It’s been a while! With work, new pup and a house deciding to fall apart seemingly weekly, it’s been tough to try and get a couple of days together to get away, and even tough to just get on the bike! I’ve done a grand total of just over 100 miles this year, all on the Brompton, so when the potential chance came to have a couple of days away I wanted something not too taxing or hilly (we’ll come to that!), somewhere I could get to and back from in decent time and somewhere by the sea. Having been on holiday exclusively in Conwy from the ages of 3-16 at Gorse Hill caravan park, I realised I’d never really cycled in North Wales despite working there lots for The Original Factory Shop (we’ll get to that as well!) so a quick google and it looked like National Cycle Route 5 looked just the job, hugging the North Wales coast (oh no it doesn’t!) across the Menai Bridge, on to Anglesey ending up at Holyhead. 120ish miles over 2 days and as it’s by the coast, it’s bound to be flat, what can possibly go wrong?
I was using some holidays brought over from last year, and was meant to be off on the Thursday, but didn’t get back from London until 1pm then had to go to work anyway to try and get the new frozen warehouse over the line before I went. With that mission failed, I came home to the news that the drainage engineers we’d had out to try and sort the issues we were now having with the smell from the ground floor, hadn’t managed to find out where the washing machine was discharging its water to, so me and Andrea striped out the cupboard in the porch, lifted the carpets and floorboards and slightly wider than I’ve been for quite a while, lowered myself into the void under the house to find the pipe had become disconnected and the washing machine was discharging its water directly under the house…😬 at least that explains the smell! As a result the relaxed packing I was planning, was done from 10pm…
With the alarm set for 5.30am I just had time to do the tyres, lube the chain (for shame, it was filthier than one of Conleth’s bikes…) smash the bags on and time trial the 2 and a half miles up Denby Dale road and up the horrible 10% climb to the train station just in time for the early train to Huddersfield. After the worst Cappuccino I have ever had at Huddersfield it was on to the Trans Pennine express and their ridiculous “bike storage” lockers. It’s impossible to hang a gravel bike or mountain bike on them as the tyres and rim depths are too big so I just left it sticking out. Obviously you also have to have a reservation for it which I did, but the jobsworth conductor said I’d have to hang it up. I told him if he wanted it hanging up he’d have to do it himself and after he tried lifting it, he came round to my of thinking and we left it where it was…😁 Quick change at Manchester for a Northern train with a proper bike space, and I was peddling into the centre of Chester, the signpost for Holyhead on the station wall, just after 10, sun was trying to get out and although it was cold, I had the whole day ahead of me on the bike, nice and flat, lovely!
NCR 5 took me out through the canal network and over some lovely old cobbled packhorse spiral bridges a legacy of barges before engines while I was coverting some of the nicer narrow boats (one day, one day!) and we were up and on the Chester Millennium path for 5-6 miles and up across the River Dee and into Wales! A quick Iechyd Da, (my Dad made a sign for all our houses with this on it!) as I crossed the border and headed to the coast past the very built up Connah’s Quay and on to the first roads with traffic on of the day. Thankfully, the visionary Welsh government have put in a blanket 20mph speed limit in all built up areas, and it’s amazing what a difference it makes! People are happier to stay behind as the speed differential isn’t that much and when they go go past, even if it’s closer than you’d ideally like, it isn’t as scary.
