I tour through the western edge of Snowdonia National Park to Caernarfon and across Anglesey Island to the ferry at Holyhead. After spending a couple of days in Dublin I continue down the east coast of Ireland to Yoletown in County Wexford.
Sunday 30 June 2019. Llanilar · Caernarfon |160 km|
There is nothing to keep me in that little cottage, and so I am packed up and gone by 7.30 am – back north again to Aberystwyth. This time I pick up the NCN 81 cycle route – the one I should have been on all day yesterday but couldn’t find – almost as soon as I leave the cottage. It’s a more interesting, but of course longer, route than my hurried trip out to the cottage yesterday when I’d had to follow the road directions I’d been given by the renters of my cottage. There is a force 5 gale blowing from the west that plagues me most of the day and will all day tomorrow too (I looked up the Beaufort force scale here).
I am still nominally following NCN Route 81 when I arrive at the seafront in Aberystwyth town, but of course I then lose it again straightaway because I want to go down to look at the town pier while the cycle route goes to the railway station. Ziggy seems to know the way though, and so I just follow the GPS after plugging in a random town up north as a destination. That’s my navigating style. But pretty soon I am going up a the side of a very steep hill on one of the fairways of the local golf course! That doesn’t look right at all, and the doubts start creeping back in. I have a hard job finding a gap in the fence line and I’m now definitely on a walking-only track. But after a few more doubting moments, including weaving through a non-descript housing estate, I pop out onto the marked route again, heading in the right direction. Thanks Zig.
Today I am definitely taking no chances with the battery running out and so at about the 60-km mark I stop for a couple of hours to recharge – at a Starbucks roadhouse, of all places, just before the town of Dolgellau. It is very comfortable and no one hassles me to buy stuff or tries to move me on – I can certainly recommend Starbucks for recharging!
From Dolgellau I continue following the marked bike trail down along the southern bank of the River Mawddach and cross over its estuary on a 700m-long wooden rail/pedestrian bridge into the town of Barmouth that straddles a headland on the northern bank. Barmouth is a really bustling tourist town at this time of year, and on the inland side of the headland it is quite sheltered from the gale – you could easily be mistaken that you are indeed at a seaside resort in mid-summer.
So yes, I think I could easily go for a vacation in the town of Barmouth. Mind you, on the other, seaward, side of the headland the sand-blasting wind is intense; that doesn’t deter some hardy holiday-makers from their day at the beach, and a few are even paddling in the wind-whipped wavelets close to shore. The blowing sand messes something terrible with my eyes.
On the seafront at Barmouth I encounter three French touring cyclists on ebikes coming towards me who’ve just been to a biking conference in Dublin called Velo-City, and we stop to have a little chat about the joys of ebiking in hilly terrain. It sounds like I still have a lot to look forward to.
On northwards, Ziggy only leads me astray once when he recommends I take the right branch of NCN 81 instead of the bracketed left branch to Harlech castle. Bracketed – as in ‘(81)’ – usually means the lesser or circular detour path, so I agree with taking the unbracketed one and end up with an arduous climb onto a high ridge and then having to descend to Harlech to rejoin the main path anyway. But the scenery and the views make it worthwhile, in spite of the buffeting wind.
From Harlech I just stay on the A487 road through Porthmadog (love that name! You what your dog?) and continue on it all the way to Caernarfon. It is a boring ride in drizzling rain on a busy road for some 40 km, and several times I feel like bailing out. But then I’d just have to do it tomorrow anyway, and besides, there’s no possibility of finding a place to stay along this miserable stretch of road.
I’m glad I persevered and made it to Caernarfon, which is another one of those ‘feel-good’ places. I stay in a terrific hotel within the old city walls with the politically-incorrect name of Black Boy Inn. It is a large rambling complex dating from the 1530s and I count 9 separate narrow winding corridors (and 5 fire doors) between my room on the first floor and reception. Welsh is the spoken language around here between both the staff and the customers. At least I assume it is Welsh. What would I know.
Monday 1 July 2019. Caernarfon · Dublin |71 km|
It is cold and the wind is still blowing steadily at force 5 from the west when I leave Caernarfon this Monday morning. I again stick to the National Cycle Network route 8/81 as much as possible – no choice really, as there is only the cycle-prohibited A55 expressway across Anglesey. That is, apart from a myriad of small country lanes that I could easily get lost in. There are no steep hills to worry about though, so the cycling shouldn’t be too arduous.
But that’s not taking into account the incessant wind. That’s the main feature of today’s cycling. Thankfully, it’s only a short ride of 70 km today, so I burn up the batteries in TURBO mode for nearly all the 40 km across Anglesey pushing directly into the fierce head wind – from the Menai Straight at Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, (to give it its short form – hear the full name spoken here), to the ferry terminal at Holyhead.
Near to the Royal Airforce Base called ‘Valley’, about 15 km before Holyhead, I fall off the bike and suffer a nasty graze to my right knee. This happens when a training jet flies past. The jet’s echo sounds like a car is suddenly right behind me in the narrow lane and I so pull over abruptly to let it pass. My front wheel goes straight into a grass-covered pothole on the edge of the crumbling asphalt and I go gently to ground. Not too gently though, as most of the skin gets ripped of my right knee-cap. Boots chemist in Holyhead provides the disinfectant swabs and dressing I’ll be using for the next few days to stop my weeping knee from sticking to my trousers or the bed-sheets. I forgot about the grazed elbow, though, and fouled the pillow and sheet anyway.
