National Cycle Route 8 diary by Alan Crawshaw
 

Lon Las Cymru, Sustrans Route 8, runs the length of Wales. There are alternative starting points, Cardiff and Chepstow - we chose the former as we wanted to visit friends on the way in Brecon - and alternative sections elsewhere on the route. One day I'm sure we'll return and cover the sections we missed. Three of us were on the trip, my wife Christine and I and our 15 year old son Rowan. Christine and I had done a lot of cycle touring before the kids came along but since then just trips from home and for me cycling the eight miles from home to my workplace at the University in Bangor. Rowan had only ever cycled on day trips and without carrying luggage so we spared him the panniers and took all the luggage between the two of us. We needed a full set of new kit too, we chose Dawes World Tour touring bikes as being suitable for both road and track, and Carradice panniers.

We could only go during a school holiday and we also run Graianfryn Vegetarian Guesthouse so school holidays are busy for us. We decided to set off on Easter Monday so we could still take the weekend bookings, stay two nights in Brecon to see old friends, and get back home on Sunday. We're only about four miles from the route near the northern end so the idea was to cycle home then complete the Anglesey section at a later date, this would just involve taking the train to Holyhead and cycling back home from there. Rowan was a bit worried when he read in the Sustrans guide that Lon Las Cymru is "the toughest section of the National Cycle Network"!

We needed to transport our bikes from Bangor to the start of the route at Cardiff, having decided to cycle north to gain the advantage of the prevailing south-westerlies - as luck would have it we faced a stiff cold northerly wind for the full trip! Getting to Crewe was easy as the North Wales Coast line is one of the last refuges of traditional locomotive-hauled trains with capacious brake vans. Crewe to Cardiff was the problem - there's a direct rail service and I used it a lot in the seventies when it was operated by similar trains. They've since been displaced by the dreaded Class 158 diesel multiple units with a maximum capacity of two cycles so we had to choose between travelling separately or making a big detour via Bristol so we could travel on HSTs. We chose the latter. A couple of days before we were due to leave I checked Railtrack's web site to confirm the time of our Bristol-Cardiff connection and discovered it would be replaced by a bus service on Easter Monday because of engineering works. I don't know if the railway company made any provision for cyclists, it would have been interesting to find out, but we weren't going to take any chances so I called into Bangor station where I was advised to travel from Birmingham to Cardiff instead and given cycle reservation tickets for three bikes.

Here's how we got on. Mileages are estimated.

Getting our bikes to Cardiff

Day 1 - Cardiff to Llanfihangel Talyllyn (58 miles)
Day 2 - Llan Talyllyn to Rhayader (41 miles)
Day 3 - Rhayader to Corris (40 miles)
Day 4 - Corris to Dyffryn Ardudwy (24 miles)
Day 5 - Dyffryn Ardudwy to home (42 miles)
Day 6 - Home to Holyhead (37 miles)

What we thought of it

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