Bike Route: Pontrhydfendigaid to Llanidloes 24mi 2700ft of climb; DO NOT USE THIS ROUTE
Accommodation: 200-year-old gardener’s cottage (Airbnb); host Lisa. 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen, wifi, washer. Dan y Coed means 'under the trees'. Our cottage has nestled under the wooded hillside of Tan yr Allt for 200 years. The cottage is on the outskirts of Llanidloes, a 10 minute walk to town. Dan Y Coed is a grade 2 listed building. Local shopping procuring locally produced food is an enjoyable experience. There are plenty of pubs and cafes to choose from in town. Perfect for walking, the woodland at the back of the garden leads onto the national trails of Glyndwr's Way and the Severn Way.
Dinner: The Red Lion Inn. We each ordered the Red Lion Burger with bacon, tomato, pickle, onion rings, and chips. Twice as much food as we could eat, even though we were hungry.
The day started out so well. The sun was shining and it was warmer than it had been since we arrived in the UK--so warm that we started out in shorts for the first time. After a little coffee in our room, we had a breakfast of Welsh porridge with nuts and seeds, fruit with yogurt, croissants, coffee, and juice, all prepared by Angela and served at "our" table in the dining room.
It was hard to leave; we were enjoying talking with Angela and Kevin. But we were also looking forward to a beautiful ride through forests and up over the hills to Llanidloes, a reasonably short route with a fair amount of uphill.
After climbing up out of the valley, we had a little trouble locating our first stretch of gravel for the day. We finally decided the two-track lane with a gate marked "Private" had to be it. Ken knocked on the door of the cottage just inside the gate to ask permission. We could hear dogs and voices inside, but no one came to the door, so we just took off down the lane.
The track was a little dicey with thick gravel and mud in parts, but mostly good, as it wound up the river for a few miles. We exited the track through another gate marked "Private," leading to a busy parking lot where families were piling out of cars, all dressed up. It was Saturday, and the parking lot was at the edge of a forest. Our guess was that a wedding was taking place.
About noon, we found an empty camping area with picnic tables, where we spread out our little lunch of crackers, hummus, and melon.
A little while later, we reached the second of our two stretches of unpaved trail for the day: a bridle path that crossed a little stream on a wooden bridge and then climbed up a steep (23.5%) boggy hillside. This stretch of unpaved trail was supposed to go up very steeply for over a mile. We could not see any end to the boggy hillside (mountainside?). We rode up the highway a little way to see if there was any alternative, opened up several different maps on our devices. There was absolutely no way to get directly to Llanidloes except to take the bridle path, which was numbered as a minor off-road cycle route connecting two major cycle routes.
Our options were to tough out the bridle path, or take the highway in the complete opposite direction of Llanidloes to a tiny town about 10 miles away, and then either try to cycle an A-road (awful for cycling) around the mountains for at least another 20 miles, or...find a taxi? in a tiny village that didn't even list a restaurant?
So we took off the saddlebags and started shuttling our bikes and bags up the boggy mountain. There was no way we could carry the loaded bikes up the rough, wet, steep hillside. Our 1-plus-mile cycle route turned into a 4-plus-mile slog through bogs that sucked us up to our waist and even swallowed half of Ken's bike at one point.
We are stubborn (maybe a little stupid?) enough to make it through all that in just a little over two hours. We were so happy to come through the final gate onto a real tar road that we almost didn't mind that the road was also 20% and we had to push our bikes for another mile or so before we could actually get on them and ride.
By the time we got to Llanidloes, it was 17:30 and we were starving and stinky. We found an inn that would serve us dinner at a table out front, parked our bikes next to the table, and devoured a couple of burgers.
It was after 19:00 by the time we reached the cottage. We were thrilled to find a spacious, comfortable place with a hot shower and warm bed. It took us a little while to settle down after the exciting day, but I think the sun was still hanging in the sky when we went to sleep.
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| Two-track along the river. |
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| We took the mountain road, which wound around the mountain through the ruins of ancient mines and mining villages. |
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| The mountain road was open and barren and stunning. It reminded us a little of stretches in Wyoming. |
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| Ruins of miners' cottages. |
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| We were so happy to leave the boggy bridle path and hit a gravel surface. (We did not take pictures in the bog. I thought about it a couple of times, but then I would get distracted by a wrong step into the muck or something.) |
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| We were even happier to go through the final gate onto a tar road--even though we had to push our bikes up that one. At least we could manage the bikes with the bags on and didn't have to make two trips! See that mountain in the distance on the left side of the photo? That's the boggy hill we had to cross. See the tar road winding down into the river valley down behind me? That's the vertical tar road we had to climb to get up to a main road. Such an adventure. |
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| Once we crossed over the boggy mountain and up the vertical tar road, we dropped off the other side of the mountain range into green fields and forests. Not long after I took this photo, Ken thought he saw two white wolves at the edge of the forest, and they growled at him. A little more adventure. |
