Bike Route: Dolgellau to Beddgelert 37mi 3000ft of climb
Accommodation: The Coach House (Airbnb); host Regan Sloan. Ground-floor double ensuite. Breakfast included.
Dinner: Y Bistro Yn Yr Hebog. Locally sourced food with limited menu, family owned and run. Absolutely outstanding.
At breakfast, we met our hosts' son-in-law, Sam Mutton, from Uganda. Sam runs an organization that supports biking in Uganda. In addition to that work, he leads private bike tours in the country, with profits going to support local development. He left us with his email address and the web address to his current project, the Kasanje Bike Park (www.kasanjebikepark.com).
Another place we were sorry to leave, with people we enjoyed and respected.
Another sort of long, hard day, but great riding, awesome scenery, incredible weather. Still feeling lucky.
We were looking forward to Beddgelert, which was supposed to be a small town with great B&Bs and restaurants and shops. When we pulled into town, all we saw were ice cream shops and people eating ice cream. That's not a bad thing.
Then we realized we had no phone service, and our accommodation did not appear to be at the location we had mapped in our route for the day. I had not taken a photo of the instructions for finding the place and picking up the key (I usually do that, just in case we have this kind of trouble). I did think I remembered that we needed to pick up the key at the Real Coffee Shop, but we weren't seeing that either.
After we rode up and down the only two streets in town a couple times, Ken suggested we stop at an outdoor shop where a man was standing outside watching. So we did, and we told him the name of the place we were looking for, the Coach House Inn. He wasn't sure he knew where that was. I asked him if he knew where the Real Coffee Shop was. He looked around and said, "Well, I'm not sure, but is that it?" and pointed across the street. Yep, that was it. The name was painted on the window under an awning, not on a sign out front.
After that, it didn't take long to get the key and move into our room. The inn was a little less charming than it had appeared to be from the listing in Airbnb, but comfortable enough.
At the suggestion of our host, we had made dinner reservations the day before, and we were glad we had. The bistro was very small (six tables), the service was slow, the food was wonderful.
One more highlight of our day done, we made our way back to the inn and fell asleep. We were awakened briefly when the guests across the hall arrived a few hours later, but everything quieted down pretty quickly after that.
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| A typical Welsh farmstead. |
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| Bluebells are giving way to foxglove as we move farther north and later into May. |
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| Dry-stack stone fences and buildings are common, but this is the only circular structure with a domed roof that we have seen. It was on the edge of a group of farm buildings. We are not sure what it was used for. |
I’m
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| Ferns are open and bushes are in flower; we can see the change in seasons in the foliage around us. |
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| The Troll Bridge. |
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| The Troll Booth. |
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| Part of our route followed the coastline. |
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| The fence posts are stone, not wood. This area is full of stone and slate mines. |
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| Back home, Izzie is enjoying her morning walk with her ball. |
