Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain

by Steven Primrose-Smith

  Eventually I stumbled upon mankind in the form of the village with a vowel allergy, Cwmystwyth. Remnants of the old silver, lead and zinc mines lay at the side of the road. This area had been mined for 4,000 years but the industry reached its peak in the second half of the 19th century. This brought prosperity to Ceredigion, a necessary injection to replace farming that had been in serious decline for some time. The work was hard and the average lifespan of a miner was only 32 years, most suffering an early death from lead poisoning. As seems to be the theme for the toilers of Wales, the good times didn't last long and the metals soon became unprofitable to mine. Many people moved to south Wales where there was at least some work mining an equally dangerous commodity. These hills were left emptier than a politician's promise.

  The road started to climb again. At the top of the hill at Penbwlchbodcoll I came to a stone archway, imaginatively called The Arch. To be honest, it's not that impressive since it spans nothing and just sits pointlessly at the side of the B4574. It was built to commemorate the golden jubilee of George III who, to show his gratitude, instantly went raving mad. But forget the arch. The best thing about this bit of Wales is that this hill crossing has a name right out of Lord of the Rings. It's called The Pass of Lost Existence. I'm not sure whose or what's existence was lost although, given the frosty wind, it could soon be the end of my nose.

  I cycled down to Devil's Bridge, a village that takes its name from a series of three bridges built on top of each other, a 1901 iron bridge over a 1753 stone bridge over the original 12th century one. We'd come across a bridge supposedly built by the devil in France last year on our £1-a-day ride. This was another. Satan was quite the architect.

  There was an ice cream shop in the village. Its sign asked passers-by “Do you want an ice cream?” From the lack of customers on this frigid morning, the answer was an emphatic “Sod off!”

  I now turned south along a wearying road of ups and downs. I stopped in Tregaron in what felt like the first proper town I'd seen all day, but I'd clearly been deprived of human contact since it only has a population of a thousand. Not much seems to happen here although in 1977 a huge stash of LSD was discovered in a nearby cottage. Oh yes, and the Talbot Hotel pub supposedly has an elephant buried in its back garden. Maybe those two things are connected.

  I needed to find somewhere to stay and so I asked two old women if there was a campsite nearby. One of them replied in Welsh. I said I didn't understand.

  “You should speak Welsh,” she replied.

  “But I'm English.”

  “Oh, I thought I heard a Welsh accent,” she said.

  But she had a point. While cycling around Europe I'd tried to learn a little bit of every language I'd come across. Why hadn't I done the same for Welsh? Probably because everyone speaks English. But then again, that's almost true of the Netherlands and Germany.

  I popped into a newsagent's. The bloke in charge said the campsite in town had closed down. I told him I remembered one from a trip long ago near Lampeter. He said he drove the Tregaron-Lampeter road every day and had never seen it. Maybe I'd made it up.

  I went through the long, drawn-out process of booting up my Samsung and, with weakening batteries, searched for the site. Sure enough it was there, just where I thought. So I did some shopping and added extra weight to the panniers.

  Outside the shop were two other cyclists, the lean and Lycraed type. They were doing an organised, one-day, four-hundred kilometre ride from and to Chepstow. They told me they'd finish at around six in the morning, fourteen hours from now.

  “Is that fun?” I asked. “It doesn't sound like fun.”

  “Some of it is Type 1 fun,” he replied. “It feels like fun while you're doing it. But most of it is Type 2 fun. It's only fun when you look back on it.”

  “But not while you're actually doing it?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  I knew what he meant. I thought this trip had been Type 1 fun from start to finish – see how quickly you forget the drenchings and the busy roads – but previous trips hadn't. You don't remember the bad bits, which is good news for the cycle touring industry because otherwise no one would get beyond their first ride. I lost my cycle touring virginity in 2009 over 1,600 miles from the Isle of Man to the south of Spain. I remember it now as one of the best months of my life. I recently found a comment I'd made on a cycling forum at the very moment I'd finished it. I'd written that I wanted to smash my bike into a million pieces. It must have been mostly Type 2 fun.

