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Hope you guys managed to get some shelter in the bothy!
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Yikes
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Wales Trip Report
Wow, what a ride. The hardest of my life so far. Two days of unparalleled ups and downs, some of the most rugged riding in the UK and some wild weather made for a thrilling trip.
Please note - if you want to come on one of my bikepacking trips in the future, they are nowhere near as hard as this normally! This was a testing start-of-season adventure.
Day one started at 6am, out of London on the first train to Cardiff and then up the valley to Merthyr Tydfil for 11ish. The four of us set off on our various rigs - T on the Swarf full suspension enduropacking machine, E on his On One with sparkly new cranks and front load, A on a Genesis that has seen many long miles already, and had a natty manual 2x on the front. Me on my ancient Solaris as always, this time with a bit more room in the bags which would prove very useful.
The climb on NCN paths past the Brecon Mountain Railways passed easily, with a little bit of singletrack and fire roads, and before long we were on the sustained rocky climb to The Gap, between Pen Y Fan and Fan Y Big, 600m up. Despite this path being sometimes inundated with mountain streams, the gradient wasn’t too bad, and we had a fair amount of company from weekend walkers, and up to the top in time for a glorious meal of mozarella and peanut butter sandwiches, baked sweet potatoes, and the odd chocolate orange twist, just 2h after leaving the train station. The view in front was enough to tempt a grin to all our faces - a track cut into the mountainside that descended slowly and surely, promising a 15min no-pedal singletrack ride.
T went first at full-sus full-pace (was he even using the brakes?) and we followed in his chunky tracks, although this path is rocky with enough speed it is a hoot to ride! The lower you get the more grass emerges around and then in the middle of the path, which is smooth and lovely for us with crappy/no suspension.
Finally a beautiful sculpted grass hillock dumps you down, 250m lower than the Gap, at a bridle gate, we all smiled from ear to ear at what must be one of the best descents I’ve ever ridden. There was even more after that though! Some narrow bridleways have been cunningly built into further downhill tracks, although rocky they were great to ride and only once below 200m did the descending really stop.
From here we picked up the 3 rivers ride through into Talybont, where rugby foiled a tea stop, and rode fairly briskly along the canal to Crickhowell for late lunch/early dinner.
In Crickhowell we were lucky enough to find a superb cafe that wouldn’t have been out of place in Shoreditch, serving expensive but sumptuous plates of grilled cheese and fried egg sandwiches. T’s trip to the DIY store rewarded us with a 10kg bag of logs for the bothy fire, which we adeptly lashed to our bikes with shoelaces, string, and A’s very handy empty cargo cages. This made the climb out of town very demanding! Gradients of up to 20% that would have been hard enough on a road bike really make you suffer when you’re carrying 4 potatoes and 4 logs strapped to your saddlebag, as I was! The roads narrowed and eventually ran out. With night very much fallen, there remained 10 rough kilometres to the bothy and a bed for the night.
Much cursing, nighttime forest plantation descents, nocturnal sheep encounters, and a long long draggy climb on rocks all in the 30-42 gear, brought us up to near the reservoir where the bothy is. Within striking distance, a pair of walkers emerged to give us the bad news - the bothy (capacity 3-5 people) was full of people already, and they were walking 8 miles back to their car in the dark! With snow starting to fall, we huddled together underneath the last stand of trees below the moor and cursed and tried to figure out what to do. I regretted saying that tents were optional on this ride…
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Faced with a bothy rammed full of smelly hikers, we put up the tents underneath some trees, flapping like mad in the wind which was gusting horribly and specked with snow. We tried to ignore the fact we had a 2-man tent and a not-waterproof 2-man tipi between the 4 of us, our bikes and all our luggage, and the fact we’d carried all this wood - by now mostly soaking wet from the rain - all the way up the hill. Perhaps this last decision drove us to venture to the bothy, to see what we were missing.
To our amazement there were only three people inside, looking a bit sheepish and rather out of it, who welcomed us in. A roaring fire was already on, indeed it was too hot to sit in about half the bothy, which was a rare problem to have indeed! The bikes had to stay outside in the snow however. In the end T and I elected to stay put for the night, and E and A would go back to the tents. Their decision would prove to be the wiser one!
We rustled up dinner, consisting of four potatoes wrapped in foil and tossed in the oven. Heirloom potatoes from Crickhowell’s finest grocer, even. The scalding temperature of the brand new stove in the bothy meant that one potato was quickly fossilised, and after we fished out the others, nearly burning our hands off in the process, their completely black skin did not promise much. But inside they were lovely and soft, and when anointed with a lot of melty cheese and some seasoning they proved a great dinner, just what you need in conditions like these. Moral of the story - don’t judge a potato by its jacket.
