Jeff Jones's bilgespot.com: Llangybi

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Llangybi

Llangybi, to prove I went there. This is the main road, and the T-junction points to its other road. A truly magnificent megalopolis.
© Jeff Jones

Despite favourable forecasts, it was wet on my Saturday excursion to Llangybi. Not raining the whole time wet, but just showers every now and again, with a nice strong sou' westerly. It doesn't bother me any more, because that's the norm rather than the exception here.

I ventured across the Severn bridge some 30 km into Welsh territory, and very nice Wales was too. It's not as densely populated as my bit of England, the hills are a bit bigger, and the roads are in better shape. There was some nice new tarmac on one of them as I dropped into the valley where Llangybi is situated. That helped with the bike control, given that I wore my front brake pads down to the metal (replaced now). It was a bugger to come back up: 1.8 km at 10 percent average, and the first bit isn't that steep.

The objective of the ride was to find the birthplace of great grandfather Gwyllim, which I did so without even getting lost, even though my paper and sticky tape sat-nav system was not particularly useful in the rain. I have to say that great grandfather Gwyllim was wise (beyond his years) to leave Llangybi for Australia, because it's a bit of a dump. I doubt whether the fibro houses were there in his day, but still... As I left hurriedly after taking pics, I thought that it lacked a certain olde worlde charm.

Usk, a few miles north, was much nicer. Unfortunately I couldn't tarry as I wanted to get my sodden self home as soon as possible. I stopped a couple more times, once when I almost saw the sun, and once when I left Cymru, because I had to get a pic of the Severn bridge. It's 2.7 km long, and therefore an engineering mantelpiece.

Ride stats: 148 km in 5'20 @ 135bpm and 1900m of climbing. Tomorrow...VC Walcot!

Weather remains fine.