  I cycled down the road to the campsite and went up its long lane. There was no one about. Two dogs appeared and barked angrily at me. One of them looked like he meant business. I adopted the pose of Tarzan and shouted “Ungawa!” a few times but he clearly didn't speak the language of the jungle. He just kept barking at me.

  I knocked at the farmhouse door but no one was in. The field that had hosted tents when I was here last now sat fenced off, full of cows. I went to the site's bathroom and found a visitor's book. There were no entries since the end of last summer and the sinks had more cobwebs than Bruce Forsyth's joke book.

  I decided to use the last of my battery to phone the site's number. Perhaps they just hadn't found anyone stupid enough to want to camp at these temperatures this year. Unfortunately, there was no phone signal. I hung around for twenty minutes but realised this was pointless. I could wait for three hours and then be told the site had actually closed down. Then I'd have to hunt for somewhere else in the dark. Or maybe they'd never come back. Perhaps there'd been a zombie apocalypse.

  I continued on to Lampeter. On the way I saw another cyclist doing that organised four hundred kilometre ride. He was considerably chubbier than the other two and looked absolutely knackered. He didn't look as though he was even having Type 2 fun.

  “I won't get home until eight in the morning,” he said.

  “Don't you need to sleep?”

  “I might grab an hour in a bus shelter,” he replied.

  “You make it sound so glamorous.”

  Lampeter is the smallest university town in Britain. It must be a shock to end up here if you haven't done your research and take whatever course you can via the university clearing system. Expecting three years of debauched city life, its population of 2,0000 and six pubs might make you think you've got off at the wrong stop.

  I'd already done too many miles today, and over some mountainous terrain with a strong headwind, but it looked like I'd have to do seventeen more, all the way to Newcastle Emlyn. Then, about three miles down the endless lanes of central Wales, I saw a camping sign in a garden. Officially it was only a place for caravans but since no one else was here the friendly owners let me on. I set up the tent in the field next to their house under the watchful eye of two hundred sheep. I opened the tent's flat, collapsed inside and slept the sleep of Rip Van Winkle.

  *

  The campsite had been a bargain £4 and the weather forecast for today, the first day of May, was awful. After yesterday's extra miles, and while I was already stationed somewhere so cheap, I decided to have a day off, my first in three weeks.

  The campsite's bathroom was in the house and, when I went inside, Emyr the site owner spotted me and asked if I wanted a cup of tea. To this was added toast with his wife Gillian's home-made rhubarb jam. I sat at their kitchen table with the couple and their daughter while they gave me suggestions of local places to visit. This was already my favourite campsite so far.

  I did very little all day. During a rare dry spell I popped out to visit a lovely, little church in Llanwenog that Emyr had recommended. It was full of wooden carvings made by a Belgian refugee, Joseph Reubens, during the First World War. But mostly I slept or listened to the radio or, when this was impossible, to the foul weather outside. I'd chosen a great day to do nothing. Riding in this would have required a wet suit.

  *

  In the morning it was still raining, just as it had done all night long. I got going late when it seemed to ease off a little bu
t it redoubled its efforts shortly after I set off and I got another lovely Welsh soaking.

  Emyr had told me the road was pretty much flat all the way to Newcastle Emlyn, and he was right as long as you ignored the repeated 16% up-and-downs, one for each river the road crossed.

  Lots of gardens I passed had posters up for the imminent local elections. Many of them supported the Welsh Conservatives. I didn't think Wales had any conservatives. And there were even signs for the Welsh Liberal Democrats. I didn't think anywhere had LibDems any more.

  The weather brightened up, little patches of blue in the sky above me. A few miles short of Newcastle Emlyn was one of Emyr and Gillian's suggestions, the West Wales Museum of Children. It was run by a large woman, a farmer's wife type who barely opened her eyes as she spoke. At first I thought she was blind but then she made some derisory comment about my appearance. In her defence, I was a bit of a sweaty mess.

