Wet potatoes at Coed Y Brenin

Sorry, perhaps I should say SPuDs?

Alex, my best pal and riding buddy emailed me last week out of the blue asking if I wanted to do Coed Y Brenin at the weekend... my response? "HELL YEAH!" Decided on Sunday due to me working on Saturday and the famous balloon festival in the afternoon.
I arrived at Alex's a little later than intended, but after a quick cuppa and and avoiding the mad puppy he has, we set off down the M54 and headed for (wet) Wales.

For some reason the conversation turned to SPD's, and using them for XC... I've used them a few times before and never been 100% convinced... some how he managed to convince me to try them again, and serious misgivings and a likelyhood of pain, we set of into the murk.

Riding conditions were excellent as always in Wales, the trails were damp in places but mostly dry, and had a reasonable amount of grip (apart from that cross camber root section leading to the Cafe half way round) and I quickly found myself loving the evil SPD's... My flat pedals and 5Ten shoes are quite awesome, but I always find pedalling over rough stuff hard work, you really have to work to stop your feet getting bounced off - not a problem when I don't pedal - but if you wanna go faster, you gotta spin! Now with the SPD's, I found I could charge through a section and then be pedalling out of it much sooner, and much quicker!
Corners were odd at first but I soon learnt to embrace the feeling of it.
Only thing I'm still not 100% on is wet roots in SPD's, but that will come with time.

We rode The Beast, and this was a lot of fun, having us whooping, whiping and pinging off everything we could, and having one hell of a laugh.

Unfortunatley it all went a bit wrong...
Alex's Crank Bros Mallets failed, and the pedal body decided to give a bit more "float" than he'd bargined for, about 5cm of it, to be exact. It only got worse and eventually fell off, still attached to the shoe. We pressed on up to the descent to the Cafe, but it was no good, it fell off every few seconds and despite a desperate bodge with gaffa tape (with help from the cafe) we agreed we should bail and get the spare pedals and see if we can do the last few sections... unfortunatley the route that the Cafe directed us on had more than the 1/2 mile climb they quoted, a lovely road slog for a couple of miles that finished me... my saddle hurt my ass in ways that I hope never to experience (THAT IS GETTING CHANGED), so we called it a day and glumly headed home. (Following the special bus, driven by a special driver, at 20mph for 30mins! Grr!)
We had a great time and and I enjoyed the technical madness, though they have "sanitised" parts of the trail, which is a shame because some of the old "dangerous ba*****" sections have been cut off, but the replacements are fun enough, even if they don't carry the same feeling of iminent death!

All in all a great day and some amusing moments on the trail and during the journey!
I am now converted to SPUDism, and expect to see me attached to some Shimano M647 DX pedals... however, only for XC.
Still can't persuade me that they are better for DH when Sam Hill made up 2 seconds on a 14second section, the most pedally part of the course, on flats.

Posse: Me (Dangerous on trusty Chammer), Alex on SX Trail in "Jey" mode
Mechanicals: Alex's non-drive pedal developed float and eventually fell off, cutting the ride short
Trail: Loopy as ever, with some sanitisation, still a lot of fun!
Conditions: Wet in England, mostly dry in Wales (eh?)

(Wet Potatoes? I used SPDs and it was a wet day, and my shoes got splashed a couple of times)