Caersws to the Welsh Desert

June 9, 2012

Day 1

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Having everything packed the night before and actually managing to get out of bed at 5.20am on Saturday morning, I necked a quick coffee, secured my bulging panniers on the alloy rack, and pedaled slowly up the road to the station through some weak morning sunshine.

After my adventures in the Peak district I always like to leave a good margin of error for last minute mechanical catastrophe, but everything seemed to be in order and the train was even in early - giving me plenty of time to find the cycle compartment. The ability to take bikes by train for free is great, but practically can be a bit challenging. When the train arrives, you generally have about a minute to work out where the bike should go - this can be in the guards van at the front or back of the train, in special vertical cycle compartments, or just informally in the vestibule - depending on the operator. Take any longer and you risk annoying the crew or even the train leaving without you (seriously). On numerous occasions I think I've figured out that I need to be at the front of the train - only to be sent running back to the other end eight carriages down by a frantically gesturing conductor. Crosscounty trains have a different challenge - bikes are hung vertically from hooks, which is great if you want efficiency of packing but is seriously physically challenging with a loaded bike, even if you're 6ft 3.

On this occasion though I had plenty of time to take off my panniers bags and hang up the now beautifully light bike. The ride up to Wolverhampton was uneventful, apart from a comical conversation I had with a couple of very Brummie teenagers who were larking about in the vestibule - they seemed amazed that you could get to Wales by train from Wolverhampton, and one of them asked me (apparently seriously) if I cycled on TV (I told them I wasn't fast enough, which is something of an understatement).

Getting off at Wolver, for a crazy few minutes I thought I might have an adventure-free weekend train journey - the super helpful train guy on the platform even approached me straight away to ask what train I was on and told me where in needed to get on. It was only five minutes before the Welsh train - to Caersws - arrived and they started to announce the calling stations that I suspected something might be wrong: no mention of Machynlleth. The terrible thing is I wasn't 100% positive it hadn't been mentioned, because my Welsh pronunciation is not exactly well practiced. The guy on the platform told me I needed to change, but it sounded ominous.

I got on the train anyway, as it was the only one going in the right direction, and it was only as we were moving off that an announcement made it clear - the track had been flooded (!), and there were no trains between Caersws and Machynlleth - only the (dreaded) replacement bus service. News of flooding also didn't seem to bode well for the offroad sections, although the weather was still bright.

I frantically looked through my collection of maps, trying to figure out where this Caersws place was (I had never heard of it). I figured it must be in the Dovey valley which leads on to Machynlleth. On the very edge of my OS map, by sheer chance, I found the place - crudely, it was about 16 miles east of Machynlleth. I asked the helpful ticket inspector about the bus service, and realising I was the one with the bike, he seemed sceptical about my chances (his exact words were "oh dear"). Weighing my options, I realised that starting the ride from Caersws was in fact completely viable - I could either ride all along the main road to Machynlleth and start from there, or could cut across country to Staylittle and join the route there. Since I would only really be missing a massive climb (apparently the biggest in Wales) by going all the way to Machynlleth, I decided to modify the route, and set off West from Caersws into the wind along the B road.

Apart from the headwind the bike felt good, and I made good progress along the B road. My new saddle felt fine, and the only adjustment I had to make after starting (I usually have to stop a couple of time in the first half hour to make minor mechanical tweaks to the bike) was the front mudguard, which seemed be occasionally contacting the wheel. I actually considered taking it off and leaving it by the side of the road (I really hate the zipping sound it makes when it contacts the tyre - like nails on a blackboard) but then it started behaving itself for no particular reason, and gave me no more trouble for the rest of the trip - even on the ridiculously bumpy offroad sections. At the little village of Trefeglwys I turned onto quiet lanes and followed the valley past Llawr-y-glyn before hitting my first taste of serious Welsh gradient as I turned north to climb onto the ridge.

