So, what happened? The dog died

RIP Smudge. Paradoxically, freed up to go away as often as I wanted to, death of Smudge caused much gloom.

So, now Im 2 big cycle tours in arrears and will have to spend the winter catching up.

Smudge

Things to do on Anglesey part 3

TAKE PART IN THE WELSH DRAGON CHALLENGE

As a cycle tourist I not only bask in the glow of low carbon-planet saving-green goddessness, but over the years I’ve saved thousands of pounds on souvenirs. You just can’t carry it home!!

Once in France we went to one of those enormous hypermarkets and crept out past all the people in their cross of St George T-shirts and piled high trolleys with our 6 or 8 bottles. Then stuffed them into panniers and saddle bags just before pedalling awkwardly onto the ferry.

You can maybe stuff your finds into jiffy bags and post them home (I usually do that with excess clothes once I’ve struggled up a day or two’s hills) but basically, all that flummery and frippery, all those gifts and crafts and goodies just can’t be carried.

You have to think of other kinds of souvenirs. The Welsh Dragon Challenge is one. It works like this…

After a day or so, once the jetlag or post-work stress has begun to evaporate, you start to look around you and think, ‘Hey! they’ve got a funny kind of … (insert interesting foreign feature of your choice) here! Then you photograph it. Every time you see one, stop (it’s easy on a bike) and take a snap.

In Portugal it was 70’s style orange and brown tiling on the outside of the houses. In France you’re spolit for choice – just the general wonderful frenchieness of it all.

On Anglesey it’s RED DRAGONS.

Award points for skill, charm, unusualness – what you will.

Gift shop in Caernarvon – like shooting fish in a barrel – nul point!!

Things to do on Anglesey part 2

Ahh Cemaes Bay! Lovely little town, shame about the nuclear power station. But don’t tell the locals that: 1200 jobs hang in the balance. Camp in one of the fields by the crenellated house on the hill above town, try very hard to pay your £4 a night fee to Lizzie “go off and enjoy yourselves, find me later” the Campsite lady.

Ahh Cemaes Bay! Scene of so many wonderful teenage family holidays. Visit the phone box where we learned our A level results back in the stone age before mobile phones; stroll along the cliff path where every bracken bush and rocky outcrop harboured its own pair of snogging teenagers; build your own driftwood fire in the coves, cook banana skins and try getting high on ‘mellow yellow’. Happy days still! Some things are timeless.

Now there’s a vineyard planted on the sunny headland beyond Cemaes Bay but this stretch of National Trust coast path takes you past a lovely old church, right on the headland and above dramatic cliffs to Bull Bay and the Bull Bay hotel.

Go beyond grey Amlwch town to Amlwch Port, full of drama and surprising history. The visitor centre includes yet another one of those fresh and homemade fabulous cafes, a dramatic film of early seafaring on a sail ship and an exhibition all about the area’s history dominated by Parys Mountain copper mine, just up the hill and worth a stroll around its desolate multi-coloured moonscape.

Red Wharf Bay has a foody hotel right on the very edge of the sand.

Keep working your way round the edge to the very pointy bit of Trwyn. Sit beneath the lighthouse and watch dolphins make their way into the great stretch of Conwy Bay. Wander around the priory ruins and don’t miss peeping inside the dovecote whatever you do. Lots of boats, ice creams and restaurants in the wealthy little seaside town of Beaumaris.

As for the interior of the island, nothing but green countryside, little villages, some marshland and reservoirs where birds may be observed, plenty of cairns and ruins – best explored in leisurely fashion on foot or bicycle.

Other things to do: Visit Bangor and pay 10p to walk onto the pier and have a ‘famous scone’ in the tearooms. Visit Caernarfon.

The bike of my dreams . . .

. . . is a cherry red Mercian

Well looky here! Dreams do come true! The frame was hanging up in the Mercian shop, on sale for £411 in 1996. (I hadnt realised I’ve had this bike for such a long time until I just went and checked).

Why Mercian? Well, Mr G. answered an ad in our local post office years ago. A woman was selling her late husband’s bike for £25, and that turned out to be an old Mercian. It was green (which plugged straight into G’s own childhood dream about this boy at school who owned a beautiful much coveted pea-green bike, I digress, somewhat). G spruced it up, got it re-sprayed back at the shop and it went on for many years, toured all over the place with it.

I could never ride it because G has these really long legs, but whenever I used to push it – y’know, just wheel it about into the shed etc – it had this wonderful springy alive feel, like a horse that was full of oats and just couldn’t wait to prance off. So that’s why I always always wanted a Mercian bike.
Mercians are a bit like that other Derby company. Rolls-Royce are the Mercians of the car world.

Things to do on Anglesey part 1

Anglesey ís a pretty low key kind of a place. Families, beaches, buckets and spades, pretty scenery, Welsh speakers. Ynys Mon, the isle of the druids. The OS map will show you where all the ancient cairns and burial mounds and monuments are. You can spend a whole holiday visiting those.
Most people cross the Menai Bridge and head for Beaumaris, but instead we went clockwise round the island, turn left after the bridge and head for Newborough. A small grey two-sheep village with a couple of shops and a good chippie. Now discover the secret of Anglesey – Newborough sits on the edge of a secret and brilliant place.

Newborough Warren

Newborough Warren was once the home of ancient Welsh kings and is now a national nature reserve. There ís a friendly small campsite and beyond that miles and miles of sandy dunes, pine tree woodland and pure golden endless sands along the edge of the Menai Straits. Wonderful views of Snowdonia’s mountains just over the water accompany your walk. Beach is dog friendly outside holiday season.

