July 4, 2015
Llangurig, Wales: Making Hay while the sun shines
IT'S ALWAYS good to make hay while the sun shines. For us Hay - Hay-on-Wye - was just a stretch down the valley. But the clouds frowned and Steph woke feeling groggy and our arrival in Wales looked like being less than glorious.
And so we plodded westwards, not despondent but hoping at least for a Cymru sign. For a photo. It's the least you can hope on crossing a national border. But, no... nothing. Nothing, that is, bar road signs appearing in Welsh as well as English. Araf it now says on the tar.
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It's an odd place, Hay. You'd think there'd be more to it because it's famous in Britain for its book festival. And there are indeed book shops everywhere. But there are, too, an unusual number of people whom the French would call marginal.
Because of the arty links? I don't know. I don't know what arty marginals ought to look like but these didn't fit my bill. What did come up to scratch, though, was our first Welsh café. A bit more food was all Steph needed to return to her chirpy self.
We had a choice, leaving the town: up in the hills or to press on along the busier valley road. The easier way won with a nem con. It was good to make progress at last, hissing along on wet, black roads. Rich green valleys reached out before us, with every so often a single white house beaming like a sparkling eye.
There were grey cliffs of brittle rock striated vertically, heaps of slate at their foot. There were resilient houses, of mournful grey stone, sturdy and respectably religious. Welsh conformist houses, not sure if they approve of anything as frivolous as summer.
There were stubby villages of industrious workshops and of post offices to sell stamps and exchange gossip in bobbing Welsh accents, post offices that advertised scooters and paraffin heaters in their window and messages from tidy wives happy to take in ironing.
It's been a good introduction to Wales, not gay like an Eistedfood or as dowdy as a valley mine but satisfactorily between the two.
Tonight we are camping beside the infant Wye, wading width now compared to its stately grandeur and arching bridges in Hereford. Tomorrow worries us, though. Today has been our first day without repeated, knee-cracking climbs. But only because we surrendered the truly pretty roads for the noise yet convenience of a way through the valleys.
Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow we're due to go over Bwlch-y-Groes. It's right in our way and it's as hard to ride as it is to pronounce. Worrying times.
Today's ride: 81 km (50 miles)
Total: 1,306 km (811 miles)
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