MTB - Brecon, The Gap

Getting ready to set off...only 3 hours behind schedule

Ballet?

Carful

Handy

Matt

The Gap - allegedly 24 miles until you let me navigate. The blue circle and line show roughly where we took a wrong turn and ended up 5 1/2 miles off course in Ponticil or somewhere. As Andy said - "there shouldn't be another reservoir on our left should there?"

Andy in his shades looking a bit of the gay

Pretty.

Pretty gay.

God knows.
Bike rack.

Matt fixing the first of two front wheel punctures. He was getting good at it by the end of the day. A lesson in checking the tyre for thorns though.

Sweaty Back.

Matt can also multi-task it would seem. As he was down there...

Too late. No it wasn't spunk or piss. The nozzle off my sack was leaking again.

You can just see Matt in the distance negotiating a technical downhill section - the light was fading fast and we were starting to get a bit worried.

Matt after a tricky and very rocky downhill section.

Matt rides past...

Just over this ridge we finally saw Brecon as the light faded - the lights were a fair way off but it was some comfort. This was my favourite section of the whole ride, a lovely undulating track, if rocky, followed by a long and reasonably tricky but fast downhill. Hard on the calves and a lot of concentration needed not to crash, but well worth all the hard work.

Finally back at the car - it was about 9:30 - we had left at 3:30 expecting to ride for 4 hours max. The parking ticket had run out at 8:30 but a ticket was the least of our worries.

Matt checked the late night business.

Clean bike. Now it just needs a bit of a service after a bit of a battering - functioned perfectly though, although I think I could have gone with the summer tyre and short finger gloves.

Well, after talking about it for ages we finally went up to Brecon to do some riding. We selected the Gap as I had heard good things about it and it looked a good distance without being a killer. We aimed to get there for 12:00, but ended up not getting there til 3:00 and them Matt and I had a cup of tea first, so we didn't set off until 3:30. We had planned it to be a 3-4 hour ride, but fate evidently had other plans for us. The early sections along the Taff Trail next to a canal, then some quiet roads were easy. Up a shallow incline for a while onto a gravel section of the Taff Trail for quite a way (first puncture for Matt included), then forking down a steep rocky descent which was a bit of a challenge but great fun (second puncture at bottom). Another downhill through some forestry, across a ford then a bit more road. Up a massively steep long hill, past a stillborn lamb and then we must've gone a bit wrong. Through a couple of forest sections and out onto the road again, and just as Andy and I were discussing how much harder we had expected to be we pulled up in Ponticil. Now, we thought we were about 4 miles from Brecon. As it turned out we were 4 miles from Merthyr and nearly 20 miles from Brecon. This was 7:15. We quelled the panic, figured out where we went wrong, retraced out steps and picked up the route again, ominously mostly uphill. Then the hard bit came. Over what I assume was the gap, which was essentially unrideable, up about 2 miles of the most sapping, rocky ascent I have ever tried, then an almost fun set of very steep, very rocky downhills that demanded intense concentration and were hard on the calves. Matt and Andy had to walk down some of it - I rode most of it, but Matt was on his reserve bike and Andy's brakes were a bit dodgy to start with. Then Andy managed to collide with a rock, stayed on his feet but buckled the back wheel so badly that we had to loosen the brakes as the bulge kept hanging up. Finally, just as the light was failing, we made it back to the country lanes and facefulls of midges that took up all the way back to Brecon, stopping briefly to look at some Whyte bikes in the LBS. Tiring but excellent. We phoned Cath to get us some food from Wasabi which was there when we got back. Line of the drive back:

"what was that? Something ran in the road - it was about the size of a rabbit." "errr was it a rabbit?"