Still revelling in the lack of Jubilee spirit that had done
anything but grip this section of North Wales (and smug in the satisfaction of
having missed at least one day of this summer’s London based carnage), we woke
up to the happy sight of sunshine streaming through the window of our B&B.
The plan was to get the drive to Bala done early, so we could leave our stuff
in the next B&B before both heading out to do loops of the Snowdonia
National Park. As with most best laid plans, things didn’t exactly go as
we expected, as we first struggled to find the place (with no-one answering the
phone, we discovered that between us we had failed to remember the address, the
name of the house, or even the name of the owner) and then when we finally
located it, there was no-one in. Luckily Bala is a small place, otherwise the
day would have been full of some very tense navigating, lots of confused Welsh
non-B&B owners being asked questions by two English tourists, and very
little cycling.
So with Plan A out of the window, it was time to revert to
type and we parked up in an empty carpark and stripped down into our lycra
gimpsuits (not actual gimpsuits – my getup was a lot more 80s neon than that).
Having studied the route map and the hills on the way, Selene decided that the
profile of her ride would be more favourable if she tackled the route backwards
(going from B to A, as it were, not actually cycling backwards – that would be
impressive). This meant that after about 10 miles she would head up the back (and
less steep) side of the Bwlch-Y-Groes and with all going well would be there to
meet me in Dolgellau (prounounced “Doll Geth Lau”, and not “Doggy Loo”, as we learned). For
me, that meant crossing the Northern ridges of Snowdonia, before descending to
the coast and along some unusually flat roads to Harlech, where my first climb
was situated.
Heading over the tops in the sunshine was absolutely glorious,
and even managed to counterbalance my gears squeaking all over the place (after
the previous day’s pounding in the rain) and my Garmin randomly deciding to
turn itself off every now and then.
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| Roads that lift the soul |
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| Sunshine! In Wales! |
Ffordd Penllech is a one-way street by a caravan park,
heading up from sea level to the main street running up to Harlech castle. Sounds
innocent enough, but that’s before you add in the detail that it’s the steepest
road in the UK, with a gradient of over 40%, and also that to ride up it you have
to go against the flow of traffic. Fortunately, it’s not exactly Oxford Street
in rush hour, so you can pretty much pick whatever line you like (not that it
will do you much good)
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| The unassuming start of the steepest road in the country |
Steep from the off, the road is very steep and narrow, and gets steeper
in the hairpins and the straights of the higher slopes. There’s not much technique to
climbing it, except to whack your bike in its lowest gear and then jump up and
down on the pedals until you hit the top. With the nice weather, the roads were
dry so I didn’t get too much tyre-slip – which is good as I’m not sure I could do a seated
climb of 40% with my smallest gear of 39-25, and anyway I’m damn sure that I’d
end up pulling some pretty extreme wheelies if I was to try and do that. At the
T-junction at the top of the hill is a pub where two old boys were sat at a
picnic table supping on their pints. As I breached the summit, red-faced and
panting, one chap looked over and in true Welsh understatement said “It’s quite
steep that, isn’t it” – sadly I was too winded to give a witty riposte, so I
just nodded and headed back down the hill to have a good look at what I’d just
come up
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| Sandals, not flip-flops for this hill |
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| The unrelenting Ffordd Penllech |
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| Pretty damn steep |
After this effort I was glad of some more flat roads all the
way through Barmouth and into Dolgellau. Waiting for me there was a tired
looking Selene, who was slightly regretting her choice of route, having swapped
the steeper ascent of the Bwlch for the epic ascent of the busy A470 (image
from Google Streetview)
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| Selene went up and over THAT! I chose the sensible option and went down it... |
With a greasy sausage roll and bag of prawn cocktail (food
of champions) to restore my legs, Selene and I parted company to meet back in
Bala. Almost straight away Selene’s warnings of the A470 being very busy and
full of inconsiderate drivers were brought home, as carriageway repairs narrowed the normally two-laned ascending road to only one lane – meaning that as I
climbed at a reasonable brisk (for a bike) 10mph, I was being passed with only
a few inches to spare by cars at 40mph. At the top of the ascent, the road then
became very twisty, with lots of blind bends and no view of traffic heading in
the opposite direction. The only safe way to ride on roads like
this is to adopt the ‘primary position’ (riding about a metre out from the side
of the road), meaning that drivers are forced to pull into the opposite lane to
overtake – if you don’t do this then people will try to squeeze by with no room
and you put yourself in real danger of being run over if traffic coming in the
opposite direction happens to make the overtaking driver swerve back into you.
Sadly, not all drivers understand that cyclists have as much
right to be on the roads as they do, and for the next few miles I was sworn at,
hooted and cut up by several motorists as they went by. Coming up to a very
steep corner, I waved a wannabe overtaker back to make sure he didn’t try and
pull past round a bend he couldn’t see round. This did nothing to improve
matters though, as he wound down his window and proceeded to hurl insults at
me, before overtaking, stopping his car 10m infront of my position, and
reversing back at full speed in my direction. With nowhere to go, I had no
option but to go round the car to the right in the opposite lane, and was lucky
that there wasn’t any traffic in that lane – otherwise it might have been a
very sticky one. Anyway, if anyone ever comes across the young man driving a
silver Ford Fiesta with the plate CV02EVL, then please do be my guest to remind
him that he is a dangerous TWUNT who should not be on the road.
Shaken, but unhurt, I then had the joy of
descending the long hill that Selene had climbed on the way, with the speedo
topping out at about 47mph on the way down. With the last of the A-roads done,
it was great to be back on the tiny Welsh country roads, although that did mean
that even from a distance, I could see my next beast of a hill – the 10/10
Bwlch-Y-Groes.
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| The imposing Bwlch-Y-Groes |
I find that riding on the flat can be really quite deceiving;
it lets you build up a momentum that allows you to pump away and keep your
speed nice and high without really noticing how much effort you’re putting out.
So there you are, powering down a straight road and feeling really quite fresh
until suddenly the road points upwards, and all that freshness suddenly gives
way to waves of lactic acid and fatigue. This is pretty much what happened to me up
the Bwlch, along with the mental intimidation of already knowing that this is a tough
climb. At about 3.5 miles long, and with a gradient that never really lets up
from the 25% early sections, it’s also made mentally tough because the road
just keeps on going up as you round each corner. I thought I was nearly at the
summit three times before I actually got there, which definitely takes its toll
as you put in a ‘final’ push, only to see more and more hill! Of all this hills so far, this was the first one where I was really killing for a mid-climb stop before reaching the top. Fortunately, I kept my resolve (and my dignity) and managed to make it up in one - although it was a closely run thing.
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| At the top, with the sheep |
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| Feet sound more impressive than metres |
After stopping for a quick recover, I tailgated a couple of
fairly bemused motorbikers down the other side – they couldn’t work out how I
could manage to stay right on their tail the whole way down. After that, it was
a fairly simple 10 mile run in down the side of Lake Bala and back to the car,
even managing a sprint finish for the camera – I’m nothing if not a sucker for
a photo-op!
Garmin missed a few miles off this ride by turning itself off for a bit at the start. Even so, for a 'flat' ride with only two categorised climbs, there was still a handy 5k of ascent and it definitely made itself felt...
