Wales Isn't Flat

Wales Isn't Flat

Cycle Touring for the Uninitiated

After finishing our 2nd year uni exams a friend and I decided we wanted to go on a holiday (like any normal student), however we didn't want to just go sit on a beach we wanted an adventure! In the end we decided on cycle touring and so chose to cycle the Lôn Las Cymru Sustrans challenge route. This is a 250-mile route from Holyhead to Cardiff, or in other words the length of Wales. It crosses 2 mountain ranges and is described on the Sustrans website as “one of the toughest of all the long distance routes on the National Cycle Network” (which I neglected to tell Julia). So basically it has everything you need for a proper adventure!

Before we set off we weren’t super fit cyclists, indeed I wouldn’t even have considered myself a cyclist. Sure I cycled regularly, I cycled to uni, to meet friends in the pub, to go shopping, to running races and to go sailing but I wasn’t a cyclist. To me cycling was merely a means of transport, sure as a kid I’d gone on bike rides and even dabbled in mountain biking but at uni I used a bike to get places and for nothing more. These days I am a cyclist, I cycle for the sheer joy of cycling as well as the exploration and adventure you can have whilst whizzing about the countryside on 2 wheels and all that started with this trip.

We set off by train to Holyhead with a vague idea of where we were going and no idea of where we were going to sleep each night. Over the following 5 days we slowly cycled South encountering some of the delights of Wales (gorgeous scenery, great campsites and friendly people) as well as some of the less delightful parts (rain, hills and midges). 

Some of the highlights of this trip were the stunning scenery we were cycling through, particularly across the Snowdonia and Brecon Beacons national parks, the hills are tough but the views from the top more than make up for it! On our third day we left Machynlleth heading South and soon reached the highest point of the trip. Looking out over our surroundings we felt like two insignificant blips in this wild and mountainous landscape, or at least we would have if we could have seen it, instead we saw grey and lots of rain! But I promise when the rain clears the views in Wales are simply breathtaking. Even if you just have to take our word for it!

This trip was a proper adventure for us and like all good adventures it didn't exactly all go to plan, we had some interesting experiences involving broken bikes, suicidal squirrels (apparently the best way to pass a speeding bike is between the two wheels), being eaten alive by midges and getting caught up in the middle of a mountain rescue exercise/ police driver training! These experiences make it more fun (thinking about it we might have an odd idea of fun) and they also certainly add to the memories.

We met some of the nicest people in Wales (both in a pub and in a bike shop) due to technical issues with Julia's bike. On our third day with about 12 miles to go Julia kept getting punctures on downhills and soon I had run out of spare innertubes. This was slightly inconvenient as we faced a 2 mile walk into Newbridge on Wye. We arrived into Newbridge at about 5:30 on a Friday evening looking a bit disheveled only to discover that the nearest bike shop was Builth Wells (our intended overnight destination and 10miles away). So true to student form Julia headed to the pub, about 5 minutes passed and she returned with the nicest man in all of Wales and possibly the world. This very kind man had agreed to leave the pub on a Friday evening to get us a puncture repair kit from his house. Shortly Julia had two pumped up tyres and we set of again towards our destination. However, 5 minutes down the road Julia braked and the back tyre punctured again! What resulted was much swearing and then about a 10 mile walk to our campsite. 

The next morning, we got some new innertubes and a tyre and merrily set off, before low and behold another puncture on Julia's back wheel. This was the only point on the whole journey where we almost gave up! However, we took her bike back to the shop and it turned out that the brand new back brake that a well known high street bike shop had fitted a few weeks previous had in fact been clamping on the tyre instead of the wheel, which was slightly sub optimal. Unfortunately no replacement brakes were available but we were determined to finish the tour so to solve the problem we simply disconnected the back brake and Julia did the final two days of our tour without, all adds to the sense of adventure and the adrenaline rush of speeding down hills. 

Cycle touring the length of Wales isn't an easy holiday but it is certainly a lot of fun and whilst it is a challenge it's not insurmountable. We also did this trip on a student budget, Julia used her basic road bike which she used at uni and had in its life time been to the bottom of the sea so wasn't quite in pristine condition and I used a 1995 Marin mountain bike which I picked up cheaply on gumtree. Sure better more expensive kit may have led to less mechanical failures but where’s the fun in that!