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

by Steven Primrose-Smith

  I appreciate I've finished this chapter on a bit of a downer. I'm sorry about that. Maybe it'll cheer you up to learn that tomorrow I have a run-in with the police.

  Chapter 6: Crashing the time machine

  Vale of Glamorgan, Cardiff, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen, Newport and Monmouthshire

  On a grey morning I packed away my tent, left the campsite and cycled to the end of the lane. I was meeting Sarah today and because she was coming from several miles away I was expecting to have to wait for a while, but as I reached the junction, there she was, a few metres down the road and fast approaching, a pretty blonde woman in pink lycra on a sleek racing bike. I knew nothing about her except that she was a cyclist. She was going to give me a tour.

  I rode beside Sarah as we cycled towards Porthcawl. She told me about a special local event there. Just as you might expect for a small Welsh seaside town, Porthcawl is the venue of one of Europe's largest annual Elvis Presley conventions. Thousands of fans of The King descend on the Porthcawl Elvis Festival every September and get all shook up. Sarah knew it through her work; she'd experienced just about the most dramatic career change it was possible to have.

  “You went from primary school teacher to policewoman?” I asked, amazed. I've never understood why anyone would want to be in the police force.

  “Yes, for six years now.”

  “You must have seen some unpleasant things?”

  Sarah told me a story of a suicide. He'd thrown himself in front of a fast train.

  “We were picking up bits of him for a mile.” I pulled a face. “Finding a foot in a shoe is something I don't really want to do again.” But other events were even more terrible. “The worst thing was telling the mum of a six-year-old that he was dead. He'd run out between two parked cars.”

  She still wasn't convincing me that this was a wise career choice.

  Despite her slender figure Sarah was a tough cookie.

  “I've just had a replacement crown,” she said. “Some charmer head-butted me and cracked my tooth.”

  She'd done some riot control and the police weren't against using sex appeal to calm things down.

  “They tend to send the women in first to talk to an angry crowd.”

  “And what if it's a crowd of women?”

  “I don't like dealing with groups of women.” Her looks were useless against them. “They usually send in a good-looking fella instead.”

  “But you enjoy it?”

  “Yes, but I really want to train in firearms.”

  Oh, bloody hell.

  After a visit to Porthcawl's Rest Bay, Sarah took me to a huge sand dune not far from Ogmore Castle. I leant my bike against a tree and I looked up at it. Should I scramble up it to see what was at the top? I moved my foot and placed it on top of a squelchy gift from a local dog, an Alsation as big as an elephant judging by the size of it. Sarah laughed.

  “Walking in a load of sand is definitely what you need right now,” she said.

  She was right. I ran up the side of the sandy mountain but when I got to the top there was more of it. I kept going and the dune kept expanding. I'd left Sarah at the bottom and we had more cycling to do so I descended without ever reaching the summit. But the sand had worked its magic on my trainers. Even if it hadn't then the next hurdle would have done the trick.

  “We're really going this way?” I asked, looking at the river, thirty metres wide.

  A few people on horseback were walking across it. The horse's legs were completely below the waterline.

  “Don't worry,” she said. “You can get across on the stepping stones.” I looked down at my bike with all its bags and then back at Sarah. “I didn't realise you'd have this much luggage.”

  The stepping stones were narrow. Sarah picked up her two-ounce bike and danced across them to the other side. She came back over and took my back panniers.

  There was no way I could get across the stones walking side-by-side with my bike, and with the other bags still attached it was far too heavy to carry. There was only one thing to do.

  I took off my socks and trainers, hooked the low-hanging front panniers to my handlebars and pushed the bike through the chilly water to the other side. Near the stones the water wasn't as deep as where the horses had crossed but it still came high up my thighs and threatened those areas that would prefer to stay clear of icy liquid.

  Safely on dry land I had a quick scoot around the early 12th century, now ruined Ogmore Castle. A ghost, the White Lady, is said to guard the place but there wasn't really anything worth taking. Sarah, however, was feeling mischievous. She pointed to an information board.