In a mile or so you gain 220m, and the gradient at times is extremely steep. I made good use of my granny - in combination with the biggest megarange gear I can stably sustain a speed of about 3mph - but even that was too fast to climb the steepest part of this hill. With my massively overloaded back wheel my front would also regularly lift off the ground when I pushed a strong pulse of torque in this gear, and I was afraid of accidentally pulling a wheelie and taking a sort of header in reverse. By using a "weaving" technique - zig-zagging up the road to lessen the effective gradient I just about made it to the top without pushing. But not without becoming rather breathless. The hills in Wales are not particularly big, but the gradients can be relentless!

Fortunately, after the first few hills climbing became easier and easier. I've often wondered about this - I don't think it's physiological, because really you should be getting more fatigued as time goes on. In my case I think the effect is psychological - there's a natural tendency to subconsciously try to take hills at "speed" (ie. 8 mph) when you first start, I guess to prove to yourself that they won't be too much of a challenge. Of course, on a heavily loaded tourer, this is exactly the wrong technique! Spinning in the lowest gear at low speed is much better. As time goes on and I relax, I start to take the hills at a pace which is a sustainable energy output for my muscles and respiration - and suddenly I can climb hills without thinking about them (or, at the end, even getting too out of breath). At least I think that's what's going on - anyway, the adaptation is amazing. Steep hills go from being major challenges (at first) to just another part of the ride, no harder or easier, just slower.

I emerged onto the top of the ridge to wonderful views and gusts of cold wind. Sheep in the fields bordering the road leapt away from the fence as I picked up speed rolling down the hill.

Wonderful views back east to the sunny valley and Caersws

Particularly ridiculous looking sheep. I saw some incredibly dodgy examples of farm animal hairstyling throughout Wales - this is photo #1 in the series...

I flew down the hill into Staylittle, tightened my brakes (one of the back pads had rotated a little on the steep descent), and decided to take a small detour to the old mining village of Dylife as it was only a couple of miles away.

Roughing It describes Dylife as "apocolyptic", and I was keen to see for myself. The hills around the village are rich in lead ore, and two mines kept many hundreds of miners employed throughout the 19th century. The area was notoriously isolated and lawless. The mines, of course, shut long ago - although there is still plenty of evidence of their presence - and Dylife seems to have been in decline ever since. When I arrived it seemed like one of the gold-rush ghost towns of the old west. There is a pub in Dylife, but it's been closed for a while now and is being sold - it must be hard to run a business in such a remote place - and a few scattered houses. After you pass the dramatic gorge, you start to see the piles of mine tailings that surround the village and scar the hillsides. The whole place has a general end-of-the-world feel to it, and that was before I saw the sheep...

... the first sheep I saw, I thought had been hit by a car. It was covered in dark red - all over its head and sides - and I didn't look too closely at the poor animal, thinking it must be half dead. But it seemed fine, casually strolling along the road. It turned out that the local farmer was using, rather enthusiastically, a wonderful dried-blood dark red colour to mark all his sheep. They were covered in it, and wondering all over the mine trailings and deserted village. What with the zombie sheep and apocalyptic atmosphere, I decided I had to to get out of the place, so I snapped a photo, turned the bike around and wheeled back down the hill to Staylittle.

Dylife gorge is actually quite impressive

Looking towards the village. You can see lots of mine trailings along the side of the stream, and just about see the few buildings that consitute the village in the distance. Didn't get a shot of the zombie sheep, unfortunately.

Here I rejoined the original route in Roughing It to get the first taste of offroad riding. This turns off the B road in Staylittle, taking to forestry roads through the substantial conifer woods of Hafren forest. The route is waymarked as a cycle trail, and soon joins the infant river Severn as it emerges near its source. There is also a variant which is much rougher, following a bridleway down through the woods along Afon Bidno. I was intrigued to see how the Haze would perform offroad and loaded. I had tested each separately, and everything seemed pretty solid - but I was a little bit worried about the vibration of the full load on the alloy rack.

The trail through the woods is in fact rather good forestry road, and makes for wonderful riding. The sun came out again (it would not go in for the rest of the day) and I cruised down to a picnic spot in a clearing for lunch of pitta bread and hummus.