Eventually E and A headed for the tented camp, and T and I dealt with the company in the bothy. Between the three guys they had polished off one bottle of rum, one bottle of whisky, and four joints between them! Their dog seemed unimpressed and stayed with us on the ground floor - very much not meant for sleeping on - whilst they retreated to the sleeping attic. We had an entertaining time trying to cram our sleeping mats out, followed by a not-so-entertaining time trying to balance the bikes on the dining table, the dog on the bench, and all the firewood around or in the stove. You will not be surprised that T barely slept a wink all night courtesy of the dog jumping on his face for a comfier bed, and I didn’t get much rest either. We envied the other two, with their bikes in the tipi and their bodies in a comfy tent up high.
Morning broke with a few glimmers of sunshine, and the fire warming up the bothy to its sauna-like temperatures of last night. Several tins of beans later we were packed and ready to head up the pass to Lord Hereford’s Knob, the majestic knoll above Hay on Wye where Powys unfolds in front of you.
However, nature had other ideas. On the route up from the bothy a stupendous hailstorm made raising one’s head above looking directly at your front axle impossible, and we cowered together like penguins in a storm, determined not to just head home the same way we came. In the end we decided to actually head home, but mother nature brought a swift reprieve by switching from hailstorm to sun and blue sky in a matter of minutes, and we turned tail to continue with our planned journey to the top. Of course then we had to sit out another two hailstorms, but after much pushing we finally, jubilantly, made it to the Northernmost point of our adventures, in time to face a real enemy - the howling wind.
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Our planned route from here took us along ridges back South, across heath and moor, on singletrack up to Waun Fach at 809m. This landscape is rugged and unforgiving, and in the gusts of up to 80kph (!) it was even more rugged and unforgiving than usual! The wind attacked us first from the side, which was almost comedic for about 10 seconds before you realise you will have to spend the entire ride with your bars pointing 15º right in order to go straight forwards, or more likely push with the bike heeled way over to one side. Our framebags turned into massive sails, the bikes riding up and bucking against our feeble grip as hands went cold and white.
By the time we reached rideable sections, the sensation was something else! Sat down on the saddle and pedalling hard, the whole bike would slide effortlessly to the left, so much so that picking a line was almost impossible. I instantly wished me and my bike weighed 5 times more, definitely the first time I’ve felt so! No amount of corrective steering or confidence could help this. The wind grew ever stronger the higher we got, and by the top we had had the indignity of having to push not only up but also down and along the flat!
Waun Fach summit was unremarkable, but our Westwards turn was significant, as it now meant the stonking wind would now be in our faces rather than to our sides. And that was cause for rejoicing! We stormed downwards ready to unleash the anger of barely riding for the last 4 hours, over lovely natural downhill tracks and slippy off-piste sections where the quadbikes had come up to herd sheep.
A few very hairy turns and extremely steep rocky runins - bikes with droppers only - led us to a saddle at 600m, from where an inconceivably rideable and quick grass track channeled all the way down, out of the worst of the wind, to the valley and forest road below. Having thought that yesterday’s descent was the best I’ve ever ridden, I was wrong - this was the best. Despite losing my Garmin someway down in the merriment, I would have gladly pushed all the way back up this to ride it again. The sound of my freehub screeching higher and higher, seeing the others hot on my tail and then by my side on the doubletrack, fully out of the saddle with the suspension going bonkers trying to keep all the stuff strapped to my bike level - it doesn’t get better than this. And below a few easy roads led to Crickhowell again, as we cut out some chunky climbs on the route to save time, and headed for the book cafe to refuel.
From Crickhowell we elected to climb up through Llangattock and onto the heath above, deviating from the plan to get back before dark. A 500m climb doesn’t sound so bad, but in 5km of busy B-road, into the wind, when you are knackered from pushing all day and lots of yesterday, on a MTB loaded with camping gear, it really is. A hell of a lot of huffing and puffing was required to get us back up to the top. I’d really rather not do this again but there isn’t any other way to get there, really! Followed by a whizzy descent to the NCN path that carried us very drearily back to Merthyr. By the time we reached the outskirts of the city the headwind had worn my patients nearly to bits, despite endless snacks being offered by my companions I was close to losing it. Thank god for a final descent into town, the takeaway pizza shop, and the heat of A’s lovely van.
A big thanks to my three companions for not mutinying even in the bonkers conditions we faced, and always having something good or funny to say. I hope to ride with you guys in the future, maybe with the wind behind us next time.
Finally, if you are contemplating this ride - go during the week when the bothy is less crowded, and only go when the weather is great. Us coming via train, booked far in advance, made both of these things impossible!
But do go and do it. It is challenging and beautiful and wild and, as long MTB routes go, a lot of this is breaking new ground.New trips coming soon. All welcome, and they won’t be this hard or mad. B
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:-)
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Who's ordered an 11-50t cassette for their bike now?
platypus
pit
BareNecessities
si_mon628
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@spotter
hey mate
I reckon if one of us brings a stove that will be good. hot tea is always nice.
if you don't have space I will bring my little one and a 750ml mug.
let me know! one of us should bring teabags too :~)
no problems for water near the bothy!