30th August 2009 (Sunday)

Had been planning a trip to the Gower peninsula ever since I read about a nice ride there in the Cycling Plus magazine. A sensible person would have put the ride on hold when the forecast was for wet and windy weather....I am obviously not sensible!

The Gower Peninsula is a little jut of land that sticks out into the sea to the west of Swansea in South Wales.

Wifey, Rosie (Dog) and me set of from home at 9:30 ish and travelled down the M4, over the Severn Bridge and into deepest darkest Wales, arriving at Rhossili at about 11:45.

It was howling a gale and was precipitating a fair bit!

I ate my Ham Salad sandwich and a couple of breakfast bars, bid farewell to wifey and Rosie and set of into the rain swept Welsh countryside.

I had planned my route to stay in the peninsula and avoid main roads as much as possible.

There is only one road into and out of Rossili so the ride started the way it was going to continue - with me cycling up a hill!

I didn't stay on the A4118 for to long as I turned off and headed for Fairy Hill :-)

The roads were wide open to the elements!

The tops of the hills were constantly covered in low cloud, unless the cloud's were emptying themselves on me!

But occasionally I was rewarded by some stunning views! even in the miserable weather...

The roads were ALL in excellent condition, unfortunately because the roads were so wet and my add water to dissolve brake blocks were fitted, the downhill stretches were NOT as fast as they could be.

I did become a little worried at the next sign! (I wasn't sure if I had planned my ride to go down a low tide causeway or something similar)

However I need not have worried the road was PERFECT, the smoothest fastest road I have possibly ever ridden down, and it looked completely unused!


To my left was a wide open marsh land with wild horses grazing leading to the sea.

After tracing the north east coast I turned in land and south heading over the Welsh Moor, It started raining again!

It was wide open and NO shelter from either the strong wind OR the driving rain!

Once I descended down the moor I turned back on myself and headed back over it again on the B4271, it was much faster ascent and descent but still wide open!

On the down hill, just before Killay I turned of the main road and on to a forest cycleway, I wouldn't normally chance an off-road cycle way with the road bike, but as this part of the route had been published in the magazine I gave it a go, again it was a perfect roadie surface :-)

Although me and the bike were now completely minging!

At the end of the forest track I emerged back out at the A4057 and a Toucan crossing, once over the crossing it was on to possibly the best cycleway I have ever been on!

And the best named place on the planet :-)

The Cycleway followed the coastline, away from the road and had a clear unobstructed view of the sea :-)


The only issue I had was as I drew near to (so called) civilisation the people walking insisted on being in the cycle half of the path and NOT the walking half (I guess they couldn't understand what the picture of a bicycle meant)

Once of the cycle way I was back on to the roads, I had plotted a route that hugged the coast as close as possible, this fortunately meant massive descents and unfortunately massive climbs!
It was on one of the descents that I encountered my favourite set of traffic lights, I don't think I would ever get irritated waiting for them to change....

Who could get irritated stopped looking at the sea?

After a load more plodding up and down hills in the rain I eventually made it back to Rossili

The clouds were still full of water and hanging over the hills!

The Cycle computer had the ride as 59.1 miles in 4 hours 5 minutes (4 hours 19 minutes if you include photo stops and junctions) with an average speed of 14.4 mph and 4779 feet of climb.

The GPS track can be found here...

I really enjoyed today's ride, even in the bad weather! I will definitely do this ride again in the sun!