  “There's a knight there crying out for some googly eyes,” she said.

  I got out my little bag of plastic peepers and stuck two on him. He instantly looked crazed.

  “I'm a police officer,” she said. “I can't believe we're doing this.”

  “It's not real vandalism,” I assured her. “They come off easily.”

  I wasn't worried. If I got nabbed I'd just say I was told to do it by the police.

  We cycled on to Ogmore-by-Sea. There was a newsagent she wanted to show me that was famous for its sweet treats. I was feeling hungry. I got a lemon cake, an incredible-tasting chocolate marshmallow Rocky Road thing – a welcome introduction to Britain since I'd lived here – and a gorgeously fruity flapjack. I'd had my cake and I'd eaten it. To be honest, I've never understood the dilemma. I always eat it.

  “Are you still doing that weird food thing?” Sarah asked. She pointed to something I'd never had before, some seaweed in packets on the counter, one honey and sesame flavour, the other coconut and chilli.

  “Of course.”

  I bought a bag of each. I saved the coconut one for later but we tried the honey one. The bag held five thin, tasty but insubstantial seaweed sheets, each somewhat smaller than a playing card. The entire pack only contained twelve calories.

  What you do in life colours how you view the world. Cycling around Europe, I've met thousands of friendly, helpful people, and you're just as likely to find them in Albania as in Altrincham or in Bosnia as in Birmingham. As a result, my experience is that people are essentially good. Sarah's work pulls her view in the opposite direction.

  “So what percentage are bad?” I asked her.

  “Well, there are good people who do bad things, but people who are out-and-out bad,” she thought for a moment, “I'd say about five per cent.”

  Wow, that was high.

  “One in twenty people are out-and-out bad?” I asked.

  “No, alright. That's too high. Two-and-a-half per cent.”

  But that still seemed massively wide of the mark. If I thought even 1% of people were irredeemably bad I'd never leave the house.

  “I got married a year ago,” she continued. “He's police too, and ex-services. He's even more wary of people than I am.”

  He was even wary of me. He's a cyclist too and was originally going to come along today but couldn't get time off work. Instead, Sarah had a tracking app on her phone so that he could check wherever she was “just in case”. He really had nothing to worry about. She could have kicked my head in.

  The morning's greyness had been replaced by a none-too-confident sun but temperatures were pleasant and Sarah took me to a old-fashioned country pub. I had a pint in its beer garden.

  “Is it true you can get done for being drunk on a bike in Britain nowadays?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And what's the limit?”

  “It's the same as for cars.”

  “Really?”

  “It's not just bikes though. It's a crime to be drunk in charge of any conveyance.”

  “A conveyance? What, roller skates?”

  She thought for a second.

  “I suppose they'd count. I've never heard of anyone getting done though, not even on a bicycle.”

  If I went back inside and got myself another pint I wondered if she'd have me
sprawled over the picnic table with my arms behind my back in handcuffs. It was probably better not to risk it.

  Our ride terminated at Llantwit Major. We were now in the Vale of Glamorgan, the most southerly of all the Welsh counties, sitting at the bottom of the country like one of those supporting rubber pads you find on the bottom of a laptop, or a verruca.

  “Llan means 'church' in Welsh, and so Llantwit literally means 'church of the twits',” she said.

  “Is that true?” I asked sceptically.

  She laughed.

  “No.”

  As well as showing me around her part of Wales, Sarah had been good enough to locate a campsite for me. I thanked her for her kindness and we said goodbye. It had been a fun day.

  For the first time on this trip the site was buzzing with other canvas-based campers. The sun had slowly been donating its rays more enthusiastically as the day went on and it was now a beautiful Saturday evening. I decided to go out and have a look around this small town. It was well-served with pubs in the centre. I popped into one and had a pint while charging my phone. That was my excuse.

