By Brian & Simon. Brian has also added quite a bit of info to “Simon’s” paragraphs. And the wonder that is Google AI offered to add links to various places referenced in the text, so as an experiment they are included.
B: When my wife, Cheryl, booked a week on a singing course at Malvern my thoughts turned to potential cycling opportunities. Mid Wales was an obvious choice because it’s an easy drive from Malvern and an attractive area.
I also have a long but intermittent association with the area. It was en route by train or car from South Wales to my mother’s parents in Cheshire and in the 1950s we had a holiday on a hill farm without electricity near Llanwrtyd Wells when the Devil’s Staircase road above Abergwesyn was still gravel and the adventurous who continued to Nantyrhwch were warned that road to Llandovery was “unsuitable for motors”. My dad was not deterred. In addition my Dad had a job that took him as far from Swansea as Llandovery and Builth Wells. Given his love of exploring remote countryside I’m fairly sure that some of the beautiful remote spots he took us to were not originally explored with a justifiable “business purpose”. But Google wasn’t tracking you in those far off days. Some of this area I later explored by bike though even that was nearly 60 years ago. My knowledge was rekindled when my elder son went to uni in Aberystwyth and we revisited some favourite spots.
A bit of research suggested that Rhayader could be a good base. It’s a small town which bills itself as the “Outdoor Capital of Wales”. Situated at the junction of several valleys and on NCN 8 and NCN 825 it has the potential for rides in various directions including areas that I had never visited.
I remembered that, after completing his ride round the coast of Wales, Simon had suggested that the interior was unfinished business and asked if he was interested. Silly question! Just the slight logistical issue that I couldn’t get Simon and his bike into the car until after I had dropped Cheryl in Malvern.
S: When Brian raised the possibility of a trip to mid-Wales, I was immediately interested. I asked if he had ideas for rides. His response contained a lot of unfamiliar words, place names with lots of the letters L, D, W, Y but not many vowels. It was like a foreign language! Eventually he had to show me on a map what he had in mind: a few days in Rhayader with loops out in all directions.
B: We quickly fixed the travel logistics and I had been looking at accommodation. A suitable modern apartment was available conveniently close to the town centre with good reviews, friendly hosts and a bike shed. What more could we want?
It turned out (perhaps unsurprisingly) that the biggest issue on all the potential rides, apart from the hills, was food and drink. The larger towns were fine but, as we found, smaller ones had limited options, unpublished hours and very few of the rare country pubs opened on weekday lunchtimes. Last minute research and sometimes a Plan B were essential.
Day 1: the Elan Valley
S: After a 3 am start, I caught a train to Great Malvern and met Brian for the drive to Rhayader in light rain. We found a delightful cafe which as a bonus offered the potential for an interesting evening meal later in the week. The rain stopped after lunch for a half-day ride to the Elan Valley, a few miles away and one of the few places I’d heard of in Brian’s itinerary. It’s a huge reservoir in a deep valley with tarmac or gravel roads snaking up the various tributaries.
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| 28 miles, 663 metres of ascent |
Day 2: Llanidloes and Llyn Clywedog
S: Brian promised me a lumpy ride to elevenses, and he wasn’t wrong. Our enthusiasm yesterday gave us tired legs to tackle the continuous short hills on the way north to Llanidloes. In the process we climbed out of the Wye valley and over into the Severn valley. After coffee, we followed a small lane up, continuously climbing which seemed easier than the short intermittent efforts earlier, before a long descent through the Hafren forest to another picturesque reservoir, Llyn Clywedog, which seemed rather more intimate because it had twists and turns so you could only see a few miles at a time. We enjoyed a rare bit of straight road, slightly downhill before a couple of vicious climbs returned us to Llanidloes for a pub lunch. We tucked into desserts too, having established that the cafe in Llangurig has Tuesday off. One last climb to the watershed before a rather smoother way down the Wye valley back home, including detouring to a former youth hostel where Brian had stayed in his younger days.
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| Nant Y Dernol, former Youth Hostel |
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| Llyn Clywedog |
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| 48 miles, 1432 metres |
Day 3: Towards Hay on Wye
S: Our ride down the river valley suggested flat riding to me, but that was only partly true. To avoid the main A470, we went on the other side of the valley using NCN 8, a gorgeous wooded lane with virtually no traffic, but it was again rather lumpy in that same leg-sapping way. An added bonus was a few miles of gated forest track, some of which was lovely but other parts provided the usual Sustrans special effects and were too stony or too steep to ride confidently on our road bikes. Thus our 300ft “down” the valley to Builth Wells had involved 1300ft of ascent. Elevenses was in the lovely Cwtch Cafe (Cwtch means a hug or cosy), where I had an Ed Miliband moment with a generous bacon sandwich (no photos luckily), before a rather flatter ride in the sunshine to Glasbury, a few miles short of Hay.
We returned more or less the same way with a few detours devised by Brian to see interesting sights, and finally we arrived at the most “interesting” of short-cuts, a footbridge across the river which avoided the last hill into Rhayader. It was true Indiana Jones stuff: just wide enough for our handlebars, large gaps between the floor planks large enough for a tyre to fit through, and very wobbly as you walked carefully across it.
