Christmas Parties. Round 1.

Car Parks can be lonely places.

It's been a busy weekend, and I think that I may feel it's effects later this week. Take it from me, things didn't really go very well.

Friday night was our first Christmas doo. Mine was with my friends from a local group of Mountain Bikers in the centre of Cardiff. Jo's was with her work, on the outskirts of town. We got home at about 1am, after having a good night.

I was up, dressed, and out of the house just after 7am for the drive back to Rhayader to check out the first of a couple of tracks that I had been informed might work for the WC2C.

The promising track was duly followed for a few km, until it just stopped in the middle of nowhere. I spied another track and headed for this by trudging through 2 foot high moon grass. It looked like it was heading in the right direction, and I thought that the Bridleway may have moved over time due to ease of contouring a path, rather than going straight over the top.

It stopped.

Ever the, "Glass is half full," type, I trudged on hoping to find that the track resurrected itself. I had been going too long to turn back and start on the other track, it would be dark in a couple of hours. I quite liked carrying my bike, anyway.

Nothing.

After hours of pulling, pushing and stumbling over the tumps of moon grass and bog, I decided to go back. This route was never going to work in a month of Sundays, and I was just kidding myself.



Saturday night was Christmas Doo No.2

This was a "White Tie" Dinner and Dance, in Cardiff town centre. We were dressed up to the nines and my kilt had it's 3rd or 4th outing for the year. I always feel good in a kilt. It must be the air conditioning.

We had a good night, with some lovely food. It was unlike me, but I didn't dance because my legs were all trudged out and I felt that I had tweaked one of the long flexors in my foot, sorry Jo. We got home after 1 am.

Sunday morning saw me rise at 7 (ish) and get out the door quickly and back up to Llanwrtyd Wells to test the same track as yesterday from the other side, in case it became obvious where the Bridleway ran.

There was 4Km of road, or so, and the ice made it really difficult to make any headway, but I did manage to get to the start of the track up onto the top of the hill that I struggled to find yesterday. Or so I thought. I ended up in a frozen wasteland of pathless countryside (in the main) covered with 3 to four foot high moon grass tumps on a bed of slippy rock. This was a broken ankle waiting to happen.

Then, there was the river crossing. It wasn't a burn or a babbling brook, it was a piggin' river.

Somehow, the eternal optimist kept popping through my grumpy facade.

I got to the top, on a vague sheep trail and much more moon grass and finally realised my short term goal of peering down into the valley that I had battled with on Saturday. The view I was rewarded with after all of this toil?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. No path, no bridleway, no sheeptrack, no oasis of calm and reassurance that I had done the right thing in pursuing this track as a viable route.

Nowt.

Jings, now I'm feeling tired.

So I trudged all the way back, carrying my bike for most of it. I then rode along the roads back to the car, and nearly fell off on the ice. Now that would have been a proper end to the weekend if I had done that, wouldn't it?

The river needed a second crossing too.


At least my bike looks the part, though. :)

The neoguard keeps your face clean much better than my brace of mudguards (from lots of manufacturers)

I stopped for tea at Matt's house, as his mum was just about to cut up the Sunday roast. Good timing, or what? :)

We poured over the maps for a while as I released some of my frustrations, in verbal form.

Got home, re-planned about 80km of the route to head over to the Tywi Valley and onwards to Nant-yr-Arian, then Mach.

The Bikes were duly washed (Jo's was dirty too) and put to bed in minus plenty centigrade. Then I went to bed after watching an hour of a spooky and exciting Norwegian Cop story. I was too excited to sleep then!

We are going to take the Gnarlavan up to Mid-Wales this weekend coming so that I can get some relative sleep and also have the chance to do a good 4 or 5 hours of recce each day, with Jo.