Tim Norris will lead this ride. He describes it as follows:
You lucky lucky people people. For the second month in a row Tim From Wales brings you something new.
We are going be starting in the historic town of Monmouth and will be going on a ride that begins in Wales, middles in England and ends in Wales again. Two countries in one ride -a club first??
On the far side of the Forest of Dean lies the Wye Valley; not much of it is legally accessible by bike and much research, begging and borrowing has been done to put together a route in the area that is both challenging and fun. Many mountain bike guides died to bring us this information!
With a fair amount of climbing either side of the river Wye but with some fun fast descents to make up for it this ride will deliver some fresh trails, views and locations to the club.
Its an Adventure for all involved as the ride leader will be following instructions given to him by another mountain bike guide and as such expect some navigational surprises!
It will be mid November, so please check the weather and dress accordingly.
We may have the opportunity for a pub stop mid ride but there are no planned cafe stops so please bring food and drink sufficient to sustain you on a hilly 4 hour ride.
May the Force be with us…
Tuesday 7 November update
The ride now has a start location. We will be meeting at the corner of the playing fields behind Waitrose. By the roundabout see map below.
There’s plenty of parking in town that I haven’t had chance to check out but we are all adults so find somewhere to park and meet by the red dot at 9.45am.
Weather doesn’t look too bad for the weekend either.
I don’t expect any gnarly or steep bits, just a few mucky tracks no doubt.
However please remember if you are coming that this ride falls under our new “adventure” category. This means I haven’t done an actual physical recce of the route and don’t fully know what to expect, but we will be following (hopefully) way marked tracks and bridleways.
Perhaps downloading the GPX to my Garmin would have been a good start or bringing a map that started at our start point. How can it actually be to follow a cycle path up the valley anyway? Turns out it was easy, really easy in fact to follow the WRONG cycle path for 3 miles!
At Nantyglo we diverted so everyone could get a look at the “roundhouses”. Oh how they nagged and begged to see these 19th century fortified homes! I hope some one took a picture as I didn’t!
Here’s where things started to get interesting. My map, and GPS and Jay’s (thanks Jay) GPS didn’t all exactly agree on where the bridleway was atop of Mynydd James so as we at first fought our way through mud and motorcross ruts we then made our own way through the wild grassy hill top trying to find a way down.
What we did find was a cool rock fissure and decided it was a good place for a snack and to take a 100 or so photos.
A short climb and hike out the other side of the valley had us on our homeward stretch as we traversed the hills side above Pen Y Bont towards Abertillery. With one final climb in our sights and the Welsh sun (it was Welsh sun) shining on us we headed up for one final treat!
What a finale to a great day!
