Night Riding Alone
I was working in Penrhyncoch yesterday, busy gardening in the sunshine. The plan was to finish at around 6pm and then either ride up to Pendam to meet the others at 7pm for a night ride, or have a bite to eat and drive up there to meet them. I was opting for the latter as I didn’t want to do too big a ride seeing as I have the Bristol Bikefest to do on Saturday.
In the end though I finished work at 5pm so rather than hang around I made some phone calls and decided to head out for a ride on my own. I started off with a quick ride around Llyn Blaenmelindwr and was then going to head out the Angler’s Retreat, but the trails here were so nice that I decided to do the entire Pendam Trail.
We haven’t had any rain for a while so the trails were hard packed, dusty and riding beautifully. Not ideal conditions to try out my new mudguards but great fun. I did the Pendam Trail in a not quick, but respectable time of 37:41 and then headed off along the Syfyddrin Trail towards Nant y Moch.
This part of the trail was nice and dry too and as I was on my own there were no stops and I was keeping up a decent pace. I then rode alongside Nant y Moch before heading off up towards Angler’s Retreat. It was getting dark by now so on went my lights. It was really misty so they weren’t a great deal of help in the low visibility. The river crossings were of course wet, but elsewhere was lovely and dry and everything was flowing well.
Soon it was completely dark and I was out there miles from anywhere all on my own with nothing but the sounds of the night and a spooky mist covered crescent moon for company. It was actually really nice. I did bump into Dave and John as I was heading back towards Llyn Syfydrrin and they were heading out. I stopped for a little chat and was soon back at my car and home earlier than usual.
So much for a nice easy, short ride mind. The pace was good as there was no need to stop and chat now and then and I covered 20 miles in total, with the first 6 miles around the Pendam Trail being at quite a hard effort.