I actually had some difficulty finding the correct trail for the rougher section (the forest is criss-crossed with tracks), but given the flooding situation it was probably wise to take the designated trail following the Severn - no matter, it was very beautiful in the sunshine. Just before the village of Llanidloes a right turn, following another sustrans route, takes you up southwest across the hills to Llangurig and the river Wye. Interestingly, this 3 mile wedge of land forms the watershed between the Severn and the Wye vallies - the rivers, starting so close together, only meet again in the Severn estuary hundreds of miles later.

Unfortunately, to divide the rivers like this some serious geography is required, and these you have to climb to get to the Wye. Again, these aren't very high, but expect some extremely steep hills rolling up and down between the two villages.

Lunchtime in a tailor-made picnic spot in Hafren Forest. There wasn't anyone else around.

Ridiculous slope between Llanidloes and Llangurig. Usually gradients don't come out well on camera, but here the slope of the fence and telegraph pole give you some idea of the crazy steepness.

Lovely lush round hills coming down the Severn valley. Very reminiscent of Devon, these funny small hills.

For such a tiny place Llangurig was quite lively when I got there, with a pub doing a good trade and a shop open. I didn't have time to stop yet though, so pushed on to the next stage of inevitable climbing out of the Wye valley. After a few hundred meters west on the A470, you turn off left onto a sustrans waymarked route that crosses the Wye and continues past a campsite.

It was here that I made my inaugural navigational error. The route is supposed to be a signed cycle track, leading up into the hills through spruce forest and open moorland. Unfortunately after the camp site the bike signs dry up, and there are several tracks the follow this description. After 20 minutes, and some squinting at my reduced map, it became apparent that I was on the wrong one - I only figured this out by the exact position of the woods around me (OS maps are that accurate) as my compass was no use in distinguishing the tracks. Anyway, for future reference, if you have to open multiple gates here, you're going the wrong way (on a track too far to the south). The real track has a better surface and climbs steeply and steadily up a ridge, soon entering forest.

I saw a lot of gate opening action on this trip. I think farm gates are, including knee-deep bogs and sinking sand, my least favorite thing about riding off road. Every gate is different, generally has an elaborate and usually homemade mechanism for keeping it shut, and frequently needs to be bodily lifted onto its hinges to get it to swing open. Getting through a Welsh farm gate with a fully loaded bike can quickly start to look like a Marx brother routine. You ride up to the gate, stop, and try to pull open the mechanism. It doesn't budge, so you put both hands on it and yank it hard. It opens, hurting your hand, and your very heavy unsecured bike falls mightily down between your legs bringing you with it. As you wrestle with your bike which is making its bid for freedom down the hill, the gate swings all the way open and hits the other wall with an almighty crash. You get back on your bike, grab the gate as it ricochets back, and try to pull it closed behind you so you don't have to get off the bike again. But it won't close, so you get off the bike, hold it with one hand on the saddle while you try to close the idiosyncratic gate mechanism behind you. You get the gate shut just in time to see your forks pivoting around and your bike falling on your foot. Bonus points if this happens before you get the gate shut, causing you to release it with a cry of pain as you grapple with the bike and have to start the process again. Repeat every 500 metres for maximum effect. As you might gather, this dislike of gates stems considerably from my own lack of coordination - so don't let it put you off riding in the Welsh countryside. Personally I could do without them, though.

The track is not marked, but is clear and easy to follow as you climb steeply up through forest. After 150m of climbing or so, a small clearing opens out, and the gradient eases up as you reenter the woods. While this climb is long the slope is not as insane as on the road to Llangurig, and the climbing felt good and sustainable. The trail slowly levels out just before you exit the forest, giving wonderful views down into the Afon Diliw valley and the wind farms on the other side.

View back down the slopes into the Wye valley

Wales, where the streets are paved with rain water. This shot also gives a pretty good idea of the steepness of the gradient.

Over the top and looking down into the valley of Afon Diliw. Barely a sign of human habitation - and yes, that's our route winding over the hills ahead!

