A Short Ride Round North Wales

By Marie Madigan

 

Proving to themselves that a cycle tour needn't be a cross-continental expedition, Marie and Adi pedal out of their front gate and off into the Welsh summer. Six short days spin out into miles of lanes, crisscrossing borderland valleys and majestic uplands where they discover new lanes and vistas in their home of North Wales, rediscover old ones, and remind themselves once again that there's no better way of exploring than on the back of a bike.

Whether you're an avid cyclist, a travel enthusiast, or simply looking for a heartwarming journey, this book will inspire you to see the world from a different perspective. Rediscover the beauty of nature, the excitement of new adventures, and the thrill of traveling on two wheels. Perfect for fans of travel memoirs, cycling enthusiasts, and those who love to explore the natural beauty of Wales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marie Madigan
• Release date: Jul 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536588279

Book preview

PROLOGUE

We’d had itchy feet and wheels for months. A long cold spring lasted up until the middle of June, when the weather remembered that it was meant to be summer and grudgingly pulled the temperature out of single figures, with a very bad grace indeed. Our tentative plans for a couple of weeks cycling from Cornwall back to our home in Anglesey had been scuppered by work; the gods of self-employment had smiled upon us and suddenly we were overrun. We deferred on the Cornish plan, but then we had a window. An extra-long weekend, Thursday to Tuesday.

‘It’ll be your birthday. Where do you want to go?’ Adi, my partner, asked me.

I love this about birthdays. You get to decide everything and the other just has to go along with it. We spread the maps over the kitchen table.

Despite living in Wales for years, we’ve done most of our cycle touring in foreign parts like the north of England. We’d had numerous short trips - into the mountains for a night or two, down the Llŷn peninsula for a couple of nights, around Anglesey - but nothing more than a couple of nights away each time.

‘What about a short ride around North Wales?’

Perfect.

We considered the map. Just across the Menai Strait from Anglesey the tones turned from the pale cream of the flat lands to the rumpled toasty brown denoting serious hills. We could see them if we looked out of the window: the northern Snowdonia ranges of the Glyderau and Carneddau to the south of us and the massif of Snowdon itself. On the map, the spreading rumpled uplands of the Hiraethog further to the south-east were crisscrossed with lanes liberally besprinkled with chevrons, as was the long spine of the Clwydian hills to the east. South of Snowdon itself the 3,000-foot mountains gave way to the great upland expanses of the Migneint and the Berwyn, moorlands full of lakes and lonely roads. In short, a lot of hills. It is said that if you could iron Wales out, it would have the same surface area as England. In other words, no matter where you cycle, you can usually depend on the road going up.

Now, I like hills. I love them when I am at the top. I quite like them when I am at the bottom. My affection dims a little two minutes into the climb, when the memory of my voice airily telling someone else that I like cycling up hills comes back and rings annoyingly in my ears over the sound of my rasping breaths. But still I like them. So a lot of hills on the map should have been neither surprising nor daunting. But the fact remains that the notion of asking my rather out-of-touring-practice legs to carry me and my pannier-laden bike straight into the mountains did not thrill my soul. Neither did it thrill The Legs. I could feel them trying not to quiver.

Then Adi had his brainwave.

‘We’ll go to Chester, along the coast.’

Genius. It would be about 80 miles to Chester, according to Google maps. Apart from a short diversion into the Snowdonia foothills just east of Bangor and a short pull over the tip of the Halkyn ridge near the English border, it would be mostly on the flat, shooting us to the borders and warming up the legs for the hillier rides ahead. From there we’d go south for a couple of days, then turn northwest and make our way back home through the mountains with fully touring-ready legs once more.

CHAPTER ONE

To The East

As we would be spending an entire day cycling east, the departure day dawned, naturally enough, with an easterly breeze. With only mild chuntering we pedalled away from home, enjoying the first few miles of the breeze on our tails. On our left, the broad mouth of the Menai Strait glinted promisingly in the sunlight, a happy change from the steely grey it had been reflecting for many months. The early holiday-makers in Beaumaris were confused, wearing scarves and sunglasses and pointing up at the strange yellow thing in the sky.

When you live on a headland every ride has to start off with the same few miles. You don’t feel as if you’ve started until you get through them. It wasn’t until eleven miles later, when we departed from our normal commuting/shopping expedition route into Bangor and freewheeled down past the university, that something in my head flicked and I finally felt as if we were out for a bike ride.

National Cycle Network Route 5 follows the North Wales coast before eventually leading all the way to Guildford. We joined it on Thomas Telford’s Menai Bridge, the lovely and much photographed suspension bridge spanning one of the narrowest parts of this notoriously treacherous strait. We rode downhill behind the university towards the tip of the headland guarding the entrance to the narrow part of the strait. This road has lovely views back over the wooded shore of Anglesey, which is by far the most wooded stretch of the island, if you discount coniferous plantations. The view vanished behind trees as we followed a cycle lane marked off by the side of the one-way road. NCN5 wound past the entrance to Bangor’s pier at the foot of the hill, then around the back of a terrace of houses and out to the sea front, near the old chandlery. From Anglesey, there’s very little of Bangor that can be seen and here the reason is obvious: most of the town lies in a narrow valley between two parallel ridges, so it’s only here that the town’s northern extremity peeks out to the sea front.

The cycle track went up on the pavement and up over the eastern ridge that protects Bangor; less of a ridge now, more of a hummock. We followed a side road down to Porth Penrhyn, which once belonged to Penrhyn Castle, out of sight behind the woods backing the small port’s buildings. This is a lovely spot, busy with walkers, where a tiny river, the Afon Cegin, reaches the sea. Under a brick archway, the well-surfaced off-road cycle track follows the river for a couple of miles. From under the trees there were glimpses of unexpectedly pretty meadows, just beginning to look spring-like. The track is often busy, popular with locals and visitors alike: this section is part of the long-distance North Wales Path. The cycle track continues into the mountains as Lôn Las Ogwen (Ogwen Green Lane), following the Ogwen River upstream all the way to Cwm Idwal. But today it was quiet, and we soon turned off and followed the NCN5 signs up a scenic, narrow road.