A hilly trip round my "bro"
In Welsh "bro" means "vale" so "Bor Morgannwg" = "Vale of Glamorgan" but it also has a much more interesting psychological meaning: "The area I feel homesick for". I'm using itt in both senses here. My ride yesterday was designed to be as long and hilly as the tougher days on the Lon Las but also took me to places in the Vale that I have not seen for over 40 years.
Some statistics first: Length:67Km or 42miles. Total Ascent: 1950m or 6435ft (~twice the ht of Snowdon!), highest point 363m or 1200ft, Avg sp~11Km/h). So it's equivalent in length to the shortest day on the Lon Las and doesn't reach the heights of even the first day but the total ascent is impressive.
The route builds on the route I tried last week. This time I managed to find the low traffic route via suburban roads to Lisvane (Llysfaen) so that's improvement #1. Also I have got the GPS working more reliably. It then followed the same route over Caerffili mountain ad past Castell Coch but this time I crossed the Taf by the pipe bridge to Morganstown and embarked on a big loop out to the west of Cardiff. Radyr to Pentrebane to Peterston-super-Ely, Welsh St Donats, Llancarfan, St Lythans and Culverhouse Cross(argh!) back into Cardiff. Culverhouse Cross is a huge roundabout giving access to two major shopping areas, the M4 and the link road to the Bay so it is incredibly busy. Next time I may well modify the last section to come into Ely via some more hilly country lanes.
I haven't been to Llancarfan for over 40 years! It was a major centre of Celtic Christianity before Augustine ever came to these isles an St Patrick probably studied there before being carried off to Ireland on a slave ship. Now it's a well off village with swimming pools in the back gardens. I met a class of school children dressed in school issues waterproofs carrying nets and jamjard-a living demonstration of the Foundation Phase in action. This is Wales' primary education revolution placing great emphasis on play and using the outdoors as a classroom.
I've now got the tracking and editing of the routes fairly well sorted. I use www.gpsed.com to track my progress. If you look at the route as tracked you will see some long straight lines where GPS contact was lost for periods. In one case it was because I went through a subway under the railway but I can't easily explain the others. However, these can be sorted out by downloading the data as a .gpx file and uploading it www.bikely.com. This doesn't do realtime tracking but does allow the editing of the data and provides the elevation profile.
All in all a very satisfactory day that emulated a day on the sponsored ride. I shall do it again at least three more times in the next 10 days.