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| Dodgy track |
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| Dodgy bridge (4mph speed limit) |
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| 63 miles, 1332 metres |
Day 4: Llandrindod Wells
S: Our legs decided that we needed a recovery day after three days of serious climbs, so we had a look around Rhayader before heading out for a shorter loop round to the west and south. It started with a four-mile climb (was this really a recovery day?) over to Abbey Cwmhir but after that was more gentle as we followed a lane down the Clywedog (no relation to Tuesday!) Brook to Crossgates (lunch at a petrol station cafe). Then over several hills to Llandrindod, which was quite exciting, first because we were hit by a very heavy shower as we came into town, so we rushed to shelter at the station, and second because there were not one but two trains present. The Heart of Wales line from Swansea to Shrewsbury has only four trains a day. After tea Brian joined up a few more lanes with some short sections of quiet main road to get us easily back to Rhayader for a special Thali evening at the community hall - a monthly Indian meal event organised by our Monday cafe which was very well attended and the food was delicious.
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| 32 miles, 749 metres |
Day 5: Llanwrtyd Wells & Llyn Brianne
S: In fact, Brian had saved the best ride till last. We jumped in the car for a short drive to the “town” (it claims to be the smallest in the UK!) of Llanwrtyd Wells, which was a whole adventure in itself. We arrived to a reception committee of four elderly locals sitting, unsmiling, surveying the tiny village square. They had disappeared by the time we reappeared with our bikes, and so had our planned elevenses cafe, which had closed “some time ago” despite the somewhat dubious promises on their website. Instead, we tried the hotel, which could have been straight out of the 1950s. An ancient retainer confirmed that coffee was indeed available, before shuffling off into the interior. We waited in the drawing room until he appeared with coffee, somewhat reminiscent of Julie Walters in the famous Two Soups sketch. Llanwrtyd Wells is the UK capital of bog-snorkelling and the drawing room was decorated with various bog-snorkelling memorabilia, plus a wall of photos devoted to the Monster Raving Loony Party and Screaming Lord Sutch. It turns out that the party held its annual conference in Llanwrtyd Wells in 2023.
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| Mountain bike Bog snorkelling |
But, I digress. Our ride went southwards to a ridge, then east down through mixed forest into a tributary of the Tywi valley. At some point we left Powys for Carmarthenshire, and turned back towards Llyn Brianne, passing under the railway viaduct at Cynghordy.
A short, sharp climb took us over the hill to the main Tywi valley and lunch at a lovely pub in Rhandirmwyn (see what I mean about the names?). We continued up, a lot more up. A short detour into Brian’s memory lane to an old picnic spot in a delightful valley, and then, guess what, more climbing to the dam (the UK’s tallest so no wonder it was up), with a glorious view over Brian’s personal lake, Llyn Brianne.
As with the other reservoirs, the water level was very low after our dry spring and summer, exposing acres of shoreline and an old bridge, but no shipwrecks or drowned villages that I saw. The ride around the shore of the lake seemed never-ending, curling round this valley or that, up and down a bit but mostly just beautiful riding with spectacular views along the lake.
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| Surveying the road in the distance |
Somewhere, buried under the water is the old “unsuitable” road. At the top, we had to descend the Devil’s Staircase, a very steep descent which required full brakes and a bit of walking. Once safely down the steep bit, we had a gorgeous ride back to Llanwrtyd along the river Irfon valley, ten miles of bliss. The scenery was reminiscent of the Lake District without the crowds. In fact we only saw a handful of cars all day. Tea and cake at a dress shop(!) in Llanwrtyd set the seal on a great day.
B: I had originally planned this route in an anticlockwise direction to get the Devil’s Staircase out of the way first. However Simon wisely suggested that we might reverse it which we realised had several advantages but one was decisive. We were almost certain to reach the only pub in time for lunch! Thank you, Simon.
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| 41 miles, 1172 metres |
Day 6: East from Hay-on-Wye
S: We had a deadline to be back in Great Malvern so it was a shorter ride. Pack up, say goodbye to our lovely hosts, drive to Hay, a quick look around (although you could spend a lot longer visiting Hay - it was a bustling, modern place quite unlike anywhere else we’d visited), elevenses, and then on our bikes again. We headed out east and south, into the Golden Valley of the River Dore, a tributary of the Wye, pub lunch at Peterchurch, and then back over the single significant hill of the day, into Hay to finish our trip.
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| 20 miles, 472 metres |
It was a superb week of riding, mostly good weather, great company of course, and Rhayader was a good base with a decent choice of places to eat and excellent rides in every direction. It was a pleasure to get to know that part of Wales, and I began to understand why it’s called the heart of Wales. You could do a lot of it from the maps and the NCN routes, but Brian’s personal knowledge and detailed planning meant that we found a lot of little extras that made it really special. Thank you Brian!
B: I can only endorse Simon’s comments about the week. Parts were a bit of a trip down memory lane but most of it was about the remote grandeur of much of this area. It was great to share it, much more relaxed to ride it with company and share decisions about what was realistic rather than feeling the need to do everything. The hills took their toll on the legs and I think we both knew when we had done enough. It was a wonderful week. Thank you Simon for joining me and helping to make it work.
