Day 2 - Cycling - All Day

The aim was to meet for breakfast at 6:30am. My phone rings. It is Dad. “Where are you?” It’s 6:45am and I am sleeping the sleep of the dead. Out of bed into shorts and a t-shirt and straight down to breakfast. Black coffee does the trick and a bacon sarnie. A quick shower and we’re ready to rock. On the road at 7:30am and feeling good.This is the day I wasn't looking forward to. We were aiming for 100 miles and there were going to be hills. The longest I have ever cycled is for 68 miles in one day so this was a bit of a step up. Still we were feeling good and for the first hour cruised along. No niggles from the day before. Happy days.Riding through the streets of Preston was pretty interesting.

The route was a bit more obvious today so Dad (as support driver) would go on ahead and we would leap frog him every so often. This gave him a few opportunities to take some action photos of us as we were doing our best Lance Armstrong impressions.On a bike you have enough time to take in your surrounding and it was great seeing the old mills that had been converted into offices and apartments. Weirdly, we kept noticing oddly named hairdressers; my favourite being "Off Yer Head". How cool is that for a name?

The route today was to head out South to Wigan then onto Manchester then Chester and out to Wales on the route to Snowdon.

Our satnav device had a few tricks up its sleeve today and infuriated us on a couple of occasions by taking us on the "scenic route". This basically involved turning off the road we were on to invariable be faced with a ludicrously steep climb followed by a rapid descent only to come out on the same road we were on a few hundred metres further up. Pointless. We soon realised we had to out think this machine that clearly had no appreciation for the fact that we didn't really enjoy riding up pointless hills. We quickly learnt to ignore future requests.

We had our first proper food stop at a great named cafe called "Butty Licious" around 30-40 miles into the ride. Still feeling good.

We were now heading out towards Manchester and still going strong aiming to go around another 30 miles before the next stop which was planned to be a late lunch. Heath decided to put the hammer down up ahead and we were rocketing along at 22-23mph on the flats for around 45 minutes. I'm pretty new to road biking but for me this was fast and was killing me. I shouted ahead for Heath to stop as I needed a five minute time out and a banana to catch my breath. I was pretty much done and not at all enjoying myself.

The next hour was a lot steadier and I was just ticking over trying to keep going. We were now in Wales and aiming for Penyfford for lunch. It couldn't come soon enough. The picture shows us just stopping at around 72 miles. I was nearly broken. Check out the grimace.

The pub was pretty good with great food. The only problem was that the landlord thought it was a good idea to have a parrot in there which was making an alarming racket. He thought it was an even better idea to walk around the pub with it on his shoulder like some modern day pirate. I would have throttled it if I had enough energy.

Lunch was a pretty quiet affair. I knew there were hills to come for the last 30 miles and we were steeling ourselves for the horrible grind we knew was ahead. My ankle was also starting to play up as I was getting pain in the achilles very time I pedalled. Not too much I could do but try and look after it as best as possible. All too soon it was time to get back in the saddle and we were off into the Welsh hills.

The hills did not disappoint and after lunch we faced a relentless climb for around an hour. The scenery was stunning and after a couple of false dawns we finally reached the top of the hill side. It was awesome to look around and not see anything higher for miles but then unbeliviably around the next corner there was more to go. It was just head down and keep grinding the legs. Finally we broke the back of it and meandered up and down on top of the hills for a while.

We were heading to the last stop of the day called Ty Nant and with one final evil climb we reached the top and cruised down jubilantly into the village centre. Our aim was to go 100 miles and we had said that we would crack on if we were under that distance. We checked our navigation and it said 100.6 miles. Yes! 100 miles cycled. Day 2 done.

Bikes into the van and into Betws-y-Coed 20 miles up the road to our hotel. Time for a couple of beers.

Ride Stats

Distance 100.6 miles

Time in saddle: 7hrs 33mins

Avg Moving Time: 13.2mph

Max Speed: 32mph

Feet Climbed: 5,929