Bear Bones January Pilgrimage

I've been careful with my working hours this year.  Last year had a horrible finish to it and over Christmas I promised myself I'd be more kind.  I eased myself in to work, doing short hours even, to rest my brain.  Week 2, I started to struggle, the hours mounting up but by Friday lunchtime I'd done my hours so I went to lunch with my boss, fired off one last email and then left to pick up TSK to drive to Wales.

Nope, no cafe here!

We had yet another night in a Travelodge in Oswestry - a poor matress had us squabbling for space in a trough in the middle but it wasn't too bad a night.

It was a nice start on Saturday from the calamity of the meeting point and mass packing in the carpark.  We rolled out at 9:30 ish, our route North blocked by private land so we retreated and headed away from the chosen route onto the road for many hours.

For clarity, this ride was called the Café Racer, an alleged stream of checkpoints (grid references provided) between which racers chose their own route.  Historically, the point has been a mountain bike ride but there's no set rules and so we decided to do it on our road bikes this year as training for the Transatlantic Way.

At our first "cafe" we were confronted with the choice of 2 farm houses, a B&B and a fallen-down shack.  We continued in earnest to the next which was a cottage at a junction of two roads.  Again, not a tea-shop sign in sight.

My "away from the main roads" route took us around the back of the village for around 500m then through a horse field before dropping back to the main road from whence we had just come.

I started to doubt my route so we found a nice pub in Carno to serve us lunch and I set about checking the remainder of my route to ensure it was on a road - or some tentative variation thereof.

We headed out down to Clatter to another farm building checkpoint and then accepted that few of the checkpoints would be serving any nourishment so started being a little more lax about making the checkpoint.  Less of the battling our way to it and more accepting that 250m away was close enough.

TSK enjoying the climb.  I told him London was at the top. 
I failed to mention it was, "Little London".

It took us to some remarkable places though and for that I am very grateful.

Another body of water without a café
at the top.  Nice nature reserve though.

On top of the moors, the last of the grey light faded with a rainstorm which had us relenting that it was now getting "too wet" and holeing up at the end of a forest trail to don waterproof trousers and coats.  A little bit of me regretted not bringing my big coat but from this I learned that my OMM coat does a bloody good job - and since I bought it for the TAW race, that's a big relief - that it can survive pretty shitty stuff in Wales in January.

At Bwylch-y-Sarnau we knew that the café would at least be open as a meeting point part way into the ride.

The village hall was filled with the sweet smell of cake and toast and around 40 humming, wet riders.  All the women riders I had noticed or spoken with in the morning were around.  Some of the guys had been there for 1.5 hours already, waiting for friends or just avoiding going back out.  They were still there when we left.

The volunteers at the Caf plied us with refillable tea, we bought extra cake to wash down our soup and bread rolls and as we chatted with fellow riders about which way we'd been, we were papped by the volunteers.  I wish I'd taken a pic but by now I was getting tired.

It gradually drifted in and out of my head about everyone's individual rides and our various knowledge of the area.  We're all so different and have been different places.  Terms like "via the windfarm" are used when there are windfarms strewn all over the route.  "in the forest" is another one, "by the reservoir / lake / river".

We dropped out of the café.  Riders were still riding up the hill on the anticlockwise route.  We set off back down the hill, towards Rhayader where we were headed for dinner but we stopped off and acquired two more faux checkpoints on the way.  At Tywlch the café seemed to be a shipping container set in the grass.  It started to dawn on me that all of these places were locations where the organiser has - at one point or another taken it upon himself to brew up a coffee during a storm, a sunday ride or an overnight camp.

It seemed frivolous to go so far out of our way down a hill to get dinner but it was, potentially the only other place serving food which wouldn't consist of boiled water and a dessicated packet.  We approached the Eagle Inn, our brakes screaching into the darkness.  A local having a cigarette laughed at us as we asked if the beer garden was open for bikes.

We headed around back and the landlord opened the patio doors.  On some days of the year its probably lovely but, as it was "out of use" in January, it was a dark, wet, musty yard with a few wooden tables and a lot of dog shit which we only realised once inside the pub and stinking heavily.

We were so hungry we didn't care and steamed our way through casserole and chips, not really knowing if the smell was dog shit or us or some of the taxidermy on the walls going bad.