There's a big wind farm in a clearing to the north: These are springing up all over this part of Wales, making use of the high barren land and fairly constant stream of wind from the west. Personally, I think windmills like these are elegant, beautifully engineered things, and it's a thrill to see them appear over the horizon as you climb.

The descent down to Afon Diliw is wonderful - good surface, a ribbon of tarmac winding down the hillside, with a gradient not so steep that I could release the brakes and open up the speed. With its full load the bike has some serious momentum going down hill, and I had been fairly ginger with the speed up till this point - there's nothing more frightening then realising that even with the brakes fully on, you can't slow down, as happened to me on one occasion on my last trip. But they performed well here, and I broke 30mph coming down into the valley - great fun.

At the bottom is a little bridge, and the road continues incredibly steeply up Lan Fawr. Just as described in Roughing It, the gradient here really is nuts and it was a serious challenge even to push, let alone ride, up the hill. I would be very impressed to see the gears on a bike that could be ridden fully loaded up this slope! Fortunately the climb is short, and I was soon on to the second descent. This is much rougher than the first - the torrents running off the hills following the recent rain flowed down the track like a river, and the action of the water had pushed large pebbles into inconveniently diagonal gulleys. These stones were not big enough not to shift when I rode over, but big enough to seriously knock the bike off course! After a few close calls I descended into the valley rather slowly, stopping to carefully push my not-that-wide tyres over the raised pebbles.

The first part of the descent into the Afon Ystwyth valley. This part wasn't too rough, as the track hadn't quite turned into a river yet...

From the bottom of the hill looking back up. They look insigificant in this photo, but you can just about see the diagonal traces of stones that kept upsetting me coming down the hill. My windy tyre tracks show how much I had to swerve to avoid them!

At the bottom of the slope the route rejoins the tiny paved road that winds its way down the Ystwyth valley towards the old lead and slate mines of Cwmystwyth. The valley is remote and steep sided, and as I rode down water was torrenting down from high ground in many waterfalls. If anything, the feeling of remoteness and abandondment is even stronger here than in Dylife. About half way along the valley is the remains of the old mining settlement and huge spoil heaps scarring the hillsides. All that remains of the old buildings is ruined stone walls, which blend in to the surrounding spoil so you don't realise you're in the middle of ghost town until you come right up to the mines. The place is spectacular, in a slightly eerie way.

Water running in torrents down the steep sides of the Ystwyth valley. The place feels sealed off from the outside world.

Approaching the old mines of Cwmystwyth. Piles of spoil rise up the hillside, punctuated by deteriorating old stone mine buildings.

The mining village is now a ghost town ... all that remains is these ruined buildings in an apocalyptic landscape. Around each one is a fence and a warning that it is unsafe to enter any of the structures.

Huge chunks have been taken out the hillside by the mining operations

After a while I came to the modern village of Cwmystwyth, which consists of a few houses. The road climbs out of the village, and then joins a tiny B road continuing west. It was at this point that I made my second navigational error. The B road climbs quite high up the hillside for no particular reason, and Roughing It indicated that sustrans had put a shortcut that kept to the valley floor. Somewhat overenthusiastically I took a likely looking left turn that was not signed as a cycleway, and (after going through several farm gates) was slightly put out when it petered out in the middle of a field. Going back to the road, I went on for a hundred metres, and immediately spotted the real shortcut, nicely signposted. Oh well, at least I wasn't shouted at by the farmer.

The shortcut pops just before Pont-rhyd-y-groes. Here there's a shop/cafe that amazingly is open until 7 every night (I was assuming it would close at 5 and was very impressed the Roughing It guys made it that far so quickly!). I treated myself to coffee and welshcakes, but was slightly disappointed that not only did nobody in the shop speak Welsh, they had English accents. Anyway, definitely a recommended stop.

Strange, ancient looking enclosure on the shortcut near Pont-rhyd-y-groes. It's marked as "hafod" on the OS map, which is the same name as the estate - still not sure what that is!

