It was slightly tough cycling through Cardiff in the drizzle because it’s very hard to see our phones (which are our sat nav’s) in the rain.

Cardiff has lots of cycle paths on the side of the main road but we had to stop lots at traffic lights or to cross the road so could barely cycle.

Almost every road in Wales is 20mph (instead of 30mph / 50kmph) which is very hard to stick to and excruciating slow. We’re very glad we’re cycling round Wales not driving 😀

The Ely Trail to St Fagans was very overgrown. We were attacked by thistles, and elderflowers and yellow plants we couldn’t identify.

St Fagans museum is very cool. Its the history of Wales through 60 buildings.

The shop contained tons of Kidney Soup and Mock Turtle Soup.

Sue introduced me to Welsh Cakes. I think we could be eating a lot of them over the next 2 weeks.

Pigs like to dig in corners - so they made round pigsty’s to stop them 😀

The guides all had very strong Welsh accents and were quite hard to understand. I think he was saying the castle belonged to the rich English overlords 😂

In fact I was surprised how many people were speaking Welsh. The Welsh language revival seems to have worked 😀

The sun came out for our ride on to Barry.

Apparently Barry isn’t just a boys name, it’s also a seaside town.

Barry has a fantastic sandy beach, and after such a short day we had plenty of energy to walk along the promenade and sit on the beach.

Unfortunately our plans for fish n chips were thwarted because the fish n chip shop had run out of fish 😀

Today was brilliant. Yesterday we didn’t follow the cycle book, because we wanted to go to St Fagans, but today wie followed the route and it was fantastic. Lots of country lanes and cute villages and sandy beaches.

49 miles is our longest ride this year and we did it easily, arriving by 3pm, not too exhausted. So we’re both feeling very pleased.

The Welsh country lanes are much better than the Devon ones. Almost all of them were surfaced and not overgrown.

We stopped for coffee in a cute village. Llantwit Major.

This is their town football club - a club of misfits and scumbags according to their website 😂

Then we had a very long ride to Port Talbot.

We are really seeing all of Wales on this tour - the industrial town of Port Talbot is not on many tourist itineraries 😂

But next to it was the lovely Aberavon beach where we had lunch.

And now we’re at Swansea beach. See this is really a beach holiday….

The beaches in Wales really are lovely. Who needs Spain 😂

Followed the NCN (national cycle network) 4 all day today. It was great, we’re very impressed.

To leave Swansea it follows the beach to the Mumbles.

Then it turns inland and follows an old railway line through a forest for ages. Was a lovely ride.

Towards Llanelli we got back to the coast, which was very windy. So were very happy to see a fancy Italian cafe at St Elli’s bay for coffee and cake.

After coffee we cycled through Kirkwelly, where I was surprised to see an English church.

Then more cycling to the very pretty \240Ferryside for lunch. The ferry goes to Llansteffan, but only at high tide.

After lunch it was starting to get hot and we really struggled with the hills, so we walked them.

But by 3:30 we’d made it to our hotel in Carmarthen.

Carmarthen has a great castle, though not much of it remains.

Made it to Pembroke today - but only just 😀

The morning started well and we had a lovely ride along country roads past farm after farm to Laugharne. We didn’t have time to visit the castle - we’ll save it for next time 😀

Then it started to rain which made the cycling tough. When we hit the coast there was a strong cross breeze which made the cycling quite dangerous.

We took shelter in a tea shop in Amroth where we decided it was silly to continue along the coast to Tenby and we’d need to go inland instead.

We cycled through Saundersfoot, which apparently has a gorgeous beach, but I couldn’t see anything through the rain.

The high street was great though. Lots of brightly painted shops.

Then it was a long slog to Pembroke. My brakes got worse and worse in the rain till they didn’t work, so we had to walk the last 3 miles.

We still made it to Penbrook in time to see the impressive castle.

Then we found a local bike shop, who will fix my brakes first thing tomorrow.

Started the day by walking 2 miles to a bike shop. He needed to replace my brake pads and tighten my brake cables. I’m very unimpressed that my local bike shop didn’t do this when I took the bike in for a service.

Pembroke castle

Then we cycled to Broad Haven, which was another lovely beach.

Due to our late start we decided to miss St David’s and cycle straight to Fishguard from Broad Haven - it was still a long day 😀

We passed a drive in open air cinema in the middle of a farmers field.

Riding along I got a text from Vodafone welcoming me to Guernsey - then Sue got one welcoming her to Jersey 😂

The hills here are steep! Much steeper than Devon. We walked up most of them - and down some of them as well 😀

I was pretty tired by the time we got to Fishguard.

Today was one of the hardest days I’ve ever done. We climbed more feet than I’ve ever done before - unbelievably Pembrokeshire is more hilly than Cornwall or the Highlands.

Because we knew it’d be a hard day we left Fishguard at 7am. Which meant we got to our first stop, Newport, before the cafe had opened. So we sat on a park bench and ate iced buns.

Then we headed to Cardigan - I had no idea that was a town and not an item of clothing.

It’s quite a vibrant town, complete with a castle.

After Cardigan it started raining - and getting incredibly hilly.

Our next stop was a tea shop in Aberporth.

Then it was 7 hilly miles to Llangrannog, another beach town.

Then we had only 8 miles left to New Quay. But it was so hilly we had to walk most of it.

Another tough hilly day - and there were times when we wondered what we were doing. But then it passes and we have a great time again.

Had our first break in Aberaeron. (Why do all Welsh towns start with Aber or Ll?)

Cute town, with lots of brightly painted buildings, like most Welsh towns.

No idea what prompted this plaque 😀

Then it was a long hard slog to Aberystwyth. The hills were so steep it was hard to walk up them.

