Here be dragons : Chapter II

Hello Granny (gear).

We got up nice an early to a damp morning and cooked up some tea and porridge. We took our time but 1.5 hours later we were ready to hit the road, as we where heading out I over heard a little girl talking to her dad.

The dad was calling the child down from the sculpture garden where she was playing. The whole campsite is covered in sculpture of horses, deer and bulls, for the kids to play on. She came running down and grabbed his hand and said that she had just been up milking the cow. To which the dad said “I hope you didn’t milk the bull!” :)

The route took us south from Devils Bridge to Tregaron and then up and over couple chevrons to Beulah, one of them was 25%, fecking eh. Peli managed to do the climb with one stop, I stopped to have a rest and let a car go by. I started again but soon gave up and walked the last bit, which is quite hard with a fully loaded bike. On one of the other steep bits I was plodding away in my granny and was not looking where I was going and therefore started to zigzag. In the vain attempt of keeping the bike on the straight and narrow I stalled at a 90 deg angle to the road. I tried my darndest to unclip but my left foot couldn’t reach the floor because of the steepness of the hill. By the time I figured that out and started to unclip my right foot I was in the ditch laying down. I’m glad that I was riding a fully loaded bike, cause the panniers protected my bike and me from damage.
Even riding in thick clouds and not much of a view, Wales is pretty. But by the time we arrived in Beulah we where very wet and getting tried of being wet. We were only cold when we stopped for a bite to eat, so we did not do much resting on our 50 odd mile ride.
On an aside, I just don’t understand sheep risk assessment. I’m happy with standing in the middle of the road eating my grass, while a 2 tonne 4×4 flies by me with a mule’s whiskers space between me and then. But oh no, I can’t have a fully loaded touring bicycle go past me at 20 paces with a deep ditch and a fence between me and and them without running to the hills…

I had planned to take some B roads and country lanes the last bit from Beulah to Hundred House, but since the A roads were so quiet since the Bank Holiday we decided to cut our journey short to get to the campsite quicker.

We arrived in Builth Wells to live music, while we had a restock of our water supplies. One thing that will convince me to tour in Wales again, public toilets, running water are all over the place (and post and telephone boxes!). You are never more than a few miles away from a place where you can get fresh water and use the facilities.
We arrived around 1700 after a long day cycling in the wet, wet as a wet thing, to find this beautiful site, Fforest fields caravan and camping site. The reception was empty and we were not sure what to do. A fellow camper told us to look out for a white 4×4 or just do as they did, put the money in the honesty box. We filled in our details and left an envelope with our money in the box and went out searching for a pitch.

We were in the showers 20 min later. The joy of a tent with colour coded poles, eh? The shower and toilet block was a bit old, but had unlimited hot water (electric showers), the simple thing of a shower curtain and was very, very clean.
I met the owner George who was very nice and said that we had done everything right and he hoped that we would enjoy our stay and we did. The site even has a Monday and Thursday fridge for you to use e.g. they will get emptied on these days, and you even have an microwave at your disposal. And a great system for charging your mobile, even though the reception in Wales is not up to the standard your are used to get in say London, 3G
et al.

We were too tired to cycle over to Hundred House for a pub lunch, so we cooked up a storm on the stove. 2 portions of Pasta’n’Sauce with extra cheese, couscous with extra tomatoes and cups of tea. And then made for bed to be ready for an early start.

Here be dragons foreword
Here be dragons chapter I
Here be dragons chapter II
Here be dragons chapter III