I arrive in Holyhead at 12.30 and my ferry departs at 1.50, so my timing is good. The whole ferry experience here is quite laidback and straightforward. You can ride your bike right up to and into the ferry terminal building and then buy a ticket to go on the next ferry from either the Irish Ferries counter or the Stena Line counter, for £37 one-way. I choose Stena because I had a good experience with them coming across from Holland. The only slight negative with Stena is that when I’m trying to use booking.com on the ship’s WiFi, the site keeps insisting I want the room prices in Krone. So much for travelling on a Norwegian vessel. I just give up in the end.
We foot- and cycle-passengers are cursorily checked in at 1.30, a mere 20 minutes before sailing, and then with only 5 minutes to go before departure, we are herded onto 2 buses that just drive straight onto the ferry. All the car and truck people are onboard before us and have already grabbed the choice seats by the windows and we’re relegated to what’s left. We depart right on time.
Ziggy is left at baggage check-in on the way through and picked up unscathed at baggage pick-up in Dublin. There is only one other bike on my crossing, a sleek carbon fibre number that weighs in at about 5 kg against fat Ziggy’s 50. The other rider, an old bloke only 10 years younger than me who has a support crew with him, is also griping about the headwind across Anglesey, so it’s not just me who was put out by it. He checked through after me, and told me the crewman who loaded both bikes onto a flatbed trailer to get them aboard ship nearly wrenched his arm off trying to pick up my bike after his.
The Irish-end formalities are lackadaisical: first a sniff from a beagle while corralled into single-file, then a cheery stamp in the passport, and it’s straight through into Ireland where Ziggy is already waiting for me at luggage pick-up. The exit road from the port is definitely not bike-friendly, and I have to mix it with huge container trucks and impatient caravanners for a couple of kilometers before finding a quiet street to go the rest of the way into the city centre. I notice that in general, though, cycling has come on in a big way in Dublin in the last few years, and commuting cyclists are out in large numbers throughout the city.
I stayed at the Arlington hotel in the city centre, a 3-star establishment on the north quay of the Liffy that I’ve stayed in several times before. The receptionist confuses me for a fellow Brazilian and gives me a heavily-discounted rate, wink-wink. I didn’t tell her she’d flipped open the Brazilian visa page in my passport and not my I.D. page, but you’d have thought my accent would have given the game away.
My knee is a mess and I don’t want to do too much walking around sightseeing for the 2 days/ 3 nights I am in Dublin – just some trotting around the main Henry Street shopping precinct and the pub district of Temple Bar. I finally get around to buying a new type cover (aka, keyboard) for my notepad computer, to replace the original one that I destroyed through abusive handling since a year ago. So writing up this blog is a bit easier now.
Thursday 4 July 2019. Dublin · Wexford |146 km|
I get away from the Arlington quite early – around 7.00am – anticipating a long ride ahead that I mistakenly thought from memory was more like 180 km, and I want to be around in Wexford to greet my daughter Molly and her mum Kathleen who are scheduled to arrive into Wexford some time later this evening by bus.
It’s a boring ride in cool conditions, and is mostly along a route that I’ve driven many times before. I used to go up go Dublin several times a week for several months, to pick up a van-load of fruit and vegetables from Dublin markets for my friend Antonio who owned a fresh produce store in Wexford town.
I get side-tracked a bit in Arklow trying to find the cycle route between the beach and the stone quarry, and the last 40 km on the busy R741 road aren’t all that pleasant either, with a constant stream of cars whizzing by, and most of them having very little regard for my existence.
The batteries are dead flat after only 110 km and I have to stop and recharge for 2-hours at Redmond’s timberyard in Balleycanew, where the owner appreciates my company over his lunch-break and we manage to solve most of the country’s political and economic woes, as of course complete strangers tend to do in Ireland.
But as noted above, the whole trip turns out to be only 146 km, and so it’s still only 3.30pm by the time I roll into Wexford town. I first try one of the best hotels in town, Clayton White’s, and find they have a special offer on: €74, with afternoon tea, gym, pool and massage, dinner and breakfast all thrown in.
So I grab it, but don’t take them up on the gym/ pool/ massage offer because, after what has been a wintry kind of day riding, the sun finally does appear for the long afternoon/ evening, and instead I enjoy a few beers from the Undertaker Bar in the main street while basking in the sunshine at the Bullring.
Molly gets my messages all wrong and they aren’t on the bus when it arrives at 9.30pm, but have been picked up by an aunt in Dublin airport and whisked off directly to their home on the family farm. That’s a bummer.
Friday 5 July 2-19. Wexford town · Yoletown |32 km|
I take my time setting off from Wexford – it’s only a short ride ahead of me and I know the welcoming committee are late risers.
The laneways out to Foulkesmills and on to Yoletown are very familiar to me. After all, I lived there for 5 years. My only concern is meeting a speeding vehicle coming the other way on a blind bend, but this doesn’t happen, so all good.
All is good too out at the farmhouse when I arrive at 11am and am greeted nonchalantly by all, as though I’ve never been away anywhere at all. A bit deflating.
I stay for 2 days and even get to go for a swim, have fish and chips, do a shopping run to New Ross and eat takeaway Indian, all in glorious weather. Until early Sunday morning that is, when the weather again turns cold and wet and miserable as Molly and I take the bus from Wexford town to Dublin airport to catch our flight to Melbourne via Dubai and Singapore.
-ends-
#65 Llanilar to Yoletown. 409 km
Europe so far in 2019. Maastricht, Netherlands to Yoletown, Ireland |2,648 km|
Distance travelled in Europe this year (2019): 6,376 km
eBike tachometer: 11,279 km (all in Europe)