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So good!
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I found this in my shed.
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Last little ride today. Bike is sold, so took it to the LBS to have them pack and ship it off.
I simply didn't use it any longer, so might as well go to a new home instead of taking up storage space. A bit sad. It's a fantastic bike and it felt so smooth and quick the 15 mins I had on it this morning. Buyer gets a great bike for the price – all because he accepts not having disc brakes.
I picked off the Carbon Ti wheels and sold it with RS81's, so they will get a new life some day. Still, with RS81, cheap saddle, Gravelkings, tubes and XT pedals it weighed in at 7,7.
Cheers
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Really enjoyed the format of this one.
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Day 6 (3/3)
The guys at Paradise were super helpful, working overtime on a Saturday so that we could get changed and find something to eat. Even managed to get the hotel next door to store the boxes until the morning after when we were flying home. Big thanks!
Then, about the finding LFGSS thing. When we got to Manchester, we also found ourselves canceled from the Airbnb booking we had in London. Enter Platypus, who even before it happened had offered a place to stay in London.
With bikes boxed and stored we spent the time well over to his place, stopping by a pub, a wine shop and take-away joint. He welcomed us into his home and we had an amazing evening with food and drinks. It was the perfect ending to an eventful trip.
Thank you, Barney!
Thank you, LFGSS!
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Day 6 (2/3)
Final stretch, but…
The drizzle is picking up and disaster strikes, as I feel bumps being absorbed abnormally well. Morale is low as we’re standing by a busy road in the rain trying to seat my f*#%ing Schwalbe tire, using sunscreen as lubrication. Luckily we started early, so when we finally managed to make it rideable we were still on schedule.
Now, some additional info about the rain. I don’t know if we’ve made a deal with the devil or something, but we’ve been extremely lucky with the weather on these trips throughout the years. It has pretty much only rained during the nights and on the final day – when it doesn’t really matter that much. When it has rained on the final day, it’s been proper rain though, and this year didn’t disappoint.
As we're getting into London it’s pissing down. Totally drenched now and starting to feel that it’s been a lot of riding the past six days. Now we just want to get to the finish line, get changed and drink beers.
Riding through central London is quite a pleasant experience though. Considering the size of the city and traffic I feel safe and it’s easy to navigate. As the rain eases up and the sky brightens, we finally coast into the alley of Paradise Cycles.
Done.
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Cheers guys!
Day 6: Pangbourne – London
96 km / 270 mAlarm clocks go off at 7 and we roll out historically early just after 8 AM. We pick up loaf, ham and cheese at the grocery store and enjoy it on the sidewalk. A triathlete stops by, and it turns out he has already done the opposite of what we are supposed to ride. So much for thinking we were starting early.
A drizzle is looming. My navigation is a little too scenic, following a dirt path by the Thames. Voices in the group want speed, not wet mud. But it’s too late and the first 10k is slow before getting on a proper road in Reading.
We gradually meet more cyclists. As the value of their bikes go up, the number of waves go down. It feels like going back in time. Everyone is on a road or TT bike. Back home, it’s much more of a mix with fatter tires and all kinds of fashion or not clothing. Here, it’s Rapha and club jerseys only.
HP has a puncture, but other than that not eventful and we get to Windsor where we stop for a snack. The tri-guy fondly spoke of some fancy café where all the cyclists from London go to have a legendary cinnamon bun.
Yea, no. We stumbled by The Windsor Cycle Hub. Lovely community dedicated to getting people into cycling. All kinds of ages and people were very welcoming – even wanted to document the four not-so-wise men coming from afar – https://twitter.com/WindsorCycleHub/status/1677705957126680578 – We enjoy a snack there and beaver onwards – past the S-Works Cinnamon bunch. Dodged a bullet there as we are not in the mood to discuss threshold watts and tanlines right now.
(1/3)
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Day 5 (4/4)
In the end, we make it out the other side and get to Pangbourne Meadows just before 9 PM. Huge day. The campsite is big and professional with a boss that wants to take our picture (he used to be a photographer, he tells us). For the first time, really, we have a bunch of other tents around us. We take a much needed dip in the Thames and head to wotn for dinner.
Problem is. Everything is closing. We chase from place to place, begging them to not close the kitchen. But in the end, we strike gold. The only restaurant that will take us in is a Turkish one called La'De Kitchen Pangbourne. We order literally everything on the menu, and it was amazing. The best meal of the whole trip.
Exhausted, but happy to have made it, we head back for sleep. Still need to get up early tomorrow.
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Day 5 (3/4)
To be honest, my research on this part of the route was quite superficial. I just followed the basic advice here and let Strava sort the rest without looking much into the details. Which would turn out interesting.
After 90 km of quite uneventful riding (apart from the puncture and near-robbed experience), we take a right off the main road. A narrow dirt road appears and the stoke is high. We climb away from the traffic and youngins. Vast fields on both sides and we feel like we’ve hit the jackpot. Just 50k left to Pangbourne – roughly two hours, eh?