Maltltreath Sands is next, making a whole corner of the island a paradise for birds and the place where Tunnicliffe the famous bird artist lived. Great walking or cycling.

Next come a series of beaches filled in summer with the bucket and spade brigade: Rhosneigr, Trearddur Bay which sits right next to Valley, where the RAF base is. You can build your sandcastle right underneath the giant jets as they take off straight over your head. There’s a campsite even closer to the airfield which is filled with the roar of jets and small boys and dads with big smiles on their faces.

From Holyhead catch a ferry to Ireland for the day, otherwise don’t linger in the town but head out to the cliffs of North Stack and South Stack and Holyhead Mountain.

Come back off Holyhead island and start taking left hand turns off the main A5025 onto the yellow lanes that wind and trundle up and over low hills by the coast. They’re all lovely, they all lead you down to someone’s special, magic beach. If you’re hungry, head down to Church Bay for simply the best of everything homemade beach cafe in the universe, serving the biggest crispest scone filled with a mound of whipped cream and dotted with strawberries; the lightest crispest pastry on the cheese and onion pie. Sleep it off in yet another delightful sandy cove, filled with families, windbreaks, tottering toddlers and tail waving dogs.

Carry on north, turning east at the top of the island and stroll out along the shingle of Cemlyn Bay where the natural lagoon is a bird sanctuaryWe cycled round this bit of coast one sunny Sunday. It was like a Sunday from childhood, completely silent except for the birds and the breeze, empty roads, saying hello to people gardening or strolling.

Sheffield – the town that writes poems on its buildings

Commuting into Sheffield this week – 29 hilly miles from where I live. It’s not practical to go all the way by bike. Well, not for this girl anyway. So I’ve been working out routes that involve driving to the outskirts of the city, leaving the car then cycling in.

I see Matt Seaton in today’s Guardian cycling column poses the question “How do we turn the renaissance of bicycle culture into a reborn cycling culture?”

Matt, can’t we just tell them all how much damn FUN cycling is? How much better you feel at the end of day when you’ve cycled?

I have worked SO hard the last two days. But I’ve begun each day with an exhilarating whizz downhill into the city, I’ve belted past cars; nodded and said hello to total strangers just because we are both on bikes; done ‘After you. No, after you. Please, after you,’ with bus drivers. And at the end of the day, just swept away all the exhaustion, all the mental tiredness, just felt so GOOD!!

Sheffield is a university town (lots of potential cyclists – young, fit, and poor) that’s done a huge amount of regeneration since ‘The Full Monty’. Along with the regen. they’ve built in loads of cycle routes: red surfaced lanes specially for bikes; bike and bus lanes indicated by big blue and white signs; places to park your bike; now the university term has started big fit young people charge around in all directions on bikes – the more of us there are, the safer we are.

Yesterday I parked the car quite a long way up Abbeydale Road. It made for a 45 minute cycle home (it’s uphill out of Sheffield). At least I can put my beloved bike inside the office garage now, so I don’t have to worry about The Preciousssss locked out in the street where just anyone could take liberties. But I still worried (just a bit) about the car. Let’s be realistic – the car is a £200 banger, the bike would cost – God knows how much to replace – I dont care if the car is vandalised, it will just be a pain in the neck to get home.

Today I put the car just a tad nearer the office, a 30 minute ride. About as perfect as can be!

Commuting not touring

Commuting not touring the last two days and reflecting on the differences between the two. First, the feeling of being well and truely suited and booted, I was glad of my fleece and flourescent windproof, helmet, glasses and winter gloves.

By golly it’s cold at 8.30am. Especially as the morning route is all downhill into Sheffield. But I’m conscious of how much commuter cyclists dress for the traffic, glad of the flo yellow top half on my waterproof, it’s one of those little wisps of pertex that folds back into its own pocket. For pleasure cycling it lives in the saddle bag and only comes out when it rains, so after years of use it’s still as bright and new minted as the day Ron Hill ran it up on his mum’s old sewing machine. However, I can see if I do many more days in Sheffield, it will pretty soon be faded and splattered.

What fun Sheffield is for cyclists! Everywhere the red cycle tracks weave alongside the roads and across the pavements. Going home tonight the slog uphill was made much easier by having a whole great bus lane to myself while car after car sat silent and still in the outside lane.

I worried about my dream bike yesterday, lashed with double locks to a stand out in the street, but today got the magic code that gives me access into the office garage.

I really enjoyed the chance to cycle at the beginning and end of my working day. After years of either working from home or working 15+ hilly miles away it made a nice change to arrive exhilarated and glowing nicely at work.

What’s a Cycle Tour?

Any bike ride that includes an overnight stay, IMHO. That’d include getting lost etc if such should happen to you.

We started with a long weekend heading out from home one Friday evening, rough camped in the woods by the Strines Inn above Ladybower reservoir. Next morning we headed over early morning moors where curlews burbled and piped in search of breakfast.

Another definition of a cycle tour: any holiday where cafes assume as much importance as the sun, the wine and the sea put together.

We continued into Yorkshire, Last of the Summer Wine country and Holmfirth then back home via Glossop.

Next, we drove down to Dartington in Devon and left the car outside Grim’s daughter’s house. A holiday that alternated paradise – the dappled, violet scented lanes – with the steepest hills on earth. We discovered pasty-sampling as an essential daily task (patisserie sampling is the French equivalent) of the touring cyclist.

We crossed France for the first time eleven years ago. Cycle touring is the only real way to spend a holiday as far as I am concerned.