Coed-y-Brenin

Coed-y-Brenin (Welsh for King's Wood) is a forest in the Snowdonia National Park, North Wales near Dolgellau. It is well-known as a mountain bike resort, and has several man-made singletrack courses in a woodland setting, varying in length from 12 to 38 km (7 to 23 mi), and one dual slalom course.

The site is owned and operated by Forest Enterprise Wales, part of the Forestry Commission, and covers an area of some 9,000 acres (36 km²) around the valleys of the rivers Mawddach, Eden, Gain and Wen.

The site was identified as a potential mountain bike race course in 1990, and the first races were held there in 1991. The initial course had to be chopped out of an unpassable rock-strewn terrain.

Shortly afterwards an MTB hire centre, together with a visitor centre and café were opened at Maesgwm. Five waymarked trails were developed by Dafydd Davis who was employed by Forest Enterprise as a Forest Sports Development Adviser, grew Coed-y-Brenin into a major UK mountain biking center. Davis received an MBE in the 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours list for 'services to forestry' relating to his work on this resort.

A new £1.6 million visitor centre is under construction at the site, and is due to open in Spring 2006. There are also a number of waymarked walking trails around the forest.

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Mountain bike trails

Trail Name	Grade	Waymarking	Length		Time needed
Afon	novice (green)	river	8 mi	13 km	1.3 hours
Temptiwr	difficult (red)	apple	5 mi	9 km	1 hours
MBR	difficult (red)	mbr logo	11 mi	18 km	2 hours
Tarw	difficult (red)	Bull	12 mi	20 km	2 hours
Dragon's Back	severe (black)	Dragon's back	19 mi	31 km	4 hours
The Beast	severe (black)	Beast	24 mi	38 km	4.5 hours

External links

52°49′30″N 3°54′57″W / 52.82504°N 3.91596°W / 52.82504; -3.91596

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