WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY TOM HUTTON
Every year, there’s a day when winter relents and spring takes over. By midsummer, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a gradual, more linear process, like night into day, or hot into cold, or a new bike into a trusted old steed. But it’s not… there really is just one day.
And if you’re a mountain bike route researcher and photographer, coming out of a long winter and watching forecasts daily, while trying to keep riding mates onside and primed to muster at a moment’s notice, you start to get tetchy when that day is overdue. And it was.
I know, it’s hard to believe now, after one of the best summers UK mountain biking has ever seen. But then, back at the end of April, it seemed like it had been winter forever and I was getting desperate. Not only to get my work done, but also to get back to the Clwydian Hills – one of my favourite, lesser-known spots – and to reacquaint myself with some of the area’s best trails.
In the end we’d waited long enough, so we took a flyer. If we left it much later, work and family commitments would be sure to get in the way and we’d never get our diaries lined up.
It worked out perfectly. Yup… we chose the day…
Thee Clwydian Hills, or Clwydian Range as they’re also known (or just the Clwyds!), form a humpback ridge that stretches north from Llandegla to the coast at Rhyl. The highpoint, Moel Famau, is the huge rounded peak you see as you drive into Wales along the A55 (eagle-eyes will spot a building on the top). They are modest in size in comparison to Snowdonia further west, or the Berwynion to the south, but they are very mountain bike friendly and boast some great trails.
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