Our customary
weekend jaunts consist of one day riding to get into the heart of country,
a day of enjoyable explorative cycling and the last day is usually a trudge
back home. This year we decided that we would be dropped off by our Dad in
Rhayader, this meant that we could start the gratifying riding straight away!
Again this year as we had our usual thoughts of, ‘oh no!’ and ‘what
are we letting ourselves in for!’ But we quickly settled in to a gentle
pace away from the noise of Rhayader and up the Elan valley. A good cycle
track leads to the first dam, on the way we talked to a pleasant couple who
were riding a Longstaff tandem. We cycled the 8 miles to the Claerwen dam
quite quickly and stopped to eat a pasty at around 2.00pm. The Sun was shining
and it looked as if we were to blessed by good weather. There were a few people
out and about, but we knew we would be leaving them all behind as we looked
at the rough track that heads north, along the east side of this massive reservoir.
I had wondered if we would be able to cycle this trail, but we handled it
easily, taking our time to avoid the big pot holes in the track. There are
two farms up this path, other than this it is completely isolated, it winds
it self along the shore of the lake in and out of inlets and then taking us
up and over the mountain. We had a brief conversation with a lone mountain
biker, near the isolated Claerwen farm. From here there was a wooden bridge
that led to about a mile of real rough terrain .We cycled over this and then
through and over rusty coloured streams that came from the peat bogs. It was
truly awesome cycling, a Red Kite flew over low in the sky, the sun blazed
down and it was early evening as we reached the Teifi lakes. These half a
dozen lakes are positively spectacular, set 460 metres up in the mountains,
with views all around, it had been really worth cycling all this way just
to set our eyes on them! This location is, thankfully very quiet, there are
no attractions here to bring masses of people, just the lakes and the mountains.
It was a sharp descent down the hill to Ffair Rhos, from here we cycled on
the main road to Pontrhydfendigaid, we called in the shop to stock up with
drink, this was the last stop before we were to set off in to the wilderness
again. This year we both had small butane stoves to cook our food, so we could
set up camp and rest and eat at the same time. After talking to a local character,
we cycled along the road past the ancient Strata Florida abbey, from here
we carried on in to the forest. It was 7.30pm, we had to stop soon to make
camp, but as we cycled along this unmade forestry access road, we were to
find no decent pitch for our tents. We climbed up and up, past massive piles
of logs until we reached a clearing high up in a valley overlooking the great
Tregaron bog. As we pitched our tents we were attacked by hoards of midges
! We thought that we were not going to be able to cook. I sprayed some insect
repellent and by some miracle they disappeared. We then settled down to warm
up our tins of Chili and Curry and rice before setting down for a much earned
rest at around 9.30pm..26 miles.
Click the images
for a larger photo !
