Cardiff to Chepstow, the difficult day continues

View from Penarth

The other side of the Bristol Channel was looking closer all the time.  

First sight of Cardiff Bay

Cardiff was much like Swansea, lovely to enter, not so nice to leave.  My coastal route into Cardiff involved a hill, but gave some nice views over the bay.  Much like Swansea, I did not explore the city, but instead rode over the bay barrage, stopping to admire the fish bypass, which is even larger than Twickenham's own fish bypass.  

Fish bypass

Whizz through the harbour, and out the other side   I was late for an appointment with a bed and a shower in Chepstow.  So if you want to find out what Cardiff is like, sorry  but this is the wrong blog for you. 

Leaving Cardiff

Leaving Cardiff was a nightmare.  The obvious coastal road went past some sort of steelworks,  but was choc-a-bloc with heavy traffic: vans, lorries, and cars.  Slow moving, and not wide enough to filter inside the lane of traffic.  It was horrible.  I rode on the pavement, which was awful - covered with black mucky grit.  Signs warned of slag lorries crossing.  It was raining a bit.  And then I got a puncture.  My first in all the thousands of miles round the coast.  And in a horrible place to fix it.  The wheel was filthy black.  Marathon Plus tyres are pretty sturdy, but a big, 1cm shard of glass had managed to get through.  It was miserable.

Puncture fixed, I set off into the traffic, gritting my teeth and riding as fast as I could.  Garmin didn't  help: "turn left onto trunk road".  Luckily that was only a roundabout.

After an age,  Garmin said "onto unclassified road"   30mph signs.  But nobody had told the drivers, who were still doing 60mph.

The end of the nightmare?

Eventually, quiet roads returned and my stress levels slowly went down.  I was very late.  But I'd entered a very flat area, like the fens, with drainage ditches everywhere, so I could just buzz along for miles.

Arrive at Newport, with the wide, tidal river Usk.  I was gasping for a little something, so went into town along the Usk and found a riverside cafe.  Very pretty.  Again I didn't  go into the city centre.

River Usk at Newport

Transporter Bridge 

I was planning to cross the Usk on the very impressive Transporter Bridge, a sort of horizontal lift dangling from a very high up railway. But it seemed to be closed, so I found another bridge, with a wide cycleway, and that was all fine. I liked Newport.

Flat riding

More flat riding. I hadn't seen the sea, well, the Bristol Channel, for a long time, and was heading for it. Garmin said "Turn left onto footpath". Warning bells rang. My notes said "C-track for 4.5 miles along coast, ... looks OK" (meaning looks OK on the satellite view). It wasn't. After climbing up the levee, there was a tiny kissing gate, impassable for bikes, with a steep drop into the river if you went round it.

You Shall Not Pass

I'm not sure how this was labelled as a cycle track, but it wasn't for me. I took a route inland, and after a couple of tries eventually found a proper cycle route along the Severn. A few nice roads, and a bit of the hated A48, and I arrived at Chepstow about 7.30pm.

The newer Severn Crossing

Check into the hostel, rush to pub before last food orders, eat, return, shower, and relax. Ahhh.

Vale of Glamorgan

Somewhere near the dreaded stepping stones, I had entered the Vale of Glamorgan. First impressions are good. Rolling green countryside and pretty villages.

The camp site turned out to be well appointed, with a cafe, WiFi and showers. I had a very good evening meal in the pub up the road, gotvfully rehydrated, and met a local who very quickly became my new best friend. "That's awesome!".  "You can stay at my place if you like", "Want a joint?" I politely declined and went back to a good night's sleep. The forecast thunderstorms never happened, there were only a few spots of rain and just a bit of wind, but that could have been the lasagne. In the morning, the campsite cafe was serving a full English breakfast, so, out of politeness, I had one.  Delicious.

Today has been a much tougher day than I expected, but not because of the hills. So much has happened, it's difficult to remember.  

I thought it would be an easier day, so I decided I could aim to ride a bit further. Options were Cardiff, 40 miles, or Chepstow, 75. Chepstow it was. The die was cast.

Just a house ...

Rolling Glamorgan roads. First town: Llantwit Major. Nice. Llan... refers to a saint, so, Saint Twit, Major? That was me today, or rather my route planner (also me).

From my notes: "cycle track along cliff 5km, first 1/2 km not marked cycle track" . Had I learned from yesterday? Unfortunately my sheer joie de vivre, or maybe joie de vélo, got the better of me, and I headed down a narrow, nettle- bordered path through woods.  I was committed.  A sign said South Wales Coastal Path, and led onto the stony beach.  Huge stones.  

Coast path

Better coast path

Walkies time.  Luckily for me, after about half a mile, the path went into a field, and was just about rideable.  This led to West Aberthaw power station  where I gratefully escaped onto the road. 

Just after Rhoose (Cardiff) Airport, another note: "200m cycle track, unsurfaced, avoidable by road".  How bad could it be?  Well it was just rideable, but very steeply downhill, so some walking was required  again.  I had to recover with an 11s stop at Porthkerry Country Park, near a giant railway viaduct.  It rained, but I didnt  care.

And then, time for something completely different: Barry Island.  It has a lot in common with Blackpool, on a smaller scale.  It's not an island,  just as Blackpool is not a pool.  It's loud, brash, full of fun and amusements.  Unlike Blackpool, it has a wicked one-way system  and it's very hilly.  I did about five laps exploring all the coastal extremities,  which took forever:;   much like this blog post.  