Rolling along, it was coming up to 11.30 and as I hadn’t really hadn’t had anything to eat today, I passed the sign for Flint, a town I knew well due to TOFS having a shop here and pulled into a small shopping arcade to get a sandwich, fill up the drinks and have a breather in the weak sunshine. Food polished off, it was up over the railway line and the first view of the coast combined with the first castle of the day. Flint castle looked slightly incongruous, closed in by the sea on one side and a rough looking council estate on the other, and was free to just go in and have a look. Some boards explained the usual shithousery of the English monarchy and the establishment of Flint as Edward I’s foothold into Wales before falling out with Lywelyn ap Gruffydd, and finally being destroyed, surprise, surprise by Cromwell…
Time for some more History as I popped across the duel carriageway to the old shop, now sadly closed along with all the 300 odd we’d opened in my 14 years at TOFS to play the “which shop is this” via various WhatsApp groups amongst all the old colleagues from TOFS that I either still work with or are still friends with. Tom gets it second guess, Tracy and Mark 1st, Caroline no where near…☺️
As I’d only done the route on Monday night, (with Andrea quietly taking the piss about how excited I get over it 😁) I’d not over studied it, just really followed the NCR 5. I knew that I had to go inland for a bit after Bagilt, assuming as the only other option was the A55 and I quite like being alive, and as it was a national cycle route it’s not going to be awful…OMFG!!! The Garmin chirped up as I turned off and up a single track wall with moss and grass down the middle. It decided to show me that I’d be climbing over 900 ft in a little under 3 miles and was showing lovely big red and dark red colours meaning 10-20%…it was horrendous. It was cold so I had pretty much everything on. Within 15 mins I was down to a short sleeved top. Not only was it narrow, poorly surfaced and horrendously steep, it was it seems also like the friggin M1 with the amount of traffic! Trying to keep momentum at 3mph while letting cars past when there was a drive way or somewhere the road widened while they slipped their burning clutches 2 inches behind my back wheel certainly focused the mind!
After 40 terrible minutes I got to the top to find I hadn’t got to the top as there was a terrifying short descent just before Dolphin to a stone bridge, then an even steeper climb up. The Garmin screen was black which means over 20% and the lights went out and I got off. The shame! Demons were back, why do I put myself through this? I’d only done just over 20 miles, it was nearly 1pm, I’m fat, old out of shape and have hardly been on a bike this year, it was supposed to be fucking flat and I was sweating like Trump doing a 4 piece jigsaw. I’d sensibly bought a bottle of lucazade and some jelly tots back in Flint, so drinking all 500 mil and half a big bag of jelly tots later, my heart rate had calmed somewhat from the 180bpm it had been going at and I started to push the 20kg of bike and luggage up the 20% gradient to find that I was only 2 corners and 100 yards from the top! Ahhhh! Crossing the A5026 there was a bit more gentle climbing till it levelled off and I was cruising through the very beautiful village of Pantasaph (I would have stopped but the road was gently sloping back down to the coast and I was doing 20mph and didn’t want to lose momentum…) and the hour it had taken my to do the previous 5 miles was somewhat ameliorated by the next 5 taking 15 minutes! And the demons retreated…
All of a sudden I was back on the coast, past the frankly apocalyptic looking remains of the Pontins holiday camp and onto the esplanade at Prestatyn. It looked like it would pretty much be right along here for the next 20 miles or so, and so it proved, with the Irish Sea on my left and then 20 miles of static caravans on my right as I cruised nice a steady (with all the layers, hats and gloves back on) through Prestatyn, Rhyl (stopping for a Greggs obvs) and Kinmel Bay, were they had closed the coastal path for sea defence works. Obviously no diversion in place, I mean the works will only take 2 years why would you? 🙄 so it was take your chances on the very busy A548 for a couple of miles before cutting through some very weird housing on unadopted roads and back to the coastal path, past a very dodgy looking funfair.
It’s at this point that the path was getting sketchy. All along the Rhyl section there were heavy duty diggers returning the sand from the concrete path back to the beach. Past Rhyl, not so much, so the path was covered for 100 of yards at a time with deep sand. Those with long memories know how hopeless I am riding through soft sand, so with discretion being the better part of valour (stupid death, stupid death etc) I gracefully dismounted and started pushing again. This happened frequently over the next few miles, further plummeting my average speed until the path widened out as I got to Abergele and nudged the 50 mile mark at just gone 4pm.
