Cyclokairos

Down the road, close to home, in the village of Meriden, there is a memorial erected by the Cyclists Touring Club in honour of Wayfarer (Walter MacGregor Robinson). It was the destination for the inaugural ride of The Green Bike. There’s another memorial to Wayfarer, a little further afield from here, at Pen Bwlch Llandrillo in the Berywn Mountains. Courtesy of the Rough Stuff Fellowship, it sits at the high point of the drovers’ road that Wayfarer took back in 1919. If I was being true to the spirit of the Rough Stuff Fellowship, I would have ridden to it on The Green Bike. Instead, I took my most off-road-friendly option, The Red Bike. 

Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog was the starting point (and the end – with the car being parked there, well, it just seemed the obvious thing to do. In the spirit of Leave No Trace, it’s always worth returning home with everything you left with, especially a car). A lane took me as far as Swch-cae-rhiw and also the point at which the River Ceiriog was left behind and a tributary stream, Nant Rhydwilym, was followed. The track alongside Nant Rhydwilym is a byway open to all traffic but a sign announced it was closed to motor vehicles. Similar signs on smaller side tracks suggested veering off the main track was commonplace. How much attention is paid to these warnings, I don’t know, but evidence of 4x4s was clear – lots of ruts, deep-water-filled ruts. These and steep stony sections had me hopping off and on the bike, and it was the last part of the track up to the Memorial Stone that proved to be the steepest.

As I pushed the bike up this last section I thought about how well my shoes have fared over the last five years. The odd superglue fix to the soles apart, they’ve withstood much bike-walking. Fate duly tempted – the front of the shoe detached itself from the sole. Where fingers failed, tyre levers prevailed, and the shoe front popped back in place.

From the memorial stone, I carried on westwards and headed down into the Dee Valley. Just past Pont Rhys-yr-hydd (the Welsh for bridge, a hint at the arrival of the Romans and the influence of Latin on the language?), I ignored the main track and took a right at a gate for a dose of Shinrin-yoku. The route through Coed Llynor crossed the River Llynor via an easily ridden ford and then it was further bathing in the trees of Coed y Glyn.

Decision time – I could head back up to Pont Rhys-yr-hydd, taking a track to the south of the River Llynor and then retrace my steps back to Llanarmon, or do something different. The something different won out. The Ordnance Survey map showed a bridleway to a col between Cadair Bronwen and Cadair Berwyn. Having read Graham Robb’s ‘Cols and Passes of the British Isles’ a few years back, I came up with the idea of visiting as many as possible (there’s 2002 cols and 105 passes, if you’re keeping count). A telic task, yes, and the type of task I have dismissed, but I’m nothing if not inconsistent in choosing what life to live. Plus the atelic experience of doing such jaunts is ultimately the driving force.

What was to come? A bridleway is any right of way to be taken on foot, horse, or bike. They come in all manner of guises. Was this one a cyclable track or one to be done on foot. Obviously it proved to be the latter. When does it not? When will I learn? It was a narrow, often rutted, often boggy ribbon up the side of a mountain. Bike-walking it was then, a 5 km trudge with a bike and one working shoe (the walking once again separating the sole and upper part of my right shoe). Did I mention it was boggy? Have you tried walking through a bog with one working shoe? You get a very wet foot. In fact, have you tried walking up a mountain with one working shoe, a cycle touring shoe at that, not some built-for-purpose walking boot?

Reading about kokoro, in the previous days, I had stumbled across this piece of advice: “Study like you’re going to live until 120, but live like today is all you have”. Well, I was seizing the day, and getting to the col was going to get done, even at the cost of some strange looks from three hill-walkers – Hey, who doesn’t push a bike up a mountain wearing one working shoe? It’s the sort of thing Wayfarer did – although rumour has it he went sabata intacta – and have you read Charlie Chadwick’s account of the laying of the memorial stone? A bloke called Arthur Matthews arrived cycling in just his underpants! One shoe is nothing.

The Japanese call it Pass Hunting, seeking out remote mountain points with cycling used to connect the dots. Using the Welsh for col, let’s rechristen it Bwlch Bagging. My kokoro-reading had also thrown up “a life well lived is a life enriched by stillness”, “slow down so you can experience more of everything that matters”, and “a slow life is not a boring life, it is an engaged life”. Progress was slow but all the more time to experience what perhaps I find more engaging than anything else – out in nature with a bike. There was no rush, I had time to make the most of the moment. Pausing, standing, staring every so often was rewarded with views across the Dee Valley, the mountains of Eryri in the far distance a fine sight.

Bwlch Maen Gwynedd was reached and then it was a short descent and ascent to another dip that separates the ridge to Cadair Berwyn from the peak of Tomle. With the sheer drops of Craig Berwyn and Craig y Llyn to the west, I was in Cwm Mean Gwynedd, a valley parallel to one I had initially taken to reach the Wayfarer Memorial. Down a grassy hillside, and for the first time in a while I was back on my bike for kilometre after kilometre alongside the River Iwrch. A rough track to start, then sealed lane and, before one final test of the legs as the road rose just past Tan-y-ffridd, I was back in Llanarmon. The tracks and lanes of Wales – I could spend my remaining days there and there alone (intact shoes optional, a bike essential).