Wrong. What we slowly realize is that we are on something known as the ridgeway. It is spectacular. So beautiful. But also extremely hard. Short, steep climbs, technical sections and scorching heat. No places to refuel without doing a major detour.
We love it, but also hate it. We’re spending almost three hours covering the 30 kilometers to the other side. Multiple punctures (not me this time) and sore bodies are starting to take its toll – and we’re running dangerously low on water as we hadn’t even topped up our bottles before heading into the adventurous part.
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Day 5 (2/4)
Fully loaded we ride north west through Wotton-under-Edge (and we thought we were done with weird town names leaving Wales). I get our first puncture. Thing is, I changed tires to the new Schwalbe G-One RS a few weeks before leaving and I’ve been really happy with them. This was my first puncture, however, and it turns out they are basically impossible to seat. Just too tight for my rim profile. We end up spending half an hour at a café, resorting to soapy water from the bathroom and a whole lot of elbow grease. But we get it seated and head onwards.
Roads kind of suck. Much more traffic than what we’ve had so far and although some parts are nice, we quickly get back to reality. Consequence of having three times as high a density of people compared to Wales I guess.
There are highlights though. After Swindon we’re greeted by this marvel of spiraling architecture to take us over the M4, and a few minutes later we meet a gang of masked up kids crowding the cycle path. For a few seconds I genuinely think they are going to rob us, but they give way and I think they were posing for some social media or something.
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Day 5: Hortham – Pangbourne
145 km / 1360 mWe’re getting into the rhythm now and we’re blessed with another morning of nice weather. The mentioned rum shack has been used to store and dry our crap, which made setting up camp a breeze. As we pack up we make another brew of coffee. We’re on schedule, but need to pull off another proper big day to get close enough to London. The final day needs to be short as we’ve booked boxes and workshop hours at Paradise Cycles, where we need to get to within opening hours…
The boss lady appears with a happy dog and laughs when she sees that we’ve made the rum shack look like a christmas tree of sweaty bibs. Not uncommon, she tells us. We do as we always do and ask for the best breakfast place in the area and get some sound advice.
We pack up and get going, satisfied to be on our way a little over 9. The breakfast joint is obviously a local favorite, and the local favorite is our favorite. The scrabby quartet hunts for power outlets and spread iPhones and power banks across the place before digging in a perfectly good all-you-can eat full english. Nice.
(1/4)
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Day 4 (3/3)
Weather was perfect with the sun just hovering on the horizon behind us. We were happy and had found a place on Maps to camp just on the shore of England.
Problem was, they didn’t accept us. They didn’t even open the door, just an old man telling us no from the inside. 130 km, getting dark, tired and no place to sleep.
Pedaling slowly staring into the blue light from the phone trying to find a campsite. We headed towards one 30 minutes further into the country. Closed gates. Come on.
There were houses everywhere and it was going to be difficult to hide four people with bikes. Then HP gets through on the phone and the gate to Bristol Camping magically opens. We’re greeted by a lovely woman that shows us to an oasis of a campsite. All to ourselves again. This time with showers, a bonfire and even a rum shack.
We shower, pitch tents and finally manage to light a fire just – it’s just before midnight and we couldn’t be happier.
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Day 4 (2/3)
From there we descended into a forest and the next hours were a blur of tiny roads encapsulated by more hedges and trees. We still had to do long days to stick to our new schedule, but agreed that we wanted to do Wye valley instead of the shorter route through Usk after Abergavenny. Everyone had spoken fondly of Wye valley. Everyone on here, but also everyone we’d met.
To be honest, it was quite underwhelming. It was basically a semi-trafficy road along a river. I think it was because we were not in business of doing stops, detours of sightseeing. Probably a super nice area to visit, but to cycle through… Anywho, when we finally stopped for dinner after 111 km, we stumbled across a cricket match. Great entertainment while we enjoyed our overpriced and mediocre food outside in the lovely evening sun.
It was already 7.30 PM when we got going, but the beer and food had numbed the tiredness and the mood was pretty good. We were going to cross the bridge, which sounded fun.
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Day 4: Builth Wells – Hortham (Bristol)
140 km / 1535 mWe started the day by brewing coffee on our beautiful, secluded campsite. Not so much because we didn’t want to wait 15 minutes and have it with breakfast in town… but more because we had brought the gear and bought the gas. It was perfectly adequate.
Back in Builth Wells we had breakfast on the other side of the road to where we had dinner the night before. I think it was good, but I can’t remember because I’m stupid enough to wait months to write this.
Tanked up we hit the road and continued the fast pace from last night for the first two hours before Hay-on-Wye. It was a cozy but/and touristy town – known for one million bookstores, which does not compute with bikepacking. We had some food in the sun and got on.
Then we started climbing, slowly lifting ourselves above the myriad of hedges. The highlight of scenicness in Wales unveiled itself. Lush, green, long views. Small switchbacks. Mountains. Sheep. It was beautiful as we fought the slight headwind towards the Gospel Path. For being just over 500 meters above sea level, it was quite spectacular.
(1/3)
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Looks sick! Enjoy the show guys.
