Day 4 Rhyader to Brecon
I was looking forward to this day as it was quite short and I expected it to be pretty much downhill as we were to follow the Wye. I was quite wrong!
The route is quite high up on the valleyside and has to cross many spurs running down to the river so the day started with a long climb out of Rhayader (must learn the welsh spelling, it means Waterfalls). At first the going was good but then we hit hit the old staging road and it was very poor despite the fact that Sustrans says that over the winter the NT and Sustrans completed improvements. Perhaps the improvements were so good we didn't realise that we weren't on brand new cycle track and what's left seems so much worse in comparison. The good part about this was fantastic views of red kites quartering the fields. "Looking for dead lambs" said a pragmatic local.
It was along this stretch that Iona discovered the disadvantage of her shopping basket strategy when "five figgy biscuits committed suicide by jumping out of the basket".
Eventually we came back out on to lanes again and began the descent into Newbridge-on-Usk. I went into an inviting left-hander at speed and to my alarm found that the bike was not responding as I expected because there was no camber (or even a negative one). I was running out of room rapidly; braking made my back wheel twitch and I was faced with a choice of the fence (with a barbed wire strand along the top) or the verge. The verge looked much moe inviting as it had deep wheel ruts in it and was obviously quite soft. I left the bike over the handle-bars, parachute rolled on hitting the deck straight back onto my feet. Unfortunately Emma was slightly ahead of me at this point so there was nobody to award marks for technical and artistic merit. However, she heard my yell as I came off and came back. After checking me for signs of concussion she decided I was ok. The bike was unharmed too so I remounted and set off again, nothing daunted.
Newbridge to Builth was a bit easier as we were on the flood plain of the river at least some of the time and we had a coffee stop in Builth. By now it was dull and cold again so the hot drink was very welcome. The next section from here to the lunch stop at Glasbury was all on roads and the first few miles were quite busy and still strongly undulating. We eventually came off the B-road onto lanes again but about 2 miles from the pub the road stretched up in front of me once too many times and I called up the Lux for a lift. This was well timed as it came on to rain quite hard.
We had taken over the back room of the Harp in Glasbury where we had a good welcome and the usual huge pile of sandwiches provided by Jess and Emma. It had been 31 miles before lunch and I was feeling to tired to be sociable I'm afraid.
I persuaded Paul to take me a couple of miles along the afternoon's route to avoid a short sharp climb after the pub but once I got going again I quite enjoyed the afternoon despite the rain and stumbling into the ditch when I stopped for a pee at one point. The climb over the Wye-Usk watershed had me off the bike again but it wasn't too bad.
The Youth Hostel near Brecon is slightly off-route but is a well run place. The male dorm was positively alpine in conception. The first highlight of the evening was the visit of Louise Sasse, a chiropractor from Cardiff, who brought a colleague along to give those who wanted a treatment session to sort out the joints and muscles. I have been a patient of Louise for about 4 years and have always found the treatments very helpful. Her colleague Jo is a sports therapist and personal trainer and she was able to ease all the aching muscles by some of the most incredible stretches I have ever experienced, just this side of excruciating. I had no aches or stiffness the next day and felt absolutely wonderful. So many thanks to Louise of the Parkwood Clinic in Cardiff.
The second highlight of the evening was the British Organisation of Nail Knockers (BONK for short) event in the pub. The game is for two teams of four people all using the same hammer to knock 4-inch nails into a log of wood until all the heads are buried. Once a player has finished their own nail they may hit any other team member's nail. This was a scary event with Cordie proving to be a particularly spectacular and aggressive player and Paul (the Pembrokeshire puppy) almost broke the world record for fewest hits. See Paul Regimbal's Facebook album for an impression.