We got packed up and had our last breakfast of our mini-tour. Getting a bit bored of sweet energy bars, I made a few marmite toast sandwich squares for the ride and Newton did the same with Bacon.
Tim’s son Steve was joining us for the ride. He works for NFTO (who run a Pro cycling team) so he had a great bike and looked like he would show us all a clean pair of heels on the ride.
The forecast had been horrendous but was now only a bit dodgy. It was wet on the road when we started but not raining. After two minutes we went straight into the same hill we went up yesterday, which climbs 500 feet. This warmed us up. There followed a couple of miles of fast downhill through narrow lanes. I was a fair bit slower on these as the wet mud on corners deserved some respect.
After 7 miles we turned right and headed past the Talybont Reservoir and then up a bit of a monster climb. Steve was unsurprisingly first up the hill and first down the other side as well.
We rode to and through Merthyr Tydfil with a long sustained climb
Up a main A road and then some fun descending. We had a fast hill down into Glynneath where we stopped for lunch as we were about half way around.
Straight after lunch we went straight into another long climb …. Are you getting the drift here. Blah, blah, blah long climb, blah, blah, blah fast descent…. Repeat.
We had decided that there was one hill which we would have to decide if we were doing or not as there was a simple option to bi-pass it (mainly because it was a straight up and then come back down). Most of us went up although Steve was well ahead and had to wait nearly 30 minutes for us to join him.
This will was Heol Senni (climb 193 in Simon Warren’s Greatest Climbs) and the view at the top was great. The clouds looked threatening which made for atmospheric photos but we only had sporadic short showers all day.
Hill climbed we set off on the final leg of the route. With about 5 miles to go, we hit the narrow gravel lanes again. Steve was up front and going well, I worked hard to stay with him and it was quite an exhilarating, if hard ride managing the loose gravel, sharp bends and potholes in the road. I managed to stay with Steve all the way and the lane finally emerged a few hundred metres from our B&B.
So the trip was done. Including the accidental Wednesday miles I had done 22,894 feet of climbing and ridden 240.2 miles. It had been great fun and nice to spend time with Paul and the rest of the guys. Also great training for my upcoming trip to ride the great mountain climbs in the French Alps shortly. Thanks to the lovely Wendy for being so tolerant of my hobby x