Just before last Christmas I decided to buy myself a new bike. Nothing very fancy, or indeed at all orientated for touring. I ended up picking up a rather bog-standard hybrid at reduced price from a pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap outlet which seems to provide most of the uncared-for commuting bikes which crowd the university city where I live. It was, however, considerably better than the decaying road bike I'd been trying to ride, and not competent enough to repair, for the last few months. And owning a machine that was actually somewhat safe and fast to ride got me interested in pedalling for longer distances, something I hadn't done since a teenager.

Cut forward four months, and I find myself attempting to use this rather ill-suited machine for proper bike touring. I'd got it a new saddle (definitely my best investment), new pedals and brakes, had the bottom bracket changed and "modified" (or ripped off) most of the commuter attachments. I'd tried some credit-card style touring, taking my faithful steed over on the ferry to Dunkirque, and to my great surprise reached Luxembourg without any major problems (if you don't count repeated destruction of inner tubes due to my inability to change a flat). And the freedom, and real sense of travel, felt fantastic. In fact, the only thing that I felt was holding me back was the sheer cost of supporting yourself purely through the credit card. My flatmate observed that it should be a very cheap way to see the world, given that there are no travel expenses - but paying €70 a night for bed-and-breakfast in (admittedly very nice) small hotels in the centre of Brugge quickly wipes this out.

So, it seems, I have been inexorably drawn down the classic path of bicycle tourists - self-supported touring! Now I have a good tent, a decent sleeping bag, a passable sleeping mat and a longing to use them. I'd already tested the tent on a long-ish ride to the New Forest (108 miles), and found that although I could distrinctly feel the extra weight climbing hills, my average speed wasn't too bad at all. The tent hadn't yet been much challenged though, and I wondered how it would fare on a trip in more exposed terrain on a weekend when rain was forecast. I'd been wanting to go to Wales for a while, and on an impulse booking some train tickets out to Gloucester, and back from Swansea. I would ride into the Brecon Beacons, find somewhere suitable to camp, and the following morning roll downhill to the South coast. A simple plan - what could go wrong?