The Black Mountain Crossing, in south wales, is a pretty neat little route around… You guessed it, the black mountains. It’s a pretty short route at only around 70 miles, but it still has lots of challenging moments, it’s wales after all and plenty of chunky rocky trails to get over. I remember a fair amount of hike a bike of this route but also some incredible moments, the highlight on this trip, is on the little there and back trial up to llyn y fan fach, normally I dislike trails that you ride up to ride down, but after a long spinning climb up the gravel climb I would get to experience this absolutely incredible views of the lake and mountains. An incredibly calm morning with a low cloud just hanging there. The lake calm as anything, not even a ripple, it was amazing.

After stopping at this lake you get an incredibly fast descent down, try to do this part really early because it is pretty popular with walkers and trust me you will want to enjoy that descent out of here, it’s amazing and FAST.

I have put this in intermediate, but it certainly has a fair amount of tough trails to ride (or hike) some trails are just big chunky rocks, some are grassy and can be boggy trails and then there is the gravel roads, some incredible gravel roads to Finnish this ride off.

It’s a great 1-2 night adventure around wales and is pretty easy to get to the start/Finish as it starts in Aberdare that has a train station.

I would say a MTB is needed for this ride, there are plenty of really rock trails along this route that a gravel bike won’t be too fun. I’m sure some people could manage it being it’s a fairly short route though.