The Miner's Cafe in Pont-rhyd-y-groes. Good place to stop for a coffee!

I knew it wasn't far now to the Teifi pools at the edge of the Welsh Desert where I planned to camp. It was still before 6, so I decided to take the leisurely offroad route indicated in roughing it. This involves climbing up into the hills just south of Pont-rhyd-y-groes, then following a bridleway around the peak of Pen Rhiwlas to the lonely farm of Blaen Marchnant; finally joining a forest road that leads down to the tarmacced road leading up to the pools. It seemed reasonable at the time, and as I climbed up east from Ysbyty Ystwyth (surely the most 'Y's in any UK placename?) the going was very pleasant.

Ridiculous animal haircuts #2: a bouffant horse!

Navigation was fairly straightforward, and soon I found myself on the grassy bridleway. Even with a steep gradient, this was nice riding. But as I rose over the hill, the going got rougher and rougher. Not only was it very boggy - huge puddles up to a foot deep were fairly regular - but either the action of the water or vehicles using the trail had cut deep furrows on either side. The combination of these two things made it almost unrideable - if I can keep momentum then passing through puddles and boggy bits wasn't too much trouble, but the high walls of the furrows would catch on the peddals, making it impossible to keep the bike going. I didn't much fancy trying to ride in the raised section between the furrows either - if I'd made a (slight) steering error and crashed down into them it wouldn't have been pretty!

Progress was slow and I soon had very wet feet - it was tolerable in the sunshine, but would have been purgatorial in the wet. I was very happy to emerge onto the well surfaced forestery road to descend to the pools - and worried that the rest of the offroad sections would be this difficult after the floods.

The going was very tough for about an hour. You can easily see how boggy the track was...

...on the other hand, the views to the east towards Aberystwyth were amazing.

I has to be said, while it cuts out 2 miles or so of B road, I wouldn't recommend this offroad section. If the area has had a couple of weeks to dry out, or you're on a mountain bike and don't putting your feet in a bog once or twice, then it's probably much better - but if it's rained recently my advice would probably be to avoid this stretch. By continuing along the B road to Ffair-Rhos, you can climb directly up on the road to Teifi pools. The distances are comparable by either route.

I emerged onto the tiny tarmac road that leads into the Elenydd as the sun was getting low. The strange, barren, grassy hills glowed in the yellow light and the warmth (and my drying feet) lifted my spirits. As you climb up to the level of the pools, great views open up across the Welsh Desert, which looked like some sort of green moonscape. You can see for miles without any sign of human activity. The area is known as the Elenydd in Welsh, and has been referred to as the "Welsh Desert" - because it's devoid of human habitation, certainly not because it's dry - for a couple of centuries, mostly in English travel guides. The area is fairly useless for agriculture and consists of endless rocky and grassy hills, with no roads, and few tracks to speak of.

When I reached the Teifi pools - you can easily see them from the road - it was quiet apart from one guy and a girl taking photos. They seemed a bit surprised to see me but greeted me in a friendly manner. I waited for them to drive off, and then pushed my bike down over a bog (I wasn't too bothered about getting wet feet at this point, but regretted it in the morning) and to the top of a little outcrop between the pools. Shielded from the road, I slowly set up the tent and fired up the penny stove as the sun started to sink behind the hills. It was nice and warm in the sunshine, but the temperature fell like a stone the moment I was in shadow, and I was very glad of the hot drink and the tent.

The Teifi pools from the road. To the left you can see the ridge, just behind which I camped. This terrain went on for miles and miles.

Looking back to the lowlands to the southwest

As I was recovering with a hot drink, half a dozen dirt bikers appeared on the road and set off across the Elenydd. They would ride up crazy gradients, and effectively disappeared off into the sunset. I don't think they saw me.

The Purple Haze, tired out in the Welsh Desert

The amazing little penny stove, with beer can aluminium windbreak!

My trusty Duolite set up on some springy moss

Today's ride: 52 miles (84 km)
Total: 52 miles (84 km)

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