I awoke early on the Sunday morning, the sun was shining on my tent, the night had been quiet but a bit uncomfortable. For breakfast we had steaming hot coffee from Nick’s tiny solid fuel stove, which was an added bonus this year, a change from drinking cold orange juice! The road to Pumpsaint is a very quiet country road and we now felt we were cycle touring, instead of the drudge of the day before, that just got us into the mountains. It was around 9.00am when we turned up the mountain road to Ffarmers, this road is steep, in fact so much so, that Nick had to adjust his front changer, so he could engage his low gear on his triple chainset, he also had to take a few links out of the chain as it was slipping due to it hanging down like a heavily laden washing line! We had cycled up the Devil’s staircase the two previous years, but I think this climb is equal in its hardness but is completely unknown. Before long we reached Ffarmers, which was completely deserted, we then hit another mountain road for Llandewi Brefi. This again was a quiet deserted road through forestry, we hit climb after climb over streams down dips. The weather was great and at the top of the remote mountain pass we looked back. In the distance to our left we could see the Brecon Beacons, in the distance to our right we could see the Black mountain, we were right in the middle high up on the mountain. A long descent into Llandewi Brefi, we then made sure we took on drink from the shop, which was just about to shut at midday. The road was fairly flat to Tregaron, where we ate some hot food from the well stocked Spar shop. We sat down in the square and planned our route, we set off on the flat road toward Pontrhydfendigaid, on this road we went past the spectacular Tregaron bog, which stretched for miles and miles covered in purple heather. We had found out on this ride what goes down goes up again and the road from Pontrhydfendigaid to Ysbyty was up and up, here I was now quite exhausted. Nick too was feeling tired so we rested in the afternoon Sun. After half an hour we descended to Pontyrhydgroes, here again we had a big climb, this road is on the main route to Devil’s Bridge so the traffic was heavy, well for that area anyway! As we climbed I was at my low point of the day, the sun was blazing down and I knew we had a lot of mountain roads to go that day. Nick also said he had never cycled on so many climbs in one day. We were soon at the start of the Cwmystwyth valley, here we viewed a lonely church, built on the side of the valley, the whole area was covered with trees and for a moment we felt like we were not in Wales but in an Alpine forest! Holiday makers were out in force, as we took the wild mountain pass toward the Elan valley. As we climbed the valley, we left the river Ystwyth, which flows west to Aberystwyth and joined the Elan which flows east toward Rhayader. The top of the Elan valley is a vast wind swept landscape which then dives down towards the dams . These are set in quite a narrow valley, Shelley once had a dwelling here and it must have been an attractive site before these dams were built, which looked a out of place as we viewed them in the evening sun. We had cycled over Ffarmers mountain road and had seen no one, but the Elan valley we had seen everyone, attracted to the dams. However it was down hill all the way to Rhayader, we took the cycle track that follows the path of the old railway line and were soon enjoying Indian food from a small café in the bustling town. After that we took the main A470 road, we looked all around for a pitch, we found an old quarry, here we set up camp for the night, the sun was setting and we were treated to an amazing show of stars... 58 miles.
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