Day 07 - Monday 21st July 2014
The Baron at Bucknell (80.43km)
I must have been really tired when I got to the campsite last night because in seeking out some shade in which to pitch the tent, I totally failed to notice that I have pitced alongside an emergency light. When I woke at 11pm last night, it was like a lighthouse shining into the tent it was so bright. It did not take long to find itself covered with an abandoned towel that I had seen when I walked to the toilet block. Said towel was also back in its original location soon after 6am so no-one knew! I slept reasonably well and woke to hill mist burning off and blue skies once again. It was a shame life did not go to plan. Once the bike was loaded and I was ready to leave (ahead of the scheduled 8am start) I soon found I had a flat rear tyre. More worryingly I could find no cause whatsoever for the flat, so switched out with the spare innner tube as a precaution. I actually could not get the old inner tube to deflate so I have my suspicions about the cause... (This is only the 2nd flat I have had on this bike in over 10,000 miles of touring and the last one was a piece of metal that would have taken a lorry tyre out!). Life was also not to make matters easier for me with my pump either. I had taken my little Leyzene Road Morph that usually lives on my road bike. I know that it takes 200 strokes on the pump to get those tyres up to 100psi. Something I can just about manage, but today the pump was leaking and not playing fair. It was also getting too hot to hold and unfortuantly the campsite manager (a cyclist) was not around. I ended up inflating the tyre to what I guessed was 20psi (instead of the 65psi I had previously been running at), though it later turned out I had managed to get it to 30psi! (New ring seals have been ordered for the pump now I know the cause of the issue!). Now whilst 30psi was fine of the canal I was doing first thing this morning, it was not so great on the roads and progress was best phrased as slow and hard work and not made any easier by my desire to stay off a certain very busy A road/dual carriageway during the Monday morning rush hour.
I have really taken a liking to the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal.
the view from an aqueduct.
I had taken the somewhat interesting decision to risk trying to get to the bike shop in Hay-on-Wye rather than use the one in Brecon because I had worked out that I could save myself several miles cycling and bypass Brecon if I did 1 side of a triangle (the short side) rather than the 2 longer sides... There was also the possibility that the bike shop would not be open until after 10am in Brecon (I don't know if this is accurate or not, but a cyclist I met indicated that she thought it did not open until 10am and certainly all of my local ones don't...) so Hay-on-Wye it was to be via sustrans route 8...
The views were great, the climbing, well some of it was, err close on lethal really. One particular hill was horrendous and even getting enough purchase from my hiking shoes on the tarmac to push my bike up the incline was almost impossible. The strava segment (it was guaranteed to have one) is called "Who knows" which sums it up superbly. You have know idea on where you are, why you are going that way or the purpose of the torture, only that it is happening... It was a touch steep incase you haven't guessed....
Any excuse for another breather....
And another one....
I finally dropped into a little place called Talgarth and happened across a shop with bread in the window. I needed some for lunch, so propped my bike against the window and walked in and WOW, what a wonderful little shop. It had so much I could have purchased including 2 varieties of almond milk - it was such a shame I didn't need any. It even had tofu and various organic nuts & fruit and.... I was in heaven... When I finally looked up to pay, I found the owner outside looking at my bike! It transpired that he was a keen cyclist, had recognised my bike as being one he had only ever seen in magazines and was out looking at it in awe. We had a long chat about it and its various features (14 speed Rohloff hub, dynamo front hub, twin crown forks, front brakes mounted behind the forks, and so on...) and when I went back into the shop to pay he gave me a free (dairy free) apricot flapjack as a thank you for taking time out to talk to him about the bike and 'show him around' it. It survived for around 15 minutes and died willingly at a bench a mile or so down the road...
The view from the bench...
From the bench, I baled on the sustrans route and went back to the A road for a short while before it became a B road and headed off into Hay-on-Wye and cycled straight passed the sign for the bike shop without noticing it. After a little back tracking and flagging down a cyclist (looked like a local and was indeed a local, who promptly stood in the middle of a road junction with me holding up all the traffic and giving me directions) I finally found the bike shop, a touch off the 'beaten track'. I picked up a spare inner tube and asked for air. Once the rear tyre was at 65psi cycling was so much easier!
I headed off towards Whitney-on-Wye, but before reaching there found a bench in the shade and lunch was called for. The toll bridge at Whitney-on-Wye which is lovely is 10p for cyclists and sells coffee/tea. I grabbed a much needed coffee and sat and watched the world go by for a while.
The toll bridge itself.
...] 4x4 SWB Land Rover
