Cycling Northwich to Holyhead along the North Wales Coastal Route
hi fellow ebike touring adventurers uh and I'm going to take a trip into the past today to before I had an ebike uh and one of the cycle tours I did on an old school manual all the effort pushing the pedals bike uh now this was coming from the Peak District to Holly head where I was catching a ferry back to Dublin uh part of the reason I was doing the cycle was I had gone over to a meeting with some friends in the Peak District H they went over to camper van uh I got a lift with them put the bike in the back and they were heading to Wales to do a tour afterwards and I thought well I'll just cycle back uh so this is one of these interesting stories about not being discouraged either because um on the first day of the cycle back uh their camper van broke down and then I thought well I'm not that far from where it was going to start anyway so I'll just take the bike out of the back of it and I'd set off uh so I set off uh up a very very Steep Hill very hard steep hill and then uh on onto some Moors which were kind of wide open beautiful it was early evening well actually it it was mid evening I was a little bit worried about uh not making the pub I was meant to be staying that night uh got to a little village was just happily sailing through the little village when my derailer jumped into my back wheel H completely demolished the deiler jamed the back wheel solid H and there was no way I was going to be going anywhere that's the sort of thing that could put you off cycle touring for Life uh and I talk about it very briefly in the recent video I did on the um the emotional challenges um and that should be over there um but uh basically yeah I could have just given up at that point well except I couldn't give up I was in the side of the road in the middle of nowhere not quite the middle of nowhere it was a small village there was a a pub nearby I went into the pub I asked if they had a list of local uh Taxi phone numbers they did there's a photograph here of the uh my very very oily fingers holding that list uh so I rang a taxi um from the nearest town that had a bike shop in it I'd looked that up already H got the taxi to bring me to a premier in I think where that bike shop was stayed there overnight brought the bike down the bike shop the next day they were absolutely wonderful they had it fixed up within a couple of hours met up with my friends with the camper van who had also got the camper van fixed in the meantime and so they uh brought me along and dropped me at my booked accommodation for the second night it's on the outskirts of uh North witch um marked here as the Hartford uh Hall House hotel I think so that's where I'm starting off um on the second day we really my first day of cycling it's really where the the photographs start and I'm heading off from there through the town of Chester uh the initial bit that's mostly on very quiet back roads uh Chester itself there's an old rail line I think that's been converted into a Greenway uh so that got me near the center of Chester left the bike for a while had a wonderand around Chester fantastic I'll show you some photos of that in the minute uh then on into North Wales uh going up up up up a very Steep Hill to my next stop no camping on this trip this was all like pubs basically I was staying in um the patrons of the pub I was staying in on this night were astounded i' come up the hill it really was that Steep and then on my final day I do this long cycle across Northern whales following the coast path so there's a very busy road here but actually there's a a parallel route that sometimes is is right beside the road it's a cyclopath running beside it over the road I've have some photographs on that that and then sometimes it takes to the hills and runs along back roads those bits are really really very pretty uh before getting to uh angle SE which is the first Big Island um and then Holly head or holy head is the second island again of Angley H so Angley was really my main purpose for the trip because I wanted to visit the Neolithic sites and angle see bicycle a really really good way to get around that so we're going to be looking at those Neolithic sites as well uh that AR the ferry in hollyhead and of course Hol head's a funny place for anyone from Ireland to visit as a cycle tour because uh most people have been through it on the ferry probably just catching a train on down to London or Manchester or whatever and the town itself is a little bit Grim apparently it's not got any better post brexit because they've lost some of the ferry traffic to Ireland H but actually Angley and um Harley head are both very pretty some great Neolithic monuments so we'll see all those anyway that was my first tour one of my first multi-day tours I ever did uh I found that second day tough my legs were really tired it's part of the story of why I did eventually uh buy myself an ebike uh but it's worth looking at and I would recommend it actually that that whole trip from uh uh North witch on through uh Colchester uh and across North Wales all of that is actually pretty nice a little bit by the road