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Wed 14 Oct, 12:30 pm UTC

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Vandals damage bike trails at Coed y Brenin

By BikeRadar

Staff at Coed y Brenin mountain bike centre in Wales are trying to trace vandals who attacked their trails.

Earlier this month, rangers discovered that rocks had been levered out of the ground on an old section of the Tawr trail, leaving large holes.

In addition, signs and way-markers had been broken and removed on the Dragon's Back and Beast trails – with some direction pointers changed to point riders in the wrong direction – and branches strewn across the track.

The damage, which affected several miles of trail, was discovered on a Friday afternoon, shortly before hordes of weekend visitors were set to descend on the popular centre, and staff had to act quickly to repair the vandalism.

Forestry Commission Wales mountain bike ranger Andy Braund said: "The waymarkers were tampered with on an extended loop in the furthest parts of the forest. They could have sent people out onto the moors, and the weather was pretty horrendous that weekend so we could have easily ended up with a man lost and going down with hypothermia.

"Rocks were removed from an old section of trail that used to be part of Tawr but no longer is – the old dual descender. It could have been a bit of high jinks but they don't realise the consequences. The damage to the trail was pretty bad. Anyone riding that section would have ended up going over the handlebars into the rocks. The potential for injury was high."

Rangers found evidence suggesting that motorbikes and quad bikes had used the trail shortly before the vandalism was discovered. They are appealing for information to help trace those responsible.

“It is unclear why anyone would want to cause damage and disruption on this scale," said Andy. "We've never had anything like this before. We are assisting the police in their inquiries in an effort to apprehend the culprits."

The trail centre attracts 130,000 visitors a year:

User Comments

There are 9 comments on this post

Showing 1 - 9 of 9 comments

  • Mo**** fu****! This is far from being an isolated incident though. I see this on trails all the time. Some big-headed "ecologist" thinks he's doing good by throwing stuff on clearly marked and maintained trails because we supposedly "damage nature". As if going off path to find trees to throw in the way was very nature friendly...

  • Um... not many big-headed ecologists ride Quads....

  • Ramblers having been pulling this crap for years! Why would a Quad Biker put trees across the trails!? Barking up the wrong Tree!

  • Not a week goes by without me having to remove deliberately placed objects from trails.

    The best one was two golf trolleys.

  • Bloody ecologists tearing trees down to spoil MTBers fun..... ;-)

    I've never been there before - but is it worth popping up on the road bike this weekend - basically is the cafe worth it ?

  • Did the Rangers also find evicence of walkers on the trail shortly before the vandalism was discovered?

    Let's not jump to conclusions about trail and quad bike riders.

  • OK...I did break my femur on the Tarw last year, but NO, it WASN'T me!!!

    Bleedin idiots, how can they sleep at night, in their shit filled hovels???

    Jealous, dull, ffick and stooopid. And that's the clever one!

    Public flogging isn't good enough. What's that CIA water-boarding thing?

  • I never said those guys were ecologist, I said that's what I usually deal with on the trails I ride... And they don't tear down trees, they take the fallen ones and put them across the trail!

  • Cil, i'm an ecologist and i ride bikes offroad and i know plenty of others like me - the 2 things go together pretty well you know, because lets face it cycling in all its forms is environmentally pretty benign and gets you closer to nature, if you stop and look around.

    The people that did this are just ignorant dicks and probably have some ill-informed objection to MTBs that some people still seem to harbour. Or maybe they're just bored and sad and need to get themselves a proper hobby.

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