  A bunch of twenty-something, baseball-capped American lads entered the pub and played pool. They fed the jukebox, choosing more and more eclectic songs as time went on. Johnny Cash and Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier started well, but then it descended into “The Time of our Lives” from Dirty Dancing and before long they'd managed to find an old Victorian music hall song about buying fruit to impress a girl.

  Ten songs in and the phone still wasn't charged. I got myself another pint and some pork scratchings. I read the back of the packet. Britain is going the way of America, with a public so litigious, or deemed so stupid, that everything contains a warning. The one on the pork scratchings was particularly worrying: “Although every care has been taken to remove bones, some may remain.” Given that a pig's bones are as far away from its skin as it's possible to get, how could that actually happen?

  *

  My timing was awful. I was in the county of Rhondda Cynon Taf. I'd always wanted to see the Royal Mint, a British institution and the birthplace of each and every coin in my pocket. I'd assumed it would be a huge, grey-stoned castle with fat turrets and ancient machinery churning out buckets of pound coins deep in a dungeon somewhere, probably staffed by magical elves. Standing outside the building in Llantrisant I couldn't have been more wrong. It looks like a cross between a downmarket B&Q and a 70s low-rise office building. It's a squat, ugly thing. Still, at least I could go inside.

  “You can't go inside,” said a security woman sitting at reception.

  “Oh.”

  “But there's a visitor's centre.”

  “Good, I'll go in there instead.”

  “But it's not open yet.”

  “That's alright. What time does it open?”

  “No, you've misunderstood. It hasn't opened yet. It'll open in ten days' time.”

  The Royal Mint has stood at its present location since 1968. In a lifetime of over 420,000 hours I'd missed its opening by just 240. In a further ironic twist the visitor's centre opened on my birthday, almost as though it were a present for me, by which time I'd be miles away.

  It had been a hard slog up the hill to Llantrisant on a hot and sunny morning. I'd sweated pints to get here. I couldn't give up so easily.

  “I've cycled a long way. If it's nearly ready to open, maybe I could go in and just have a quick look around.”

  She wasn't going to budge.

  “No, it's not finished. There are electrical cables all over the place. You'd need a hard hat.”

  “I've got my bicycle helmet. That's like a hard hat.”

  “Sorry,” she said in a firm tone that indicated a conclusion to our conversation.

  I took myself to a café and had to console myself with a lemon and mustard chicken sandwich that tasted of neither lemon nor mustard. All in all, it hadn't been the best of mornings.

  Still, I was feeling positive. I was on my way to Cardiff and that city was home to a unique British something I'd definitely get to see. Through heavy traffic – it is after all the most densely populated county in Wales and the sixth in the whole of Britain – I fought my way to the city's huge Victoria Park that houses a nice, little campsite within walking distance of the centre. On the desk I met Vance, a bloke my age with a nice, round, smiley head.

  “I'll put your bike in our container.”

  “Is that necessary?” I asked.

  Normally I just fastened it to a tree.

  “Scum come through here at night. It's the city centre. They'll have your bike.” He opened the container's heavy metal door and my bike disappeared. “Before we got this we had sixteen go in one week.”

  I think I'm making this campsite sound a lot ropier than it is.

  “What are you up to anyway?” Vance asked.

  I told him.

  “Right then.”

  For the next twenty minutes he and his colleague in reception racked their brains for recommendations in Cardiff.

  “I'm going out for a drive this evening, around Cardiff,” said Vance. “Come along if you like.”

  Until then, I thought I'd take advantage of the sunshine. I pottered off to Y Mochyn Du – the Black Pig in Welsh – a pub on the edge of the park, with dozens of people outside enjoying the springtime warmth.

  Sitting in a beer garden is a different experience in Britain than it is in a normally sunny country, such as Spain. Here there's an air of excitement and a smile on everyone's face at the unexpected joy of such a day. It's the knowledge that this won't last very long, probably not until tomorrow, maybe not even for another hour. But while it's here, it's glorious. It isn't taken for granted because it can't be taken for granted.

