Be like a duck-billed platypus! : Day 1 (or day 10): A Beginning....

I'm back from the trip now. I had intended to blog this consistently, but I had not really contemplated that it would bee quite so difficult to get wifi or 3G connection. That said, here it is.

This is our route. Dan tells me that this is not the route we took, but since I remember what it looked like, rather than its shape on a map, this will have to do unless he improves on the detail.

We had some bike troubles on the night that I arrived at Dan's house. These were not troubles with my bike, of course, but with Dan's. His stand was almost completely seized and rather wobbly; we were up until late making sure everything worked, and pulling like crazy at the giant alan key.
Eventually, it was fixed, and the morning was spent packing with this result:

The first view of the duck-related articles.

To my lasting shame, Dan's version is entirely more impressive than mine. Sadly, he was to be proved right in that it would be much quicker if I were to carry nothing but emergency gear. My pack consisted of a set of lights, my wet weather gear, a set of dry base layers, arm and leg warmers and my fleecy-snuggly softshell. In short, it boiled down to this:

Well, soon enough we were on our way. Our trip that day was Route 47 of the National Cycle Network, for the most part.The track was good in the beginning, but punctuated by very awkward access controls that seemed to get narrower and more awkward as the day progressed. It was not long after these had taken a turn for the muddy-and-awkward that we came upon an unusual little teashop where a very kindly gentleman was good enough to bring us tea through his stable yard.

Dan, map-reading at the cafe.

Dan's bike in the stable-yard.

After this pleasant stop we were warned vehemently by a young boy, who was travelling with his father, about the following 'Hump-Backed Bridge of Hell' and subsequent huge hill. The bridge section certainly deserved the warning, as it was situated at the very bottom of a steep descent and would almost certainly have caused me to flounder on my still-fresh SPD's (my disengagement was still a little uncertain). Luckily, with warning, we survived its almost legendary hump.

The following climb was possibly the only one that we had to do entirely on foot, as someone had (unwisely, I may add) decided to insert steps onto a steep and winding hill and leave a narrow gutter-track to the side of the steps for the wheeling of bicycles. This proved highly inconvenient with Dan's full touring load and required a good deal of joint manual handling in order to get it around the corners. Regrettably, we've no pictures of this, being simply too frustrated by the time we got to the top to bother taking any.

The next stage of the journey was speedy and relatively uneventful. We were mostly on railway-path route from that point onwards, with only the regular addition of access controls too narrow to fit our handlebars through to break up the otherwise speedy progress. A stop of few minutes on a viaduct near to Methyr Tydfil supplied some gorgeous views and the nomming of snacks.

On the onward journey, in our search for helpful meals, we stopped at a lovely narrow-gauge railway station where a steam train was being set up for its journey. Unluckily, the cafe contained no promising or substantial food. We did however manage to get some lovely pictures of the process.

Me, heading off to try to find food.

The steam train getting its dosage of (Dan assures me) water.

After this, we got into the Brecon Beacons proper, which happened to contain some stunning views, exhausting climbs, and missing signposts. We did get lost at a few of the junctions, the signs for Route 8 that we were following being either conspicuously absent, or misleading (I shake my fist at SusTrans). We were running late by the time we took these photos, having finally found the proper route on our most major misstep.

Badly-surfaced path, "woo touring-load!"

A nostalgic snapshot for Dan, of the very area that he and some friends 'camped' on on a previous trip to the Beacons.

We had a brilliant descent off the mountains on a path just technical enough to be fun for me and challenging for Dan on his fully-laden bike, and finally rolled into Brecon in a tired but confused state to find the campsite that I had booked. It was everything we had hoped for, and after a dinner of seasoned cous-cous and eggs, we settled down to our log fire and a whole big bag of marshmallows.