We survived another nights sauna (air conditioning is obviously unknown in the UK) with the weather / heatwave topic dominating most media over here.
Our lovely Welsh b&b host prepared a massive breakfast for us and was incredibly welcoming even though the phrase "talking under water with a mouth full of marbles" was most likely invented to describe her !
Henley prepared for the days ride by undertaking meditation exercises and visualising his warm up routine (see pic) before we headed off on a short but extremely tiring day taking on the Welsh Hills that make Devon and Cornwall look sissy !
There was no such thing as flat, every climb resulted in a short steep descent followed by an equally short steep climb ! Hours of this really sap your energy !
Our ride essentially followed the Wye River but took detours up and around valleys and mountains.
After passing thru Newbridge on Wye we took another large climb / descent to be presented with a choice (see pic) a steep tarmac ride or a rocky off road ride - without a sign we took the tarmac straight to someones house realising that the rocky / rutted off road path was in fact ours later confirmed by a passing cyclist as being 5 bone jarring kms long !
I would have loved to give this so called technical section a go but memories of Peru (broken wrist) and encumbered by two large panniers tempered my desire !
As it was the off road ride passed without incident or broken spokes and we were soon back climbing and descending on beautiful Welsh country lanes some with a 25% gradient that required a bit of walking.
Kev took the mountain jersey for the day with his grinding but effective climbing style while I settled for a fair bit of walking.
By Llangurig mid afternoon we had only covered 45 kms so we did what we do best and sat down to have an ice cold Pepsi and an ice cream !
This was a definitely a bad move as our route crossed the road and went immediately up a 25% hill that had the added challenge of melting bitumen which was sticking to our shoes !
We made it across the countryside to a hill just outside of our destination of Llanidoes where we stopped to talk across the road to a Dutch cyclist travelling in the opposite direction.
A passing motorist pulled up to chastise us indicating that he had nearly hit someones panniers in the shade and proceeded to go on and on about our irresponsibility !
He had a valid point and we thanked him for it but as he proceeded to go on again, and as i'd had 7 hours in the sun I simply turned round and said mate you are giving me a headache so just f&ck off !
That didn't seem to work so by saying it a little louder and using my best impression of a wild Australian he finally got the message - Mr Switzerland (Henley) indicated that he could not hear the driver (next to him) so didn't intervene !
Finally in town after a tiring 57 kms H did a few laps before finding a grade 1 sauna which may just give us a few hours sleep tonight !
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