We set off back out along another lane that ran to a building looking like a cross between a community centre and a bunk-house - still no café.  The lane turned into a forest trail with a thin strip of broken tarmac down the middle.  It was steep but at least that strip of tarmac made it easily pushable.  We made several false attempts to find a bothy that I had marked on my GPS - clearly during my online research I had mistakenly mixed up the satellite image of a sheep pen for the bothy.  I had mixed emotions.  Part of me expected the bothy to be packed with other racers but still, camping outside it would have been nice, including spending the morning with other people.  The other part of me wondered if anyone else would actually take themselves the 15 miles off route to get to it and I imagined me and TSK having the place to ourselves.

My afflictions associated with other people when I'm tired made me fine with not finding the bothy.

As it was, we had a sheep pen and a large oak tree to ourselves, behind which we were sheltered from an icy wind and soothed by a soft mat of fallen leaves.  The Oak obliged not to drop any branches on us in the breeze.

Attempting and failing to photograph me and our camp spot.
One day I'll look back on this and think how young I look.

It took me a while to get to sleep but I only woke twice and it was suffice to pull my coat over my chest to increase my insulation.

As the light dawned I dreamed that other bikers were approaching then realised it was just the day arriving.

I had no energy or urge to take a picture of our camp in the daylight. 
This is the end of my tent with TSK wriggling around inside.

We brought two stoves - him the usual one.  Me a new lightweight meths stove for trial.  From this I learned that I need matches, not a lighter to get the meths stove going (especially in temperatures of 2 degrees C).  When it did go though, it brewed up quicker than the gas stove which had a head start (and more water to boil, to be fair).

It took us around 1 hour to decomission everything and set off again.  I'm putting this down to the cold but also know that some of my winter gear takes more packing than summer stuff.  I'm planning to run a foam mat in winter which won't need inflate / deflate and a much smaller, less escapey sleeping bag.  I also ripped a hole in my dry bag whilst trying to pack the sleeping bag which didn't really help the packing process.

We were stiff and slow but we made it - back to the road and up on to the moors.  It was blowing.  We were so pleased with our winter spot.  I'd go so far as to call it a hidden valley.  Outside of it the weather was big but eventually the clouds retreated, the sun started to appear and the road turned to tarmac.

We were on our way.

I'm calling this a sunrise.

Our first diversion into a village arrived at a closed shop where we ate the rest of the cashews left over from the poor student then made a plan to get to the next check point before eating the dried food we'd carried thus far by the reservoir (where there would be an ample brewing water supply).

We reached the turn off point and rode as far up the hill as we could muster, past a circling red kite and a fallen-down mill building.  A land rover passed us as we both stepped off the bikes to push.

We shared an energy bar to stop the leg wobbles and trudged on up, rewareded on the other side by a long downhill through the forest past a man dressed as the lord of the manner but with the nicest smile and best attitude either of us have ever seen from a man rocking a deer-stalker hat.

At the tee junction at the end of the road we had one of those disagreements which is the reason behind us not doing the Transatlantic Way Race together.  Him: go off course to find cafe serving full English breakfast.  Me: stick to course, gain checkpoints, follow plan, eat lentils and ham (rehydrated) out of a packet for breakfast.

This is my only hope for us keeping anywhere near a similar pace on the TAW race.  He can ride faster than me but he can't accept dinner out of a foil bag the way I can!

The love of my life.

I conceded, but whilst I admit I enjoyed the breakfast, the missed checkpoint and extra effort in doing so (only to turn from it) smarted - for about 30 minutes - roughly the time it took me to order a slice of lemon meringue pie and an extra cup of tea.  For in consuming breakfast at a cafe, we'd gone into lunch teritory.

Back on the course, we hit the head of the reservoir (you know, *the* reservoir) valley and the check point, located on an inflexion on the road with not even a layby in which to stick an icecream van or a coffee trailer.

My suspicions that this was just a list of Stu's brew-stops was thoroughly justified.

The reservoir was pleasant, with a plethora of picnic tables and "no camping" signs, we wondered if anyone would've really been out checking in January.

After 29.5hrs outdoors and at 2:30pm we finally made it back to Llanbrynmair and hung out in the school amongst the paper-plate faces and glitter -based art and welsh-language body chart hanging on the wall like some kind of bizzare upright murder scene.  Tea and cake flowed but eventually it was time to dress in dry clothes and drive home in shifts.

Somewhere between the dog poo fuelled dinner, the eating snacks through mucky gloves, sleeping in a sheep pen and the junk food consumed on the way home I ended up spending Sunday evening throwing up all that I had consumed in the last 24 hours but, weirdly on Monday I was fine and ready for work.

Ready, quite frankly, to deal with anything.