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Day 3 (3/3)
We found a pub, and ended up by ourselves in the “beer garden”. No worries, we were happy, smelly and could use some privacy to get changed anyway. Got some decent food and a few beers while we checked the map for a place to camp. No obvious options, and while the sun was setting we headed back in the direction we came from. A huge campsite used for a Motorcycle and Beer (?!) festival appeared, but nobody picked up the phone. We found the farm that owned the place, and after some friendly trespassing to find the owner, a kid appeared and told us there was no way we could pitch our tents there. Camping only during the festival. So the 5000 lots to pitch tents remained untouched for the night. We did ask if he knew a place where we could camp, and he said no and told us we should head back to town.
We did no such thing, and went to the closest farm that was running the same operation by renting out their land to the festival. They met us at the site and were super friendly. Court Farm Camping gets high regards from us.
Got the beautiful spot all to ourselves. Even with running water and a loo.
Slept like babies.
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Day 3 (2/3)
The climb up Machynlleth Mountain was a good 10k at 4,5% avg., but with steep sections of 10% avg. It was hard, but proper nice. A narrow road with no cars and lush green views wherever you pointed your head.
We rolled down to Llanidloes where we snacked on the sidewalk. It was already 5 PM and we’d only covered 70 km due to our mucking about and slow average speed so far. Once we got going, however, the terrain got easier after a while and we were picking up speed. We pedaled into Rhayader, and motivated by our recent increase of pace, decided to keep going for Builth Wells.
The desolated and fast roads made it easy and enjoyable, and we averaged 30 kph for the final 20 km – full TTT mode!
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Day 3: Penhros Isaf Bothy – Builth Wells (1/3)
113 km / 1958 mThe bothy experience! I think we all had the worst night’s sleep of the whole trip, but still super happy to have made the stop.
Pros:
- Building cool af
- Not having to pitch a tent
Cons:
- Dirty and moldy
- Crap air quality
We packed up our gear and rolled down through a beautiful forest and into Dolgellau – a ridiculously cozy town where we had our well deserved full english. This one was probably the best of the whole trip. We had a few cups of coffee as we charged ourselves and our phones, procrastinating slowly towards departure.
Our hesitance to get going turned out to be well justified, as we headed straight into a wall of a climb followed by a busy main road. This turned out to be our one bad experience with traffic in Wales, but after an hour or so, we finally got onto a B-road heading into Machynlleth. We had lunch on a lawn as the weather turned sunny. Moral was creeping north again after the traffic slap in the morning, and we got going, climbing steadily to ditch the hedges and start enjoying the views.
- Building cool af
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Been slacking with writing more, but my official excuse is that I've been waiting for Sveinung's pictures to develope and be edited. Now they are here, so posting a few from the first two days, and I'll be back with day 3 soon.
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Feels like this thread is the place to be. Gonna be a nice bike!
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...
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Day 2: Chester – Penhros Isaf Bothy
118 km / 2075 mWe knew we had a big day ahead of us with a lot of climbing and headwind, so we got going reasonably early. After riding alongside the canal we stopped at Yvonne's Cafe in Deeside. Lovely place where the local construction workers must’ve thought we were some kind of clowns. But a friendly place and great pastry out in the sun. Coffee not so good.
After that it started getting more rural. Pace slowed down as headwind increased and route got hillier. We aimed for lunch in Denbigh where we were unsuccessful in our search for a nice place to eat and ended up at Morrisons. At least we got to charge our phones and got ourselves the first full English of the trip.
This was the last time in a while where we could pronounce the name of our location.The proper climbing started as we fought our way up into Gors Maen Llwyd – a nature reserve. Not spectacular, but beautiful views and a bit like Windows 95 on an average day. From the top we rolled down to Pentrefoelas where we had an ice cream and took a hard left, heading for Snowdonia.
It was at this moment that parts of the group wished they had spent more time on the bike before the trip. Headwind increasing and a mountain pass that seemed to never end. Still, we prevailed and hauled ourselves over the pass where we were awarded with an amazing view of Cardigan Bay as we finally enjoyed a long, winding downhill.
Another hard left followed immediately by a short but spicy 16% climb snapped us back to reality and we started heading south for dinner and tonight's planned bothy experience.
We stopped for dinner at a pub in Trawsfynydd. For the second time that day we were served underwhelming food and looked at as clowns by the locals. I got a feeling that rugby is the only accepted sport in that village. Beer was good, but it was getting late and we hustled along.
We really enjoyed blazing down the highway before the last climb of the day – a bumpy fire trail up 1.25 km with 8% – but with the finish line in sight it was quite enjoyable.
The bothy appeared amongst the trees as the sun was starting to paint colours in the sky. A lone bikepacker was standing there, waiting for us. For a moment I thought it was one of you guys here who had decided to surprise us, but it wasn’t. Just a guy doing his own thing, and he seemed happy to not have to stay in the bothy by himself.
We had a beer, some chips and tried to keep the gnat at bay before heading inside for some well deserved sleep.
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Now that's a nice looking bottle!