The only thing I knew about Aberystwyth was from the Crown, that Prince Charles went to uni there. The Crown doesn’t paint it in a good light, but actually it is a delightful seaside town, with the best pier I’ve ever been to.

Weirdly there care cows and sheep in the same field.

There were no hotels in Borth, so once again we’re in a youth hostel 😀

Today was brilliant. Best day of the tour so far.

We followed the coast all day, it was fairly flat, and we stayed on well paved roads the whole time.

We started the day with a short train ride to Machynlleth as our book said the road from Borth was too busy to cycle.

This was a great idea and made the day a bit shorter, which we needed, because we’re both pretty tired.

Our first stop was a pretty seaside village, Aberdyffi.

Just before Barmouth we came to the most amazing tiny town - Llwyngwril

It has an annual knitting competition.

This is Gwrill the giant.

This dragon is also knitted!

Barmouth has a great beach. Lots and lots of sand

Today was brilliant. We left Barmouth early and got to Harlech castle before it opened, so we didn’t go in. One of many castles we plan to see next time we come 😀

Harlech also has the steepest street in the world - luckily we didn’t need to go down it.

We had a really good route today. Lots of quiet roads. And mostly flat.

Porthmadog is a major station on the Welsh Highlands Railway. Apparently we were in the Welsh Highlands all day 😀

The steam trains were gorgeous- and very busy.

The last 10 miles into Caernarfon was on an excellent, paved, flat, cycle path. It made us very happy.

Caernarfon castle was amazing.

The whole town was lovely.

A short day today because we had two castles to fit in.

First though we had to cycle to Bangor. After singing the Bangor song ‘Didnt we have a lovely time, the day we went to Bangor’ for 10 miles, much to Sue’s annoyance, it was slightly disappointing 😀

Next was Penrhyn castle which was out of this world. Just the stone staircase took 10 stone masons 10 years to complete.

Then on to Conwy. The next in the series of impressive castles in cute towns.

Started the day with a lovely, flat, \240ride on the coastal cycle path. It was pretty perfect.

We passed Rhyl at 15 miles, which is apparently the seaside town in the Bangor song. (They used Bangor because it has 2 syllables. But Bangor doesn’t have a beach..) so once again I looked forward to Rhyl and drove Sue nuts singing ‘Didn’t we have a lovely day, the day we went to Bangor…’ for 15 miles, and once again I was disappointed. Rhyl is a brash seaside town with lots of amusements and funfairs and Scouser holidaymakers. Not a lovely town like loads of others we’ve passed through 😀

Then we did a 10 mile hill, which was actually totally fine.

We passed a monastery.

And a town that was totally overrun by sheep. They were on the football pitch, the golf course, the park and the road 😀

Then we had a rather nasty 8 mile ride to the outskirts of Chester. Spent far too long on a busy A road.

We passed Flint castle.

To avoid Chester traffic we’re staying just outside it. There was only one pub to go to for dinner, and it was not brilliant 😂

Todays cycle didn’t go to plan.

It wasn’t a scenic day. We’ve left the coast now and these last days are cycling down the English / Welsh border.

First stop was Wrexham. Wrexham isn’t a scenic town - so no photos. There were a lot of homeless people eyeing up our bags, so we didn’t feel comfortable.

After Wrexham we got to our first diversion. There were lots of signs saying the road was closed - no motor vehicles were allowed, but we continued because almost always a bike can get through a road closure.

However, after a long downhill we got to this:

So we had to turn back.

We didn’t know how else to get to Oswestry, and I panicked a bit, but Sue was super calm and replanned our route.

Eventually on the new route we got to a canal and decided to follow it.

Then police and fire engines and ambulances and a helicopter arrived and they closed the canal!

So then we had to reroute again!

This map shows how far we had to ride to get back to where we wanted to be.

Our next stop was Oswestry

And now we’re in Welshpool 😊

Lovely ride today through lots of quaint Welsh and English villages.

We got to Knighton in time for their annual carnival. Thousands of people lined the street. Everyone joined in. It was lovely.

Then more cycling over hills.

And we arrived in Kington

Kington primary school is one of my oldest customers 😊

We must have crossed the Welsh English border about 5 times today. 😀

Today was harder than expected.

Started off cycling to Hay on Wye.

This toll bridge was weird. It’s privately owned and protects a wooden bridge.

Hay on Wye is quite eccentric. Famous for having 20 bookshops.

Hay on Wye is twinned with Timbuktu

Then we accidentally ended up cycling over the highest road pass in Wales between Hay Bluff and Twmpa.

It was cold, windy, bleak and miserable. I don’t recommend it 😀

The road was single track and awful and we couldn’t understand why there were so many cars on it. Then (eventually,freezing cold and after a lot of walking) we got to the top - and there was a car park with dozens of cars in it. And there were walkers everywhere hiking up the bleak windswept mountain.

Cycling down the hill Sue was chased by an aggressive farm dog. Just as well we were going down hill not uphill….

Luckily at the bottom the hill was a pub. Total life saver. We could get warm and fill up on coke and cheese toasties.

After that the ride to Abergavenny was easy. It’s a nice enough town. Biggest place we’ve stayed in since Swansea.

An easy day today - it was particularly short because we wanted time to see Chepstow castle.

Our hotel is particularly old and cute.

We made it!

A ruined church from the 12th century

We got stuck behind some cows

The Newport transporter bridge - which is insane.

The trip was amazing. We loved almost all of it. It was a bit hillier than I’d realised and consequently a bit harder 😀

We definitely want to do another tour next year. But I’ll take the elevation into account when I plan it. And make it shorter - because I missed work 😀