Porthmadog to Holyhead

Porthmadog to Holyhead
Statistics: 68 miles, Maximum speed unrecorded, 10 beers

I awoke at about 7am to one of Dave's thunderous farts. The Hancock HB from day two was still seemingly doing its evil work. I knew that this was going to be a very long day. The Patron produced excellent scrambled eggs and beans and I supplemented them with a bucket of grapefruit segments, cereal, three cups of tea and a humbug. Dave replaced a perfectly good inner tube and (some time after we knew it) we were off. Early cloud was once again burning off as the sun rose in the sky. We repassed the delights of Porthmadog and shamelessly took the A497 to Criccieth. We had a photo session in front of the castle then rejoined the 'B' road route as far as Pant Glas where we once again opted for some 'A' road action. Dave is a bit of a girl when it comes to traffic so we headed back to the cycle route pretty quickly thereafter. To be fair it was a fantastic surface and we were clocking 21mph before we knew it. We fairly steamed into Caernarfon for lunch. The Palace Vaults provided masses of food at a pretty good price. Sadly I took advantage and ate my way through a Yorkshire pudding full of sausages and onion gravy, a pint of Stella and an apple pie and custard. Dave had cottage pie, lager and festival of onion rings. All this was eaten in the shadow of what is possibly my favourite Welsh castle.

Getting out of town, in a freshening breeze, proved a little tricky, as all the signage seemed to have disappeared. However, we finally found the way north and about 10 miles later we crossed the Menai Bridge in bright sunshine. This seemed like an important moment yet for me it was also where the shock set in. Not only were my Achilles tendons beginning to hurt in a worrying way but I had rather underestimated the size of Anglesey. I know that Britain and Australia are both islands but I have an enduring mental image of islands being about ten miles across. The reality (which included a small navigational error) left us with close to three and a half times this distance left to do. I managed to distract myself from this mental anguish and the pain in my ankles by popping painkillers and watching the pretty aeroplanes from RAF Valley practicing strafing unarmed Timorese civilians in their Hawk jets. With every plane I watched and with every maths problem I did our goal and the glory that went with it got a little closer.

In Touching the Void Joe Simpson talks about the anticlimax of getting to the summit of a great mountain, but how little he can know of anticlimax. While summiteers may be faced with their insignificance in the towering beauty of the natural world, or tortured by the relative emptiness of life after great achievement, they can scarcely begin to comprehend the anticlimax of a journey which ends by watching a man digging up muddy worms next to a Welsh ferry terminal. We had no elation or sense of achievement (there would be time later to be smug) now was time for a power shower. The B&B looked for all the world like a Happy Shopper from outside and, we were assured, contained five Austrians, but with a serious shower and an en-suite fridge it was good enough for me.

Gary Nelmes
(The Seventy-Nine public house Holyhead, October 8th 2002)