Batty Island

Barry Island beach

Barry Island from one of its many hills

After the non Island, Barry Docks: massive, empty, redundant from what I could see.   Some nice redevelopment under way along the waterfront. 

Barry docks

Cardiff was just round the corner, but first, there was Penarth, a micro Brighton, complete with pier, and very attractive  except for its hilly one way system, based on Barry Island.

Penarth, from the pier

Cardiff is another story, one I can hardly bear to recall.

Here Be Dragons

massive Bay film studios, leaving Swansea

Sandfields

Sandfields, Whales

The next bit wasn't so pleasant. A strong headwind didn't help. I mostly followed NCN 4, which squeezes in beside the newborn M4, other A roads, railways, river bridges, and industrial works. Often on pavement cycleways beside a big road, it was perfectly safe but a bit dull. It started to rain in Port Talbot, which didn't help. Only when I got near Bridgend parish, did it feel like being in the countryside again.

Port Talbot port

Port Talbot steelworks (blast furnaces)

After a very long time, I found a cafe for tea, overlooking Nest Bay, just before Porthcawl, just as it started to rain again. Sat for a while watching the surfers, and contemplating where to stay tonight. Thunderstorms are forecast, so maybe another night indoors.

Porthcawl is a biggish seaside town with a proper esplanade, seaside hotels and so on.  A bit posh, maybe?  But as you leave, there's a Canvey Island style amusement beach, at arms' length from the town.  Porthcawl probably pretends it isn't there.  Another arms length, and there's a big caravan park.

Porthcawl

East Bay, Porthcawl

It was here that my planned route began to come unstuck.  My notes say "cycle track across beach 8km, avoidable by road inland".  I was uncertain about this, but it was a bona-fide cycle route, complete with green dots on the map.

  

The map was misleading.   It was across deep sand, impossible to ride in a normal bike.  So it had to be the "road inland", which was two A roads, including maybe 6 miles on the busy A48, a dual carriageway for about half the distance.  A dreadful option for anyone cycling the coast.   After a tense ride, I was back on country lanes.  

And relax ...?

Another cycle track: a bridge across a river, and a concrete track across fields, leading to another river.

Arrgh!

View from the other side

No bridge.  Stepping stones.  Wide.  Very wide.  RideWithGPS had not mentioned this.   The water was at least a foot deep, maybe 2 feet in places.  I quickly decided against riding across.   Walking across stepping stones was dodgy in cyclung sandals with cleats, I discovered on my recce.  So I removed the panniers, put my water shoes on, and carried the bike across, then the panniers.  Scary.

Ogmore Castle

Directly across the "ford" was Ogmore Castle: "Monument closed."  I was too stressed to visit anyway.

I still had nowhere to stay, so I consulted Google.  There was an attractive place in Bridgend, a Wetherspoon hotel, but I didnt want to go inland.   The only other reasonable option was a camp site in Monknash, the Heritage Coast Campsite.  It sounded a bit hair-shirt, but turned out to have a lovely pub just up the road, the Plough and Harrow.  I pitched my tent and skedaddled to the pub, just before the kitchen closed at 7pm.  Lovely local pub, great food and beer.  There was a minor sensation when Tom Jones came up on the playlist.  And it rained while I was eating.  Another win.

to Swansea and beyond!

It was great to be back in a youth hostel; a bit of company and all the facilities.  It wasn't  very full, perhaps because of the season and the weather (the season very definitely  stops at the end of August, it seems), or possibly because you can still only hire a whole room to yourself.   Still I had a great chat with a pair of cyclists from Bristol who've toured all over Britain and quite a bit of Europe.  He recommended I try Switzerland next, but I'm not so sure.  I have never heard anything good about its coastline.

On the road by 8.30, straight into a series of killer hills..   I'm now travelling east along the south coast of the Gower.  It has a sort of scarp cliff running along it, and the maim road runs along quite high up, but the coast is, as usual, at the bottom   They don't  mess about round here, if the road needs to go up a hill, it just goes straight up.  In 5 miles I had done 200 metres of climbing. 

Oxwich beach

Grand entrance to a ?House near Oxwich

I also found myself directed along some very impractical routes, flooded bridleways and roads where they seemed to have forgotten the tarmac layer.  But also some sunshine, great views, a few skeletons of castles, and beautiful beaches.   Ten miles, 300m of climbing and I stopped for the worst ever latte, and the best ever pain au raisin, at Kittle village bakery.  They were thrown into confusion when I produced a Scottish £10 note, but all was well.

Dodgy

Vrty dodgy

Ford

Beautiful Caswell bay and then up-market Langland Bay, complete with Manor house, looking a bit like St Pancras Station Hotel. Each beach came with a free gift of more hills, but then ... no more hills to Swansea!  They're all beautiful beaches, with a little cafe, maybe a shop selling beach things - typical small tourist beach, and somehow very welcoming.  Nearly 500 metres of ascent in 15 miles, but well worth it.  

Caswell bay

Caswell bay

Caswell bay

Caswell bay

Caswell bay

Caswell bay

I

Langland Manor entrance 

t was definitely the right decision to stop at Gowerton in May and come back with fresh legs for the Gower.

Mumbles point

Three lifeboat stations?

Just round the corner was the Mumbles headland, and a nine mile crescent of flat, beachside cycle path into sunny Swansea, with a following wind.  Dotted with cafes and a few walkers.  Lovely.  Lunch by the marina in Swansea, and onwards towards the industrial chimneys of Port Talbot, without really seeing most of Swansea.  Sorry, Swansea.

Approaching Swansea

Swansea

Swansea marina

Lunchtime companion

Will he notice?