itself isn't great you know but it's it's spectacular in its own way a lot of that bit of the coastline was quite heavily quarried um so there's that sort of infrastructure visible around you h and a fair bit of it is away from that that main road so don't be put off by that so the actual cycling of this trip started off from harfoot Hall uh on the edge of North Witch uh they've got a great Duck Pond out the back thoroughly overgrown but starting off with the traditional breakfast now I had looked at the map than night before and had noticed that just a few kilometers up the road from my nightst uh was one of the wonders of the canal age which is the Anderson boat lift up here so I hurriedly rejigged my map and decided I would head there instead before then heading uh West towards Chester so bit of a diversion always got to be willing to do a bit of a diversion but this was going to be quite worthwhile so what is the anderton boat lift you wonder well the river Weaver and the Trenton Mery Canal are very close to each other at this point but the problem is they're about 18 M uh vertically separated I the river is about 18 M below the canal so in 1870 they had the idea of building a lift a water lift basically that could take uh barges and lift them down those 18 M so they could be transferred between the river and the canal pretty impressive the thing is huge [Music] [Music] anyway I'll after a brief and quite early morning stopover it was following a network of back roads across Northern England towards the Welsh border uh lots of quite pretty little Villages uh pretty old houses and then some stretches of Woodland and quiet Lanes before eventually I hit the Old Railway line leading into Chester which is now a Greenway H Chester is on the Welch border and was founded by the Romans it started as a Roman Fort and in fact it was also one of the last towns to be conquered by the Normans and still has a pretty fine set of City walls some of the best apparently in England it's also one of those random cycle touring fines in that I hadn't intended to go into Chester I just needed someone to eat lunch and I realized my route passed close by so I decided might as well sto there and I was not expecting at all uh the sort of H great architecture and sites and above all else a really good Pub so this Pub is located in a jackan great hall from I think the 1300s H it's got these fantastic old tapestries on the wall kind of wondering just how old they are um and apparently during the English Civil War was used as a meeting spot by the royalists there's a plaque inside that gives you a bit of that history that was one big attraction to it h the other one though was it had real ALS and even better my favorite proper cloudy English cider you can't really get those in Ireland so I was overjoyed H sauces did mashed with it and then a second desert beard to finish if you do find yourself in Chester I would definitely be checking this place out I'm even tempted to go back at some point especially just to go there again after those two strong points I decided it was probably a good idea to delay getting on the bike again for a little bit uh and took myself off to visit the cathedral uh so Chester Cathedral is again very old building uh the oldest parts of it are probably around the 10th Century uh when it was being built at the time of the Vikings and then it continued as did many cathedrals of this period uh to be rebuilt and rebuilt into the 1600s H part of the reason that that happens in a lot of places I don't know if that's true here is that because things would often fall down uh and then have to be rebuilt on many cases it was perhaps just a change of taste and redesign H anyway in any case if you do find yourself in Chester I'd recommend popping into it h it is a fairly magnificent Cathedral and I've been in quite a few um quite a lot of nice stain glass inness H nice artwork and a completely magnificent organ uh as a young teenager I used to be in a church choir so I appreciate church organs uh quite a bit having given some of the alcohol time to work through my system I took off again following that rail path uh that's heading along to the estery or parallel to the estery uh and into Wales you come out of the wooded bit to the river D and the EST where there is a cyclist Bridge crossing the river and for a while here you're in quite an industrial landscape as the where and at the point I was at still are some active steel Works along the river I think the last of those may have shut down relatively recently however but yes it's a lot of electricity pylons and old industrial buildings the cycle route markers are very attractive and there are quite a lot of display boards that you're passing uh that tell you about it and of course for the first time we're now seeing stuff in Welch uh but yep a lot of industrial Landscapes um and part of this as you come off the cycle track on narrow and going through a town on a busy enough road I was there at Russia and then you get to a castle so this is Flint Castle which was built during Edward the First's conquest of Wales I think around 1270 or 1277 was located here because