Returning by train to Newtown in fine weather, I set out for the final two days of this leg of my adventure. I had missed only rain and instead attended a Crowded House concert in Manchester and a band rehearsal at home. By lunchtime on Thursday I was back in Wales and cycling along quiet roads through the Severn Valley. The countryside here is attractively green and rolling, but not quite what I would call mountainous. Not here, anyway. But it was a very pleasant place to ride a bike on a bright day like this, albeit with a distinct nip in the air. I was wearing cycling longs for the first time this year and was pretty glad of them, too. I had chosen well, I felt.
Thanks to a cancelled train to Shrewsbury this morning I was already an hour later than planned, and it was afternoon before I began cycling. That was OK and it meant I missed some of the cooler hours of the day, but it also meant I couldn’t waste much more time. I cycled as far as the pretty little town of Llanidloes, about 90 minutes away, and then stopped for a late lunch in a very appealing vegetarian cafe. Llanidloes was that kind of place it seemed. Understated but with interesting small shops and cafes. Our former next door neighbours in Hathersage had moved here, which I found strange for people with grown up children and mobility issues. Their house was out of town up a very steep lane. Lovely, but hardly practical. Now they are back in Sheffield. I visited them a couple of times and that was my only previous encounter with this area.
From here it was time to bid farewell to the now quite young and sprightly River Severn and cycle along a very small lane that emerged at Llangurig in the River Wye valley. Both of these rivers rise on the flanks of the same mountain not too far from here and are reunited when the Wye joins the Severn just by the Severn Bridge.
I once stayed the night in the rather run down Black Lion Pub in Llangurig, en route from the slopes of Cadair Idris to Cornwall, with my lifelong friend Simon, in the June week between our fortieth birthdays. It was a mad caper in which we converted our dates of birth into grid references and joined them together with a week of cycling, including a ride across the Bristol Channel on paddle steamer Waverley, just as I did this June. On that night in Llangurig, Simon broke the news that he was engaged to be married. The pub was dying on its feet then and today it looked like it had suffered a further seventeen years of neglect. The pavement outside was closed off, I suspect due to the visibly slipped roof tiles. And yet on Google maps it appears to be still open in 2015. Remarkable.
From Llangurig I had very little choice of route. The A44 heads west towards Aberystwyth and I had to follow it, and the River Wye, for ten miles between more serious looking mountains. There were no turnings and no settlements. I finally crossed the infant Wye and entered the county of Ceredigion, and almost immediately began to descend at speed for several miles, suggesting that I had been climbing consistently to this point. I hadn’t really noticed. But the downhill was epic. The road was all mine and I made the most of it. Finally I had to turn off to the south and Devil’s Bridge, where the fun ended and the hard work resumed. From here onwards I would be on very little travelled roads through tiny places I didn’t know. It was as mid as Mid Wales gets.
As much as I was off the beaten track, my road was considerably less undulating than I had feared. I kept the big hills to my left and slowly progressed down the Teifi valley from its upper reaches to the very small town of Tregaron. It had been signed from Devil’s Bridge a long time ago, but felt like a bit of a backwater when I arrived. It has a big, old church and some quaint buildings huddled by the small, stone bridge. I paused, and then decided my best policy was to make the most of the remaining sun and keep going. I was thanking my good judgement in stopping and eating substantially way back in Llanidloes. Opportunities out here were few and far between. And time was passing. The last hour to Lampeter was almost entirely traffic free. I passed through the pretty village of Llanddewi Brefi, where – as far as I could tell – I was the only cyclist in the village. But no one else was about, so who knows.
Lampeter seemed like a large place after today’s ride. It’s not really, though. In fact it is Britain’s smallest university town and during term time the population increases by about a third. Still, I liked it and it provided a very comfortable hotel overnight stop. I heard from home that the northern lights were visible. The Welsh skies were very clear and starry tonight and I went for a short walk around midnight. It was easy to find a place free from artificial light and I’m sure I also saw some strange activity above. My phone camera certainly did. How unexpected. And also, how cold! It was extra weight to carry, but I was very glad of my light puffa jacket and my wool hat!
