The story so far is this; we’ve got our bikes, we’re in the process of gearing them up and we’ve done our first long(ish) ride up to Avebury stone circle. In October we’re going to Spain for three weeks, which means at some point along the way we’re going to have to camp. I’ve bike-camped quite a few times now but for Gen who has only just started riding it’s something else that was on the list of things to experience.
We decided to ride up to Brecon last weekend; the longest trip we’ve attempted thus far and stay in a pre-booked campsite, one step at a time. The weather forecast wasn’t looking great for the weekend but we decided to go anyway, as I’ve said before (and get constant reminders about from Kev); we can’t control the weather in Spain so why try and control it over here? Besides, we need all the riding experience we can get!
We arrived at 19:00 and set up camp after finding our way around the campsite (Gen’s first experience of riding on grass)! After spending a while getting setup and sorting everything out we decided dinner was in order; a bit of tinned Chilli and some rice, it was simple but it filled a hole. We then played on our DS’ (in true adventurer style) and had a coffee before going to bed.
We woke up on Sunday morning to the now familiar sound of rain; I pretty much expect rain when it’s time to take a tent down now. We had some porridge for breakfast, got dressed and packed up the tent when we got a bit of a gap in the weather. Not long into the ride home and the light showers turned into heavy showers, and the heavy showers just got heavier, eventually allowing Gen to experience the “bullet effect” you get when riding along at 60mph+. The bad weather caused us to miss an exit for the M4 and we accidently carried on into the centre of a very wet, very busy Cardiff. I think this was the single most depressing ride I’ve ever had; I was cold, wet and angry at myself for missing that exit, but I suppose it was a good learning experience for Gen and I’m glad that she pulled through it, wet weather doesn’t really get much worse than that. We eventually arrived home safe, excited and proud that we had completed the goal we had set out to achieve.
We clocked up 320 miles on this trip; Gen has now experienced a motorway, a rather windy bridge, some nasty weather and unfortunately more of my shockingly bad navigation skills. It sucked that we didn’t have more time to explore this weekend as there are some beautiful landscapes and fantastic roads over there, the Brecon Beacons will definitely have to play host to a future trip or two.
