Enormous Ride To Elan Valley
This is going to be an enormous trip through The Elan Valley and home via some new small roads.
Well, wow that was one long day! 261 miles in total; leaving at 9:22 and walking into the GL for a pint at 5:20. We headed down to Rhayader with the intension of picking up the National Cycle Route single track mountain road to Devils' Bridge, only to find that the Welsh Rally was on, and all the rally cars were leaving Rhayader and driving at a million miles an hour over the mountains. The roads were all closed, so getting over to the west was looking a lot more difficult than originally planned.
We had a quick tea & pasty stop at The Elan Valley Visitor Centre (a new café to go on our cafés visited page), re-routed and decided to extend the day considerably by back tracking to Rhayader and turning south to Llandovery, Beulah, Lampeter and Tregaron. Bloomin' fantastic decision and I know we have ridden these roads previously, but it turned out to be an excellent ride!!
The skinny fella in the picture is a statue depicting a Navvy that built the damn in 1904 - it was 100 years old when this statue was commissioned apparently - looks like he needs a good pan of Scouse!
We did have a bit of a hairy trip over to Devil's Bridge, as we turned right at Beulah to go up and over a mountain road to get over to Tregaron, expecting to be able to ride it comfortably, only to be confronted with rally cars competing in the Welsh rally coming in the other direction. If you look on the map above there is a little route hanging out to the right from Beulah, that was us attempting to go over the mountains and getting turned back by a very concerned looking Marshall who was directing the rally cars .The cars were not racing, rather cutting through to get to the next stage - however they weren't the slowest things on the road heading in the other direction on a single track road - good job they had exceptional large brakes!!!
You don't expect this coming at you on a mountain road!!!!! But that's what happened...Stopping for a cold drink at our normal café in Devil's Bridge, where 100's of scramlers' had gathered for a ride out somewhere. Also a big group of riders were expected just after we had arrived. Good job we got in before them, as there were literally 100's of bikers all in this little café waiting to be served by about 2 people!
You can see T giving some inconsiderate bikers who had parked in front of us a piece of his mind!! He was politely asking them to move their bikers in order for us to be able to get out; didn't go well with the bikers I don't think, but nonetheless they did move.
After the pit stop we decided to ride over a new (to us) mountain road past Nant-y-moch Reservoir toward Talybont and Macynlleth. This road is so small it doesn't even have a number or a name and it's heart stopping in places - single track, no barriers with pretty steep drops to the right of us - pretty relieved it wasn't dark or raining as that would have been a little scary!!!!
As you can see, this is a pretty isolated part of the world and even though it's just a few miles off the main roads, you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere, with no other human in site.
Yes, this was as narrow as it looked, but what you can't see is the shale on the road, making the riding a little tricky. The road swept around huge reservoirs with breathtaking views across the moors. The water level was very low unfortunately and much need rain required!!
Good job no other cars were coming in the opposite direction, or bikes for that matter, as there were no passing places and no way were we going near the right edge of the road as we would have ended up at the bottom of a very steep valley should we have taken one wrong move!
Another great day, probably longer than we wanted and certainly, outside the tours, our longest days' riding we've done for a some time!!!! Back for fish, chips, mushy peas and curry sauce home made style!!!!!! Yum Yum!
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