  She told me what I'd find in each room and also about their collection of lovespoons, a tradition dating from the 17th century when a suitor would carved intricate designs in lime, birch or oak to impress the local pretty girl. Who needs Tinder when you know the way to a woman's heart is massive wooden cutlery?

  The museum's toy collection was expansive and the displays covering each decade of the 20th century brought back a Tonka Dump Truck full of memories. There was a large collection of Action Man figures. My brother Dave and I had owned a few. With no babies in the family left to provide for, one Christmas my grandma knitted us some outfits for our little plastic fellas. The blue and white jumper was fine – it made him look like a sailor – but ours were the only Action Men in the world with pink berets and cerise woollen underpants. He really didn't have the knees for it.

  There were plenty of other action figures too. It was clear little effort had gone into making the Spice Girls dolls. The band members all had identical faces, their hair and outfits – the Union Jack dress or the leopard print leggings – the only thing to set them apart. And there were loads of Sindy dolls, the low-rent Barbie. The Virgin Atlantic Flight Attendant Sindy also included a bikini. #everydaysexism

  Some of the action figures were baffling. Under what circumstance would anyone want a figure of The Osbournes except maybe to melt its heads with a blowtorch? And why did Gillian Anderson's X-Files doll come with an additional figure wrapped in a white body bag with the ankles and neck creepily cable-tied? And was a Barry Gibb action figure ever necessary? Maybe he just existed to give Action Man someone to beat up between unnecessary Middle East regime-changing campaigns.

  They also had two bits of electronica that I'd raved about. Merlin was a 1970s red moulded thing about the size of an early mobile phone on which you played crap games. It had the processing capability of a door bell. And the Stylophone was wrong even before you attached the name Rolf Harris to it. I'd once used mine to perform “Amazing Grace” for my primary school's Christmas show. I don't know why I didn't get my head kicked in. It sounds terrible, like an electronic bagpipe that's simultaneously nasal and scratchy, the noise your fillings would make if you were creatively electrocuted by the Stasi.

  There were thousands of tiny toy soldiers, some I remembered owning but had completely forgotten about, and enough scary dolls to fuel a lifetime of nightmares. For an hour I was whisked back to my childhood and it was wonderful.

  The sun was properly out by now, a very un-Welsh gesture on this Bank Holiday Monday. I cycled under its warming rays through Newcastle Emlyn and then on to Cenarth. I'd planned to reach Fishguard today but figured an afternoon in the sun of this freak warm afternoon would be a good opportunity to dry out my sodden tent as well as uncrinkle the ends of my fingers for the first time since I'd hit Wales.

  Right in the centre of little Cenarth was a campsite. I rolled inside and looked for reception, and then I saw the sign. The reception was half a mile away, and for the gradient involved to reach it it may as well have been half a mile straight up. When I finally found the farmhouse in question they wanted £15, a bit of light robbery after yesterday's bargain site.

  But it was a nice spot, with the River Teifi running beside it. A man was standing in the water, thigh-deep, fly-fishing. Over the river was an attractive, old stone bridge. It had large circular holes cut into its supports so that flood water would run through it rather than over the road.

  Cenarth is famous for coracles, that unstable craft made of willow that's supposed to sit on the water rather than in it. They are best used when winds are light and tides are elsewhere. The National Coracle Centre is here in Cenarth but, as this was a Bank Holiday, it was closed. It wasn't the only thing. The nearest open shop was all the way back in Newcastle Emlyn. Even the garage was shut. But luckily, after the previous two nights of cheap camping, there were a few coins to spare for dinner in the White Hart pub. I chose a chicken breast covered in bacon, cheese and barbecue sauce with fat home-made chips washed down with a couple of pints of real ale. This was definitely Type 1 fun.

  *

  Last night's campsite was the first one to provide a key to its toilet block, as well as being the only one whose reception was at the top of a mountain and, of course, the key had to be returned. I packed away and pushed the bike up the hill for a second time. A woman answered the door. It had been a fella last time.