was a day's March from Chester and it also covered where the Ford across the EST was and then it was up that Steep Hill from the coast with quite a magnificent view over the river de estery to glan aen I think it's pronounced in uh where I was staying that night uh and again the couple of pints of beer and my evening meal I went for lambshank in this case cuz I was in Wales and lamb has a traditional association with Wales I was up very early the next morning before Dawn because I knew I had a very long distance to go and that Hill had really destroyed me the previous night and I knew there were going to be a lot more Hills in my future because I did know the Welch Coastline has a lot of hills on it um so that was something I was looking forward to uh but fortunately I was greeted by a fantastic Sunrise uh and an initial phase of very quiet roads running up through the hills um above the main road there's a very busy Main Road follows the coast but does this secondary uh route up in the hills which is small rural roads uh this is what the the Welch Coast North Coast Cycle path follows initially before it sweeps down towards the coast uh and is then a cycle Lane alongside it this initial bit has some great signage it's fairly flat uh and then there is a fantastic steep descent back down to the coastline again uh there's a period here where it's a cycle track that's running through and alongside of marsh I saw some nice horses on this particular route and then eventually you get right down to the coast and you're cycling along the beach for a while the cycle route is well signposted but there are parts of this stretch where it ends up jammed right up against a very busy road but also some nice beach resorts where I stopped to fuel up for breakfast I knew I'd have a long way to go so I wasn't skimping ing uh before crossing the river CIA here uh and then heading along the coast the coastline here has been pretty heavily quarried that's part of the reason you get squeezed up against those roads it's quite steep Cliffs on one side H and you've got some of the old extractive uh peers and things that used to take that stone away so it's an interesting mix of Nature and old industry you now want to pay close attention to those cycle signs because I didn't and as a result cross the bridge on the main road at Conway Castle which is not very pleasant Conway Castle is just a few years older than Flint's Castle also part of Edward the first conquest of Wales and again is dominating a key crossing point after Conway the landscape is back to vas deep Hills running right down to the Sea so the H cycle track is again quite close to a busy road but well separated from it there's quaries and the cliffs along here this is again quite an old industrial Zone um and then the cycle track heads up into the hills again where I stopped at the village in in lanfer Fen Brave pronunciation there uh to get some lunch the Quarry used to employ thousands but now it's just a village of a few dozens very quiet indeed uh but ground for a quiet point the route out of the village is following quiet rural roads the main road is a couple of kilometers down below you uh there's some very nice rural cycling along here uh in a wider patch between the mountains uh some great cautious sheep having a look at me from around the tree here I thought this was a great little hidey spot I'd have loved it as a kid uh old style Fords across rivers and then onto yet another what I presume is an Old Railway line uh that's heading down through some quite heavily wooded areas until we reach the town of Banger in North Wales the route here descend ends down to sea level again before you start to climb up and heading towards the location of Bango University and here was my first stone circle but don't get too excited because this is one they built in around the year 2000 I believe and then across to angle SE across the very high meni bridge this bridge is actually part of Euro Route 2 although it swings South from here and and heads down through Wales along the western coast uh but we'll on it briefly as we also head south for my accommodation that night which was going to be a B and B uh looking back towards the Welch mountains which we would see throughout the next day a couple of brief spots of interest on my route were KB which is a uh Roman and Iron Age U fortification small village that was there not really that much to see now it's mostly mounds of Earth and then also very nearby Castle binwen which is a Neolithic circular enclosure uh somewhat more visible on the landscape but again not that much to look at this was alsoo reused they think in Roman times there's quite a lot of archaeological uh remains apparently here only person there and then finally and exhausted onto my B&B a dryan where thankfully I was able to get an evening meal I was desperate H and even better they also had wine so the night ended quite well my route the next day was a pleasant wander around the southern thir third of Angley as I headed for my Ferry on hollyhead um this again great very quiet roads bit of a shock if all you're used to is the main road coming from the ferry