LLANGYNOG

Super industrial flow.

Which brings us to Revolutions, landing, thudding onto the keen edge of twenty first century riding. Flow on a grand scale, danger by the tractor load, a place to set it down smoothly, if you could, but then not many can. The centrepiece of film maker Clay Porter’s Four by Three masterpiece. Menace by design, the quarry that had the world tweeting its tits off, f–k me this was good.

But it came from hard work, and not before considerable vision too. Fashioning the angles in the right places to get the relevant power. Boosh. It was the British bite–back to Rampage, a heady homecoming for bother Gee after the perils of a remote American desert. Double jeopardy? “Gee just tail me into this. It will be fine.” Team mates Taylor Vernon and Marc Beaumont, not exactly low on skill, went down hard, but not after a good go. And shortly after that came the now famous line, “I’ve never been through woods so fast” shouted Dan as he and his brother realised one mother of a line.

No place for the feint–hearted, Llangynog by way of Revolutions and Athertons proves that the UK can compete with both west and east. The badly judged rulers in the land of the rising Utah dust aligned, but no match for the GT emperor in the land of the wringing wet – North Wales late 2012 was a place of mountainbike power generation.

But let’s not for one minute forget the omnipotent Welsh conifer woods too. Of rut and radicle they are the unstoppable works of art that anyone with an appetite or insight into the subtleties and minutiae of track building will understand.

They are not new lands. The tree sucks up the water, whilst the wheel unearths that most precious of mountainbiking surfaces – root systems. And here in Revolutions and Atherton territories they have been preserved, each one guarded and protected, the pick–me–up for anyone who’s spent a day on the road.

It’s not like Whistler because it’s Welsh and it’s way smaller. But it has in abundance, like its North American counterpart (if you can compare), the ubiquitous root. These woods can be dark, frequently the problem with planted versus indigenous, yet conifers are mountainbikes pride and joy in many ways. And lets face it, there’s an element of familiarity to a rough–cut track in a Sitka woods every much as recognisable as a surfaced trail centre. And that’s how it is.

Until that is when you peel into the finish area and gaze east, and there up on the southern slopes of Llangynog a brave new world. Dan Atherton’s world, a massive landscape, every bit as jaw dropping as the galleries of Dinorwic, comparable in power, and no place for the fragile. A gathering of ups and downs within a capricious, fickle microclimate of winds that render any attempt at hitting the downslope futile, serious stuff – 15 foot up with a sidewind and bleating sheep cutting loose is no place to be.

From Dinorwic slate mines to Revolutions, Coed Y Brenin to Antur Stiniog, they have all have put Wales on the world map. In Dan Atherton, that rare breed of rider who has drive and vision. For the time being you cannot help but think that it’s Llangynog that is now skyscraping its way into the mindset and fantasy of every rider in the world. A castle in the sky. Homage to Farmer Jack and co naturally, but this is bike territory now.