There has to be something else going on with the pricing. I just had a look at the event that I’ve done in Aus and it’s <$600 Au to do the 4 day P2P event with earlybird pricing.
Government tourism funding boost maybe?
I would like to do it and let my partner go at is own pace (much faster than me), so we can both get the training in. We tend not to pick up finisher medals for environmental reasons anyway.
But I wouldn’t pay such bonkers prices.
Notwithstanding the price etc - I can attest to the great geography of the area.
I grew up less than 10 miles from that place and spent a lot of time in the 1980s riding old school MTB.
The Coed Y Brenin (Kings Forest) tracks are pretty decent - they set up a dedicated MTB park there some years ago and it’s grown over time in reputation.
When I was living there in the 1970s and 1980s it was just forest tracks or single track to chose from to ride my bike (older bmx then onto MTB - (I was rocking a specialised rockhopper sport 
)
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Possibly some element of supply and demand… lots of people would like to do an event but hardly any of them exist.
As noted above its illegal to race on bridleways and you would probably struggle to do a long distance race in the UK which didn’t go on any bridleways (maybe you could do them enduro style though), so it would be seriously difficult to come up with a viable long distance route. Then a lot of the rest of the course would be on private land so you’d have to coordinate with lots of landowners.
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I found a few articles online in regards to bridleways. Ouch. What a mine field.
http://openmtb.org.uk/resources/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-bridleways/
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Interesting - thanks for that.
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This race is slightly more expensive (although not when the Wales early bird pricing expires), but it includes accommodation whereas you have to pay double the price to get that for the Wales one…
Not sure the riding would be as challenging though, seems to be aimed more towards noobs.
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This is really helpful , thank you, will take a look