Day 383 (Sunday)

Had a very late night!

Managed to wake up and get up reasonably early, had porridge for breakfast then set of for a cycle ride at 8:30 am.

I set of towards the Severn Bridge, stopping just before Rudgeway to take a picture of a ruined church (I have seen it a few times and want to find out a bit more about the place)

I added a new Severn Bridge picture to my collection!

Once across the Severn in Chepstow I turned left onto National Cycle Route 42 - It was a fantastic country lane route that went all the way to the top of Gospel Pass :-)

The first clear view of the Black Mountains was quite daunting.

The first major climb of the day was out of Abergavenny up the aptly named Hill Road (Pen Y Pound)

From here it was a rather nice and cooling downhill run, then started the rather long climb to the top of Gospel Pass.

Not quite at the top, but at the end of the steepest climb (Looking back down the hill)...

Just a little more to go...


The views from the top were stunning and the roads were awesome.


Now I was a bit of a fool today, I forgot to take any spare batteries for the GPS Phone. It survived until just before the top of the mountain (Well about 200 foot below the top). I cycled a little bit further on toward Hay on Wye, then I decided that it may be safer to back track my route and meet up with wifey (She was following me and set of from home about 2 hours after me)

When I got back to the top she was just coming the other way :-) (thankfully!) I turned around and went back down towards Hay on Wye to a parking area and had an Ice Cream :-)

We agreed that I would cycle back down the mountain and meet her at the bottom for a nice drive home. So I turned around again and cycled back up to the top! (Not bad I cycled over the mountain top at least 3 times!)

But the ride down was certainly fun! (And Fast!)

When I got to the bottom I loaded the bike into the back of the car, had a nice pint of cider in the pub, and wifey drove me home.

We ended up getting home at about 6:30, then went out for an evening meal.

The cycle computer had the ride as 88.14 miles in 6 hours 51 minutes with an average speed of 12.8 mph.

The RunGPS plot can be found here...

A couple of top tips from today's ride are....

Don't do a cycle ride up a mountain in a north westerly direction when the prevailing wind is North West! - Normally I do loop rides so I end up with a tail wind benefit at some time....Not Today though!

If you rely on GPS navigation don't forget to take spare batteries!