The Hemingway Way.

I just got back from a fishing trip in Snowdonia and while the car journey through the Welsh valleys was beautiful and at times spellbinding, I simply wanted to be on my bike because as Hemingway rightly wrote:

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

Cymru.

I love days like this.

Photograph taken by my pal Kevin Kafesu on a recent trip to Wales.

Done.

Yup, I did it… last friday I rode the 80 miles across the English / Welsh border into Welshpool and it was real hard, well from Cleobury Mortimer it was hard at least. You underestimate how much it helps to have other riders with you on journeys such as these as I travelled alone. The pain in my knee and the fatigue across my shoulders probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I was riding with someone else but alone those minor niggles became massive injuries ( well in my mind anyway ) and I could not think about anything else.

All that said I endured the pain ( and the careless caravan towing association who very nearly killed me on two occasions ) and got to my destination where a bath and a home cooked meal awaited me.

For anyone interested in the numbers I rode 81 miles in 4h 48m and that is with absolutely no thanks to the headwind.

While on the subject I would like to congratulate my home slice Adam ‘Army’ Armstrong who bagged his ‘cent’ over the weekend by cycling his favourite 25 mile loop 4 times. Good on you Army, hope your limbs feel better! Next time we ride 100 miles in 1 direction… then ride back!