Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll to Prestatyn

Wednesday September 22, 2010

Breakfast beside my tent.

This morning I was off to a good start, because I'd bought milk the night before, so I ate brekkie before packing up.
I wasn't feeling that great on the bike today though, a little slow. And the weather wasn't great either, wet and showery.

Crossing the Menai Suspension Bridge, heading towards Bangor on north-west Wales.

After having some difficulty following cycle route 8 initially, I eventually got on the right track, which followed mostly alongside the coast.

Riding along the coast in north-west Wales.

Even their bike path walls look like the top of a castle turret. 

I went through another town with a castle (there seem to be a lot of these), which I think was called Conwy.

Conwy Castle

Looking back towards Conwy.

Just on the other side of this town, in a town called Llandudno Junction, the back tyre went flat. What a drag! So I stopped by some shops with some shelter, since it was still raining, ate some food, and fixed the puncture.

Fixing puncture number 2 for the trip.

It was at this point that I was browsing through my twitter feed and discovered a tweet by Phil Liggett saying that there was a new cycling app called Bike Hub, for use in the UK. Normally I'd just see a tweet like this and think "well, it's for the UK, it's no use to me," but this time I was in the UK! It looked like it could be very useful too, so I downloaded it and checked it out, thus beginning my fourth method of navigation.
First I was using the GPS app TomTom, which cost $120 from the app store, probably the most expensive app going 'round, and I only used it for the first few days. After London I was just using Google Maps, and having the internet on the go means I can get more detail in the maps as I go along as required. Then I was using the National Cycling Network map, in combination with Google Maps. But now with this app, I can see the National Cycling Network routes on a Google Maps style interface, which I can zoom in or out on, and unlike Google Maps, it shows me contours! I've been thinking for a while this is what I really need, because following the cycle network map and Google Maps, I really have little idea of what the terrain will be like, other than by actually looking in the direction I'm heading, and assuming that if I see mountains ahead, then it's going to be hilly. This "Bike Hub" app also utilises GPS and shares characteristics with apps like TomTom. You enter in the destination you want to go, select "fastest route", "quietest route", "shortest route" or "balanced route", and it works out a route for you, outlines the route on the map, and can give you directions if you want it to. So I've been using that, and I can choose whether to take the route that it recommends, or to take a cycle network route instead (if the app doesn't recommend taking the cycle network route), or I can take whichever route I like, and still see in the Bike Hub app map the roads that I'm on with the blue dot representing my location via GPS and the contours I'm about to traverse. So I think this is the superior navigation method for the UK. I'll have to revert to the old method once I'm out of the UK again though.
Anyway, there I was fixing the puncture in the rain. This took more than an hour all up, I really wasn't happy about getting a puncture, I was feeling a bit flat and unmotivated but I thought "well, it's the first one the tyre has had, it was bound to happen sooner or later, it's just unlucky, fix it and move on." So I fixed it and moved on.
Next I got to a town called Colwyn Bay, and stopped by the beach side for lunch (rolls with tomato and sardines).

Colwyn Bay

Colwyn Bay

While I was sitting there, a bloke from the house just behind where I was sitting wandered out for a chat.

Roy's house in Colwyn Bay.

He was a bit of a bicycle tourer himself, and he could talk the leg off a chair, I could barely get a sentence in. He soon invited me in for a cup of tea, which I politely accepted. He said to just lean the bike against the car and he assured me it wouldn't get stolen, because it was a crime-free area. So I trusted him.

Roy with his son on the left.

The blokes name was Roy, and his wife's name was Pauline, they would have been in their early 60's I guess, very friendly people too. They were both "born and bred" in Liverpool, and one of the reasons they moved to their current location in Wales was so that they could cycle along the cycle path which runs right along the north coast there for 15 odd miles to Prestatyn. I also met their son Mark, 22 year old bloke; he was just about to head out to a mates place.
I had a few cups of tea and some delicious quality fruit cake (Roy reckoned he always likes to get good quality food).

Tea and fruit cake.

I got plenty of advice from Roy, he got the maps out and we discussed where I'd been and where I was going, I worked out more of a concrete plan of where I was going to head, at least in the UK: up the west coast of North-west England, through the Lake Districts then across to the west coast through Northumberland National Park, and then to Edinburgh. From there I'd head west, catch a ferry to Ireland, ride south through Ireland and catch a ferry to France and go from there. Pauline was nice enough to look up the ferry routes, when they're running and the prices, so that I knew there would be a ferry I could catch from Ireland to France. Roy kept talking when Pauline and I were discussing ferries, and Pauline was getting annoyed and kept telling him not to interrupt. She told Roy "I think you're giving him too much information". Roy had heaps of brochures and maps for cycling routes which he offered me, but I declined, not wanting to be more weighed down than I already was, and thinking that the iPhone would be sufficient.
They also talked a lot about places they had been, both driving trips and cycling trips, and how Pauline was also into kayaking (don't get the wrong idea though, she wasn't slim, young, fit and into extreme sports, I imagine her kayaking would have been rather slow and tame). Interestingly, Pauline had relatives in Fremantle, Western Australia. It seems like a lot of people I talk to over here have relatives in Australia.
Roy was kind enough to give me some left over roast turkey on my departure, that I could use for lunch the next day. By the time I left their place it was just about dark. It wasn't much further down the road that I got my second puncture for the day! I couldn't believe my bad luck. Quite annoyed, I stopped under a bridge (it was still raining), ate some roast turkey sandwiches (I was too hungry and annoyed to save it for the next day) and fixed the puncture, and I was on my way again.

Repairing puncture number 3 for the trip.

It would have only been another fifteen minutes down the road when I got my third puncture for the day, argh! What are the chances? I couldn't just put it down to bad luck anymore, the tyres obviously weren't of great quality, and I resolved to buy a new one when I got the chance. I actually had two new tyres on order through wiggle, I ordered them about 3 months ago and I'm still waiting on them. The tyres were one thing that the good people at Commuter Cycles in Brunswick, Australia, recommend I upgrade, and as I said I was planning to. And indeed as I was just discovering, these tyres were a real let-down (get it?).
This third puncture I couldn't be bothered fixing, it was dark, raining and getting late. It was a slow enough puncture that I could keep going for a while before it was too flat to ride though.
After riding through more rain, and very sandy paths that clogged up the drive-train, I finally made it to Prestatyn, found a spot of grass to camp on near the sand dunes, set up and collapsed into my bed.

Ride stats
Distance: 76.68 km
Average: 15.9 km/h
Maximum: 44.7 km/h
Time: 4:48:41