port which a lot of Irish people would be uh and some great views back to snowdonia and the Welch mountains but the real thing I'd come to angle C4 was the Welch Neolithic it's absolutely covered in monuments many of which are still in a reasonable state of preservation I think this first one is called lanan uh but unfortunately my records keeping was not great however go to my route map and just simply follow the same route as I cycled and you will come across these they're all quite close to the roadside they're all signposted there's generally a small space to pull in I also got buzzed by The Oaf this route which is mostly Euro 2 is another great network of very very quiet back roads I saw very little traffic indeed on it it does climb up to a high point there's a small village at that high point and there was a uh post office sort of Corner Shop that I could get some sandwiches and things at H but otherwise I saw very little in the way of buildings all day until I got to Holly head itself my next upop was the cruor KH at bad Gus uh with the gantus is apron in Welch uh which is a very similar in style to a lot of the passage graves in newrange at the the um Bend in the Bo and the speculation is that this may well have been a single civilization crossing the Irish sea in this period uh there were two uh male skeletons discovered in this particular location when it was excavated the excavation also discovered the fire in the main chamber had had a stew poured onto it uh the ingredients being Ras eel frog toad grass snake Mouse shrew and hair H you'd almost wonder if that was a potion rather than a stew the location of the site is such that it is looking back across the Irish sea at the wicko mountains having worked up an appetite at this point I spotted there was a restaurant called the O oyster Catcher And diverted there for some lunch uh some fish in this case and for another one of those nice pints I like to break up my journey with and then a stop for yet another Neolithic burial chamber this one is at Ty again it's roadside uh there's a sign basically by the road if you just park in there it's then a short walk across the fields to it and then not very much further along the Route just past the two horses is a second pair of chamers at praed I have no idea how my pronunciation is going on these I'm really struggling with it but let's have a shot uh very little information unfortunately about uh both of these sites apart from the age of them and not all that much actually online about them either um but again that kind of adds to the pleasure as you're cycling around the countryside and you come across them and you stop for a visit and wonder exactly what they were and what they meant to the people living here and this last couple of Cavs were watching me descending the hill to the bridge at Crossing over into Hol head itself uh where quickly we find yet another standing Stone uh this one from the Bronze Age this standing Stone and the cars I get to next are literally right on the edge of the town of hollyhead and they're basically between warehouses in the fields on the edge of the town with the second site being in fact three closely grouped cars that were probably built uh over a period of maybe a thousand years one after the other um so yeah if you're ever in Holly head town and need to kill a couple of hours waiting for the fairy uh walk out and uh visit these sites it's well worth it h they're also easy enough to find because there is a weather spoons which is called the stones um just up the road from them and then it was onto the ferry and the evening Crossing to Ireland with a beautiful sunset again a reminder this is Euro Route 2 this is the route it follows on the Irish side it will follow the Royal Canal to molar and then down to atan and then they're building a track which will go all the way to goway but I wouldn't expect that to be finished for at least a couple of years so I hope you found that account of my 2019 trip uh useful uh interesting uh if you did give it a thumbs up helps the algorithm get it out to more people I would recommend the trip uh I would I certainly considering going back and doing a very much more extensive tour around North Wales uh the channel is about doing this by ebike rather than the old school bicycle I was on much easier to do those multi-day trips by ebike your legs on so so if that's something you're already doing or something you might want to get into do give the channel a follow you'll find loads of videos here uh about battery charging bike reviews the trips I've done at this stage I've done uh a monthlong tour of Scotland around the Scottish Highlands and Islands uh and also oh about 50 days uh cycling around the Irish Coastline this summer I'm planning to head off to the bass country and Northern Spain for a 3- week trip uh so do give me a follow on that if you want to get day-by-day updates when I start that 3-week trip I I also have an Instagram account and I'll be stopping on that trip taking pictures and video at the side of the road and posting them instantly so follow that and you will H get detailed as I create them
2024-03-07 23:54
