Wales Day 1: Newport to Port Talbot
- Start point: Newport
- End point: Port Talbot
It’s 7am. Forecast is for some big sun so I’m last minute packing ultrasun by decanting it into a smaller/lighter bottle. Just realised how stingy they are on it- you get very little for your £20. Tempted to increase my water storage from 1.7 to 2 litres too but I think I’ll just top up every time I see a town. Water is such a pain with these trips, I hate leaving the bike while I go to fill up.
10:20. Got on the train. Met a lovely German family who were bike mad, they looked after my bike while I went to Sainsbury’s and loaded up on food. I should name my bike. I’ll think about it on the train.
10:40 how about Harry? In honour of our fallen comrade!
Train toilet is blocked. It wasn’t me though.
Woman sat next to me had a hiking pole. I asked her where she’d been hiking. Hadrian’s wall. Not sure if that’s a bad omen or not tbh. Chatting with her later on she’s done some of the Camino too. People are cool
South of Shrewsbury now and I’m seeing hills. My brain has just figured out that all the miles I’ve done on this train I’ve got to do again, backwards, the long way round. Starting to think I should have just left home and headed south, skipping the train and filling up those few days with fitness before Wales. The aircon on this train is insanely powerful. I’m almost shivering.
I’ve got half an hour to go on this train and I can just see hills everywhere. Had lunch and got some mini cheddars to take with me. Just got to fill up the bottles and go now. Weather is amazing, going to use some ultrasun today!
The actual riding out of Newport was really nice, I went straight into a huge hill which was an omen of things to come. Mainly spent today on A roads but did some of the NCN4 which is a really nice bit of cycling infrastructure. It’s got some holes in it that need joining up but the surface was perfect and it was nice to be in the shade. Temperature was crazy today, I went through loads of water and could have done with another top-up before hitting the valleys. I was starting to get cocky thinking it was an easy 50 miles and maybe the 1000m of ascent was just undulating roads.
Not so. I got to the valleys, had a quick stop and a wee and there was this ominous black wall in front of me. I had 20km to go and although not particularly steep it was just a never ending brutally hot climb. All the wind was behind the hill so I had no air. I got to the top, spotted an ice cream van and spent £4 on ice cream but DIDN’T get water. Wtf dude! At this point I had about 300ml left and I figured it’s all downhill from here. It was, but riding at 40-60kmh for 15 mins solid really dries you out!
Got to the pub where I’m staying and I was a bit disheveled. Sat in my room for half an hour just drinking water and breathing heavily.
That was quite easily the hardest day’s cycling I’ve ever done including the nasty 30degree heat hill out of Settle on the Way of the Roses (I had a triple chainring for that!). Tomorrow is the same ascent but more distance so I’m going for a long lunch.
Glad I got to see the view from the top of the hill. If it was crap weather I’d have binned it and gone the flatter route.
With some luck I’ll sleep really well and get a nice early start to avoid most of the heat tomorrow. The plan is to get 2nd breakfast at the mumbles and lunch in Llanelli. I’ll eat those bloody mini cheddars tomorrow too!
Had a local beer and pork belly with extra veg for tea. Should have had chips too - I was very broken!