  I tasted my pint. While living in Austria I'd regularly drunk mid-5% lagers but after my four weeks of weaker British ales my taste buds had changed. The 5.7% Target IPA I sipped here tasted too strong, although its power matched that of the bar snack I'd bought, another bone-warning packet of pork scratchings – British tapas! – this time The Snuffling Pig's Hot-to-Trot Habanero flavour.

  I finished my pint and returned to the campsite. Vance was almost ready to go. I climbed into the passenger seat of his blue, open-top sports car.

  “Everyone likes the car except my ex,” he said. “That says something.”

  It probably did, but I'm not sure what. I immediately got on with Vance and his accent seemed familiar. It turned out he was also from Blackburn. He lived across town from me but had gone to the school on the council estate, Shadsworth, next door to the giant estate in Knuzden on which I'd grown up.

  “The kids from Shad were scary,” I said. “We'd look up the hill from Knuzden Brook towards Shad and it was like Mordor.”

  But Vance wasn't scary. He was a friendly bloke. He'd been in the army for a little while but he was a pacifist. He'd only joined up to travel but he ended up training in Blackpool. That wasn't much travel; it's only 25 miles from Blackburn.

  He'd had other jobs too.

  “I was an entertainer in Tenerife,” he said as we zipped through the streets of Cardiff.

  “What sort of entertainer?”

  “Fire eating, guitar.”

  “Wow, guitar eating? I'd pay to see that.”

  He drove through town and parked up at the huge and remodelled Cardiff Bay, formerly rough old Tiger Bay. Nowadays it's very clean, almost Scandinavian, and reminiscent of Oslo's own seafront. Stray bits of wonderfully pointless bits of art lie about the place.

  We got an expensive pint from The World of Boats, looked out across the bay and chatted. Vance was currently single. He'd been going out with a woman for years. They'd had a child, got married and almost instantly split up. Vance didn't want to remain without a partner.

  “I'm going to try speed dating on Wednesday.” He smiled a little nervously. “It's my first time.”

  It's a pity I'd be gone by then. I'd like to have heard how he got on.

  “Do you go back t
o Blackburn much?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I can't. It depresses me.”

  I'd made my peace with the place but I still didn't feel a desperate need to go back there. There were no plans to see it at all on this Britain-wide trip. And besides, in my hunt for the best place to live in Britain, I knew from experience it wasn't Blackburn.

  Vance took me back to the campsite. It had been a useful tour to orientate myself in Cardiff. Tomorrow the weather forecast had predicted rain and so I was giving myself a full day to explore Cardiff properly and – who knows? – maybe some other distant corners of the universe.

  *

  I was peering through the window of a tourist shop opposite Cardiff Castle. I'd been told to find a particular world record holder here. There it was, on the wall, the world's longest lovespoon, those tokens of affection I'd first seen at the toy museum. I wondered if the recipient of this one had liked her gift or read a deeper meaning into it. After all, it did sort of imply she had a massive gob.

  Today was going to be much more exciting than bits of tree carved into insulting presents. And not because Cardiff is the booze capital of Britain. I walked back down to the bay where Vance had taken me the day before and located my goal. The reception area seemed empty but they couldn't fit me in until eleven thirty, fifty minutes from now. I would have to wait.

  To kill time I wandered the bay, looking at the street art. One was a small, whale-shaped wooden house. It had a window you can look through. Inside was a tiny kitchen with a kettle. This, apparently, was actually a kiosk called “Love Me or Leave Me Alone” that sold food and drink inspired by Tiger Bay's multicultural heritage. Today though it was empty. Another piece was the wrecked body of a ship but whose hull was actually a face turned towards the ground. A tourist train came past driven by a middle-aged pirate and full of infant school children, laughing and shouting “Hola!” at me. Their accompanying teachers laughed along with them. It was a welcome splash of colour on an otherwise grey morning.