  “When I heard we had a cyclist I was going to come down for the key,” she said.

  I thanked her, though I'm not sure why, given that she didn't actually come down.

  My map showed several options regarding my route to one of today's destinations.

  “What's the easiest way to Fishguard?” I asked.

  “On a bike? There isn't one. It's a hill whichever way you go.”

  “Oh well.”

  She thought for a second.

  “Stick your bike in our pickup and I'll take you to the top,” she said.

  “Nah, thanks, but that's cheating.”

  “Go on, no one will know.”

  I smiled.

  “I'll know.”

  The hill was big but not terrible. It wasn't made any easier by my back wheel. I'd discovered one of its spokes was trying to remove itself and the wheel was buckled enough to rub, adding extra friction. However, the effort was alleviated by my surroundings. Flowers were beginning to emerge by now, speckling the grass verges along the side of the road with purple and yellow, like a bruise, but, y'know, nicer.

  I had entered one of the loveliest part of Wales, a county in the south-west corner whose entire coast is a National Park, Pembrokeshire. Soon after, I arrived at Castell Henllys, another one of Emyr's recommendations, where an iron age fort has been recreated.

  “That's bad timing,” said the young woman on the till. “The actors have just this minute gone for lunch.”

  That was a bit inauthentic. They should have been up there roasting a wild boar or something.

  It was a lovely place to be on a sunny afternoon. A path through a herb garden took me to five yurt-like huts with woven roofs built exactly on the site of the original settlement. Inside, the roofs of the huts were black with soot. They realised that if they put a hole in the top then their fires grew too large, so they didn't bother. Instead the places just filled with smoke. As a bonus, the roof space collected carbon dioxide that killed the woodworm but, occasionally, the human inhabitants too.

  One hut was much grander than the others but it was still amazing to think that the chieftains who ruled here lived in such squalor when, at the same time, Greeks had classical Athens. While lowly Socrates was philosophizing in the vast, Doric-columnned marble of the city state's forum, the chieftains of Wales were here playing “Whose Bone Is This?” and eating cockroach fritters.

  I continued on my way and arrived at the pretty lower harbour of Fishguard. It was nice to see the sea for the first time since Abergele. The sun was gently heating the day to something approaching actual warmth and, as a result, I fancied an ice cream. I popped into a café and bought a small tub called Celtic C
runch. I looked at the ingredients, which included Amaretto, butterscotch and chocolate, none of which were available to my Iron Age friends, but never let authenticity get in the way of marketing.

  My dodgy back wheel wasn't my only mechanical problem. I was five miles the other side of Fishguard, far from any settlement, when my chain snapped. Deep joy! It was still ten miles to St Davids. I hadn't seen a campsite nor a bicycle shop in Fishguard whereas I knew St Davids had at least somewhere to pitch up. I decided to push forward.

  After wheezing along with the wind in my hair at a consistent twelve miles an hour for the last few weeks, the sudden slow plod of walking was tedious. Within a mile I was bored and suddenly remembered I'd bought a spare chain link a few years earlier. Was it still in my pannier? Amazingly, it was. I leant my bike against the dry stone wall of a farm, put the chain into position, attempted to click the link shut and then, moronically, dropped both pieces of it into the dust and gravel on the ground. I found the first half of the link almost immediately, but the other piece was nowhere to be seen. It had clearly fallen through a worm hole and was now lying on the surface of a distant planet.

  Over the farm wall some blokes were messing about with a car. I approached them and told them what I'd done. I wondered if they had a metal detector but because this wasn't 1973 they obviously didn't. They did, however, come out to help me look, but after five minutes they gave up, clearly thinking I was some sort of time-wasting nutter. I kept searching. It didn't help that I'd moved the bike out of the way to make it easier to search the ground and now I couldn't remember exactly where I'd dropped the link. In the end I scraped all the dust and gravel from a two metre wide circle into a big pile and searched the whole lot, millimetre by millimetre. An hour later I found it.