Easter Holiday 2012
School holidays. My wife and I both work in schools, so we have the "luxury" of school holidays. It's a double-edged sword. I don't get paid if I don't work. My rate of pay includes "holiday pay", but I can't choose to work over the holiday, because all my workplaces are closed.
We have just over two weeks in which we have to keep our children stimulated and entertained on a minimal budget. Not easy.
We decided we needed a change of latitude, and as my wife's parents live on a rather lovely part of the North Wales Coast and haven't seen their grandchildren in a long time, and can provide us with free accommodation, we decided to grace them with our presences.
Travelling anywhere from Pembrokeshire is not easy, however you do it, but travelling to North Wales by public transport seemed all but impossible. Train: Pembroke Dock - Swansea, Swansea - Shrewsbury, Shrewsbury - Machynlleth, Machynlleth - Barmouth. Price: extortionate. All we want to do is travel about 100 miles up our coast; do we really need to go via England?
Online journey planners such as Traveline Cymru seem incomplete and do not include buses such as the rather important Traws Cymru, though that could be down to my wife rather than the website.
Eventually, after much searching and researching, we came up with what seemed the optimal travel plan for the family: train to Carmarthen, bus to Aberystwyth, bus to Dolgellau, lift to Barmouth.
My choice was obvious.
However, Barmouth is around 120 bumpy miles away (for bumpy, read "very hilly"). The most I've ever cycled in a day before was just over 100 much flatter miles, and at the end of that I was incapable of any further movement for a few months.
Then again, I'm fitter now than I was then, right? I cycle everywhere. I usually have loaded panniers when I do, sometimes even a trailer draggin' behind me. I didn't really feel convinced, to be honest.
I've driven the coast road many times and "know" it well, though you never know a road well until you ride it. (insert quote)
Preparation:
As I didn't have much time for preparation, I didn't do any. I'm not joking. I put some new wheels on my bike which had just been given to me by a friend. I gave the bike a quick fettle, making sure all the nuts and bolts were tightened, and then spent my time conserving as much energy as possible. When you've built your bike from the ground up, you have the advantage of knowing where every nut and bolt is. It makes life easier. I'd been riding daily as I commuted to schools to teach safe cycling - the previous week had involved riding out to a remote village school, about 8 miles each way, and towing a trailer with heavy signs, so I was as "warmed up" as I was going to be. To throw in a fifty just for the sake of it would, I felt, just be wasting energy. I know people who will train hard for an event up until a week or so before and then stop and rest for the few days prior to the ride. If I did that, I'd seize up! We're all different. I'm no "athlete", believe me. I don't go in for the "fitness for fitness' sake" ethic, I'm way too lazy. One of the reasons I cycle is that you can get away with minimal effort quite a lot of the time, it's the whole point!
Having done rides of similar length before, I'm very aware of how important the conservation of energy is, and the need to pace the ride correctly. When I estimate a journey time I take 20kmh as an average speed, then factor in stops. This is an important bit to get right, as you don't want to feel "against the clock" at the end of a long journey. I also hoped to meet up with the family en route at Aberystwyth - I had a "window" of about 90 minutes between their bus changes.
I decided that in order to arrive at a reasonable time, and to be able to meet up with the family at the appointed hour, I would have to be out on the road at 4am. OUCH!
Needless to say, I didn't get any extra sleep the night before.
The Ride:
I was awake in good time. Plentiful tea and a bacon sandwich were enough to get me going, and I left the house at around 4:30am in pitch blackness. Most of the streetlamps were out, and the whole town looked peaceful for once.
A note to anyone who thinks that going out into the darkest hours and riding off on a bike is complete madness: Daybreak is ALWAYS AWESOME! The birdsong is probably the best thing you will ever hear, and as the light grows, so does the noise!
I didn't have much luggage as most of my stuff was being taken with the family. Luxury! Most long rides I do, I'm gone for a few days and need to carry changes of clothing and food etc, so I'm weighed down from the start. All I took with me was:
- emergency toolkit
- first aid kit (including painkillers!)
- lots of chocolate "energy food"
- phone
- ipod
- camera
- GPS
- money
- mobile charger (power monkey) and spare batteries (rechargeable of course)
all of which fit neatly into my rack box. I don't include drinks bottles as luggage, they're just part of the bike. I just take squash. I used to mix up energy powders, but they cost more and there's no appreciable difference I can see. If I just take water, I drink less. Take what works - if you don't like the taste, you're not going to drink it, especially when you've a raging thirst and your bottles are lukewarm.
To travel light, you have to be brutal about what not to take.
Windproof clothing is better than waterproof in my opinion. I've not managed to find any waterproof material which really works, and windproof material dries quick once the rain stops. It's also usually lighter.
Once you're moving, you soon warm up, however cold it is. Just look after your extremities. Fingers and toes soon go numb in the right conditions.
I didn't see daylight till I was heading up into the Preseli hills, about 30km, and when it did appear it was foggy and cold. Only on the top though - it soon warmed up after the descent.
At Cardigan I stopped for a "Full English" - IMHO the very best cycling fuel money can buy. I'd travelled about 40m (65km) on a bacon sandwich. I also needed to get warm. My feet had been numb lumps since before the top of the preselis and getting some feeling back was important.
I knew there'd be little opportunity to stop between Cardigan and Aberystwyth, so a good feed was essential.
The weather was overcast but clear - it didn't look like it would rain, but this is Wales, and rain it will. It started just after Aberaeron, light at first, steadily getting heavier. In Aberystwyth it was chucking it down so I was glad of a sit down with the family in a dry cafe and a few exra cups of tea. It was still raining when I set off again and did so almost all the way to Machynlleth, when the sun popped out again, and stayed out pretty much all the way through Dolgellau, apart from a heavy and cold hailstorm.
There was another brief fall of hail on the estuary road between Dolgellau and Barmouth, but by then I was past caring. The coast road was a struggle against a strong and cold Northerly wind and each kilometre seemed longer than a mile as they ticked slowly over, but I arrived dry and happy, a new Personal Best of 199.3km, according to my GPS.
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