Brevet Cymru 2010

mvt

Myself and Rottenhat took part in this event,a 400k audax,last Saturday in Wales.Tough enough going,with plenty of hills in the mid-teens gradient.The weather had its moments too with a fierce hailstorm around the 180k mark and heavy cold rain for the last 100k.
However,this is not to say it wasn't fun.It was very well organised with a turnout in the mid seventies and a fair amount of women taking part.You don't really see these figures at an Irish event so it was good to know that you weren't going to be last as usual .
We started at 6am on Saturday and finished,I think,around 4.45am on sunday.We did around 425k as we mananged to get lost somewhere towards the end.
Pleased enough myself with my own effort,was a lot stronger on the back 200 than the front two.Old Rottenhat was very strong throughout and was untouchable on the climbs.I got my own back by forcing him to sleep in the front of the van after the finish.Speaking of which,will never forget the feeling of satisfaction upon climbing into my own sleeping bag,warm and dry for what seemed like the first time in years.The passage of the Severn bridge in the teeth of a gale to get to the feckin van won't be easily forgotten either.
All in all,another nice dayout out on the bike.

rughdh

Chapeau to you both!

The tax man

Well done guys.

damoz

I cant even begin to contemplate 425 km's ! Chapeau

oflahero

This is beyond mortal comprehension.

shaungil

Good work lads. Is this madness a build up to some other madness?

rottenhat

mvt wrote: »

.I got my own back by forcing him to sleep in the front of the van after the finish.

He was crafty enough to make it sound like he was doing me a favour by giving me the front seat and I was exahusted enough to believe him.

Anyway, I'd rate this as one of the best events I've ever done and highly recommend that some of you give it a go next year - a 400 is well manageable if you build up to it, and anyone who cut their teeth cycling the Wicklow mountains will be able to cope with the 4800m of climbing on the Brevet Cymru.

Here's the write-up I posted on the Audax Ireland list (warning: goes on and on, as usual):

As some of you know, emty and I travelled over to the UK for the Brevet Cymru this weekend. It's an old and well-regarded route,
recently taken out of mothballs by Mark Rigby, and I thought it would
be good preparation for the Mille Cymru later this year as it covers
some of the same area. We took the ferry from Dublin port to
Holyhead, then drove down to Chepstow - this takes a surprisingly long
time as there's no sensible motorway route and the A roads through
north Wales are very windy and pass through a lot of small towns en
route: it took about six hours on the way down. It might be quicker
to take the Rosslare-Fishguard/Pembroke option, and even if it wasn't
quicker, you'd have the ferry ride in the middle to break up the drive
a bit. We stayed the Friday night in a Travelodge by the Severn
Bridge - the hotel isn't much to write home about but you just have to
ride across the bridge to get to the starting point, and it's a handy
walk from the village of Aust, where you can get a decent dinner and a
couple of pints in the Boar's Head. It seemed like the Travelodge was
almost entirely occupied by audaxers, including a couple who were
asking after Paul O'Donoghue and Eddie Dunne, so we had some company
for dinner.

The following morning a small group set off across the bridge - an
impressive sight with the sun rising over the river - to the start at
Bulwark community centre. The place was hopping by the time we
arrived, bikes leaned against every free foot of wallspace - almost
all steel frames, a few fixed-gears, a couple of trikes - knots of
people chatting, greeting each other, and Mark R serving up toasted
scones and tea as fast as he could make them. There was a slight
hiccup when he turned out not to have cards for us (computer error) so
we wound up assuming the identities of two DNSs for the day. There
were 67 starters in all, and we rolled out a little after 6am.