Stopping to play the guess which TOFS game again (everybody got it right as Abergele TOFS was a licence to print money back in the day) the coastal path ran alongside the A55 and past the quarry with the huge conveyor belt running down the inland hillside under the A55 and along a pier and out to sea. I’d driven past countless times so seeing it close up was interesting but there was no info and it wasn’t running, so round the top of the headland and into Colwyn Bay. There was a shop here as well but up the hill and off the route, so no chance! Given how awful the town is (or was, I haven’t been for nearly 8 years) the coastal bit of Colwyn Bay was really nice! The Prom had seen some money spent, and there were some lovely houses overlooking the bay and looming in the distance the expanse of the Ormes of Llandudno on the headland, certainly the landscape of my holidays as a kid!
Stopping at the Co-op just outside Llandudno to fill the drinks up, I was grovelling up another little horrible 15% climb, thankfully on a protected bike path next to the busy road up to the big welcome to Llandudno sign, down a little gravelly ginnel and stretched out before me the magnificence of Ormes Bay as the sun decided to make a welcome appearance , lovely! Llandudno, along the promenade is really a very grand place and as I took in the view, many happy memories walking along here with Mark and my mam and dad surfaced. The plan was that I was to ride round the side of the Great Orme along Marine drive, up to the top where one of my favourite photos of me, Mark and my Dad sitting on a bench eating ice creams was taken some 45 years ago and get someone to take a photo. However I’d done nearly 60 miles already, it would add on another 7 miles and another 1000 ft of climbing, I could feel cramp coming on and in a display of unusual clarity decided to just go to the foot of the tram stop take a photo and carry on to Conwy!
Stopping to read some of the boards at the start of the lovely pier I was approached by a couple if gentleman who asked me about the bike, commenting on how smart it looked. I told them it was a steel frame Ribble at which point they said “isn’t it a bit heavy?” I invited them to look at the mess riding it looking like a burst sausage and saying the extra couple of kg the frame weighs was the least of my worries and they said “fair point” and moved off!!! Up another short little nasty climb and I was at the Tram station just as the tram came trundling in. I took a short video and sent it to Mark, who’s in Washington DC for work, and had a little cry thinking I wish I could have sent it on to my mam and dad as well. After being such a massive part of my childhood I never came again with them after our last holiday here in 1986. If you could turn back time and all that…
Eyes dried, I crossed town to the other side of the headland and the views of Snowdonia and the northern tip of Anglesey across Liverpool Bay were as stunning as I remember in the hazy sunshine as I joined the busy B road to Deganwy and the beautiful site of Conwy harbour and castle shimmered into view. Now THAT is a castle!!! A couple of miles round the gravely track going over the top of the A55 tunnel, which wasn’t around on in the 80’s (built in 1991) meant that the pinch point past the castle was a lot less congested than it used to be! Past the castle which as it was now just gone 6, was closed, I dropped down to the harbour to take a picture of the smallest house in the UK, a firm favourite as a kid (cows, far away etc…😁) and it was time to find the youth hostel I was staying in tonight. Of course it was up a massive hill right at the top of the town! Gasping like I’d smoked 20 of my mam’s favoured Woodbines, I pulled up the final 15% drive to the YHA and collapsed on the bench outside. 63 miles and over 4,000 ft of climbing on my “flat” coastal route!
Room was great, (I love a YHA) for the £22 I paid so I splashed out £3 for a towel and had a well deserved lovely hot shower! Weather looks awful tomorrow, with strong winds and rain in the morning turning to gusts of over 50mph in the afternoon. I’ll need to get over the Menai bridge early just in case they close it, so the planned trip to the caravan park at Gorse Hill (it’s all private now, so I don’t know if I’d get in anyway) may have to wait for another day and it’ll save 8 mikes and 500 ft of climbing. I’ll make the decision tomorrow! I’ve had a lovely day though despite it all. Love you mam and dad x.
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