Transcambrian- Reverse

After last weeks debacle of a bikepacking trip where Phil and I ended up pretty much broken, we were faced with the fact that we had already agreed to head off on a bikepacking trip with a couple of mates from Mountain Rescue. The general plan was to do either the Capital Trail near Edinburgh, or the Trans-Cambrian trail across Wales.
The main thing was that there needed to be a LOT more cycling and a LOT less walking than last week and we'd be happy.
When it was planned, we did not really count on the fact that there would be a yellow weather warning across the country for wind and/or rain for half the weekend. Different forecasts said different things, but the general consensus was that it was going to be a strong Southwesterly wind, gusting to potentially about 40-50mph and a fairly sizeable chunk of rain.

Considering that the Transcambrian is normally done East to west, and that is what most of the information online is about, we decided that it would be more intelligent to do it the otherway around and at least have a following wind, rather than a brutal headwind ALL the way. This was going to be a lightweight bikepacking affair with tents etc, rather than a hyperlightweight trip, staying in B&Bs and pubs, so we weren't going to be going hyperfast, but rather, at a fairly decent, steady pace.

As mentioned, the trail is normally ridden the opposite way around to the way we went, so we were travelling up everywhere that is designated as an amazing descent, but at the same time, we were going down all the ups, which was pretty good.
In terms of logistics, it is a non-circular trail (as you'd imagine), and we decided to put the logistics at the beginning of the trip rather than at the end. It means you travel in clean clothes with clean bikes to the beginning of the trail, rather than in manky clothes with crap covered bikes back to your car. We parked in Knighton and got a taxi service to take us and our bikes to Dovey Junction- £25 a head, which was pretty decent- where we were kicked out into a pretty decently heavy rain shower where we set about clipping all our luggage to our bikes and getting ready to set off, whereupon the sun came out for a moment.

The sun came out just after the shower.

We started out down the road and were quickly off the main road and up the first hill. The first few miles of anything like this are basically a bit of a shakedown in terms of what you have and haven't attached to your bike correctly. This was much the case as we worked our way up some fairly technical uphills (as mentioned, they are normally tackled as the last joyous downhills of this route). The main thing that sticks out about the route here was the fact that it rained on and off pretty much the whole way along, and the brisk tailwind proved to us that we had definitely made the best decision in terms of the direction of travel.
To be honest, Phil and I were just glad to be riding bikes as opposed to pushing them! The riding was actually pretty delightful, company was excellent and there was little enough to be told about anything bad happening. General plan was to get about 35k on the first day and camp somewhere near the river Severn, so I'll let some photos do the talking.

Tom on the first decent climb (after the first section of hiking)

Coming to the place that Phil has designated the campsite, the weather continued to be a bit on and off. (there aren't a lot of photos of the rain as when it rains, you don't tend to want to get the camera out). There was a toilet block and a carpark, and luckily the toilet block had a bit of a lean-to thing that we took advantage of and used the shelter to have a bit of a cook up of tea prior to putting up the tents.

Cooking up a storm

It got fairly chilly quite quickly, especially as we were pretty damp and the wind was still fairly brisk, so tents were put up and we bedded down for the night.
It rained. It was crazy windy.
Finding fresh water was a little bit of a problem, and if I was to do this again I'd probably take some steri-tabs. We were quite lucky last week as any water source we came across in the Lake District was clear and potable. This was certainly not the case here in mid-Wales.

Across the Severn.

Day 2 started with the first of the fords within about 2 minutes of leaving the campsite. Any ideas of keeping feet dry were swiftly kyboshed, and the scene was set for the next 80km.

Quite a lot of it looked like this

Wet, but very rideable tracks with some excellent down hill sections. 

I didn't get many photos of the downhill bits, simply because by the time I got to the bottom there wasn't enough time to get a camera out to catch the others.
After about 10k the rain started to get REALLY bad and we arrived in the hamlet of Llangurig. It was a couple of k out from the route, but we figured it would make a good stop off should the weather get really bad.
It did, so we stopped for a cup of coffee.
And a cake.
and it rained.
So we had a panini each.
And another hot chocolate.
and eventually carried on when it seemed like the worst of the weather had gone through.
The trails continued to be excellent, with a number of fords to be crossed. We rode for the vast majority of the time, but ended up pushing up some of the steeper sections. 
We stopped for a version of lunch in the middle of a forest where, had we been going in the other direction, there would have been some excellent downhill single track.

Lunch stop

As you can see from the photos, it was still pretty damp. The section after lunch was a bit into the headwind, and then a turn and a straight run west with the wind behind us down to, and then along some reservoirs.
It was at this point when we realised just how hard it would have been if we went the other way, and a lot of grinning was to be had as we battered along roads at 25kmph while feeling like we were being pushed along from behind.

This isn't a ford. It's a puddle.

Down and past the reservoirs we came upon a section of bridleway that was obviously used for offroaders as well. The surface was pretty torn up, and as we had been going through fords for most of the day, we just decided to blast through the puddles in the track as well. This was one of the parts of the route where we were very very glad of the decision to be on mountain bikes rather than gravel bikes. Yes, gravel bikes would have coped with it, to a point- but not with the amount of luggage that we were carrying.

We eventually came down the way towards our camp for the night- in Rhayder where we got a pitch on the Camping and Caravan association campsite, which meant a shower and toilets! The final section was a delight of bike tracks that we just tootled down with very little effort. Staying in the town also meant that we treated ourselves to a pub meal in the evening as well, which went down very well after 80km of offroad riding.
To be honest, there was a fair amount of backroad cycling going on as well, but I would much rather that than the option from last week which was struggling up "bridleways" that were no more suitable for bikes than they were for horses.


We woke up to day 3 feeling pretty refreshed, and although there was a bit of drizzle in the air, and the temperature was a little colder, we were very much up for the final 50km.
As we rode further East the trails became easier and less challenging than that which we encountered on the first day. There were still a couple more fords to cross, though, which didn't cause any problems at all.

Final ford of the weekend

 Our final stop for the day before getting back to Knighton was in Llanbadarn Fynydd where there is an excellent local community shop. Very welcoming staff who was perfectly happy for us to heat our own food up in the microwave (we didn't), and had an excellent stock of food and other stuff as well, which we took advantage of.
Then it was onward and upward to the final few hills back to Knighton.

This was an excellent trip out, and I can highly recommend it as a Mountain biking route. If you're going to do it on gravel bikes, make sure you have as thick a tyre on as you can and don't take much luggage- go fast, light and stay in B&B's etc rather than tent.
Waaay better than the Lakeland 200, which as we have been discussing, is probably meant as a challenge to see how hard you are, as opposed to having a decent weekend out on the bikes and enjoying yourself.
In all, I think we probably only hike-a-biked for less than 1% of the route. There was a fair amount of road in there, maybe a bit too much for some people, but it was a welcome relief from some of the other sections for us.
There was only really one big fall, no real mechanicals, and a lot of laughs.
Main navigation was done on a Wahoo Element Bolt with back up on Viewranger, I did it on a 26er while Tom was on a 650b+ (and certainly had the most fun), Phil was the only one on a full-sus (and on 650s) and Chris was on an old 26er with Panniers.

Had the weather been a bit better we might have considered doing it over 2 days, but I reckon we got the most out of it over 2 and a half. Great weekend out.