Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain by Primrose-Smith Steven

Author:Primrose-Smith, Steven [Primrose-Smith, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rosebery Publications
Published: 2016-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

As a county Newport is just outside the top ten most densely populated. Cycling eastwards through this urban hell, the jumping chain got worse and I knew I had to do something about it. I passed a Halfords but one that only dealt with cars. A guy working there gave me directions to a bicycle branch. I followed them and realised it was on the same shopping park as yesterday's KFC. Oh, such happy memories!

The morning's greyness had been replaced by bright sunshine. Fully repaired I headed across the transporter bridge, one of only eight still working on the planet, to avoid the worst of Newport's busy roads. I now cycled the quieter, wider roads of southern Newport.

Now in Monmouthshire I passed through Undy – half a pair of pants – Caldicot and Chepstow. As well as Undy, it's got a handful of other nicely named places: Mardy, Jingle Street and Bullyhole Bottom.

Now free of the tiny counties of south Wales, larger Monmouthshire deserved a more thorough exploration but the rain delays in Cardiff meant I was already going to have to chop a day off both Gloucestershire and Wiltshire to stay on schedule even if I breezed through Monmouthshire without stopping. That was a shame because I quite fancied having a pint at the Skirrid Mountain Inn in Abergavenny, supposed the oldest and most haunted pub in Wales. It had an interesting story attached.

Skirrid is a version of a Welsh word for “to shiver”. Apparently, in the hours after the Cruxificion of your fella in Jerusalem, the entire mountain on which the pub stands shivered. No one knows how powerful a shiver it was because, of course, this was in the days before we measured shivers on the Richter Scale. We should also consider that no one in Wales would have had a clue who Jesus was or when he was supposedly killed until several centuries later and so – who knows? – perhaps they were out by an hour or two.

Anyway, Monmouthshire mostly and sadly ignored, I cycled on to the old Severn Bridge, a wonderful ride on a blue-sky day like today, crossing the wide expanse of the Severn Estuary and rolling once again into England. Farewell Wales! You were at times beautiful, frequently bleak but always bloody soggy. And sorry about the Newport thing.

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