It quickly became apparent that UK audaxes are much more diverse in
terms of pace, and that they don't really ride in groups to the same
extent that we do here. I pushed emty to move up the road as I didn't
want to hang around and we eventually latched onto a small group that
was going at what I considered a reasonable pace - even at that, there
was no up-and-over working, just two CTC riders keeping a steady pace
at the front. The opening section along the Wye valley to Monmouth
was very picturesque, rolling past Tintern Abbey in the mist, and on
to Monmouth. Past there, the climbing began and it wasn't long before
the two of us had dropped the rest of the group. Brevet Cymru has two
kinds of hills - long, long drags that feel like they're never going
to end, and short, vicious ones that top out around 14-16% gradient -
and plenty of them. We trickled up and down picture postcard hills -
lush, green pastures neatly separated by hedgerows - along roads that
were rarely less than perfect. I don't think there was anything even
as rough as the Wicklow coast road on the entire route, much less the
likes of the bombsites that we've been riding down around Bunclody and
Clonegal - it's hard to overstate how much more pleasant this makes
things.

Anyway, not a whole lot of point in giving a blow-by-blow account - it
would be pretty meaningless unless you know south Wales very well.
The ride started in glorious sunshine but I knew well from the weather
forecast that heavy rain was expected during the night and as the day
went on it clouded over and the showers grew longer and longer. I was
lucky enough to miss the brief hailstorm around 3pm but emty was
caught right in it - he said it was so heavy that the road was
carpeted in white by the end of it. There was steady drizzle from
about 6 onwards with a brief break before the heavy rain hit just
after nightfall. It was striking how much darker the heavy cloud
cover made things compared to the clear, moonlit night on the Fleche.
emty and I had been meeting up at the controls but generally riding
separately between them, and somewhere along the way we acquired a
young lad from London named Adam, so for the night section we stuck
together (just as well for Adam - his main light had conked out from
the rain and he was relying on his headtorch only).

During the day the controls were mainly at cafes - I was very
impressed by the cooperation they were providing, stamping cards,
checking names off lists, putting on extended menus, and in one case
staying open several hours late until the last riders were through.
But it was the night control that I will remember for the rest of my
days - after two hours in the rain, soaked to the bone and so cold I
think I was bordering on hypothermia, we made it to the Bwlch village
hall. There we were welcomed by two volunteers who plied us with tea,
soup and apple pie with custard. Our gloves were squeezed out and hung
on the radiator and towels were offered to dry what could be dried.
Behind the curtain on the stage there were sleeping mats and blankets
for anyone who needed to crash for a while. It took forty minutes and
two cups of tea before I stopped shaking and having to drag myself
back out into the misery was one of the most painful things I've done
on an audax - I could have stayed there for hours. I asked how many
had been through before us and was (pleasantly) surprised to hear that
it was only ten or twelve.

Between exhaustion and stupidity, I hadn't bothered to look at the
routesheet at Bwlch and had the notion that we stayed on the A40 all
the way back to Chepstow so we went off course after Abergavenny,
realised something was wrong, backtracked, got on the right road, and
then missed a vital turn-off to wind up at a roundabout where none of
the signs pointed to anywhere we wanted to go. There was a village
nearby so we headed there and by chance came across a map of the
village which showed a road that would take us to Usk. By now I was
shivering so much the bike was shimmying from side to side - only on
the hills could I get warm enough to stop shaking. Unfortunately, it
was downhill most of the way back. We crawled into Bulwark community
hall just before 5 where Mark R was again serving toasted fruit scones
and tea as though he'd been at it all day. emty forced me back out
into the rain (ah, how I hated him then) for the trip back across the
Severn Bridge in a scary cross-wind and by about 6am I was wrapped in
my sleeping bag in the front seat of his van, wearing every dry piece
of clothing I had.

Despite all that, Brevet Cymru was one of the best rides I have ever
been on. The scenery was wonderful, the organisation excellent, and
it was a great feeling to be out on 400 with so many other people
(even if, God help them, most of them were displaying that fabled
English reserve and weren't all that talkative). I'm already planning
to go back next year, if not for the Brevet Cymru, then for another
Mark Rigby event, the legendary Bryan Chapman Memorial 600.

oflahero

Bravo. I especially love the sheer onomatopoeia of that village name, 'Bwlch', presumably after the noise audaxers make as they come and go.