Two days in one: Abergavenny-Chepstow-Bath

Abergavenny to Chepstow: 34 miles (54.4km)

A final hurrah through Wales that included one massive climb, with a section at 16% incline for what felt like a very long time (me, I piked early and walked). Perhaps the coolest thing we saw was the view out over the Severn inlet. It's incredible tidal, and the tide was well out as we looked down on it. The bridge is an amazing structure... but more on that later. We also saw a castle in Chepstow, which was much more impressive than I had expected; it looked from the outside like just a single section of a keep, but it turned out to be about three times longer than it is wide. I also got the chance to get a mad picture of the spiral stairs:



OK, so this was actually taken by James, leaning out and endangering my camera. Whatever. The other cool thing about Chepstow Castle is that they stage Shakespearean plays (and hopefully others) in the grounds.


Chepstow to Bath: 46.5 miles (74.4km)

Actually, to say we were in Chepstow itself is somewhat misleading; we were staying in St Arvans, about 2 miles out of Chepstow. But that's ok, I won't hold it against James; these mistakes are easy enough to make.

Our journey today would have been 8 miles shorter had we not recklessly decided to visit Tintern Abbey as well. Tintern is north of Chepstow, so we sweet-talked our (Irish) hostess into letting us leave the bags there while we zipped up and back. We took back-roads to get to the Abbey; we took the A road back, which was faster, and not as steep to climb, and didn't have mossy sections nor wet leaflitter to negotiate. Tintern Abbey itself was incredible, and worth the extra 8 miles:



After we reclaimed our luggage, we headed out through Chepstow and threw ourselves across the Severn. There are two bridges over it (it's weird they have a website for that, yes?): this is the one we didn't ride across.



Fortunately there is a dedicated, barricaded-from-the-cars cycle path; otherwise this would have been a decidedly hairy ride, since it was a bit windy. It's nearly a mile from end to end. And there were blokes out painting it while we rode... Paul Hogan, anyone?

From the Severn we rode to Bristol, which was an entirely uninspiring and basically boring ride through ugly countryside, boring suburbs, and hair-raising inner-city streets. Give me Newcastle any day. Or Glasgow. Fortunately, the last section from Bristol to Bath was along one of our favourite things: a disused railway. It was basically flat the entire way, so we managed to do it in decent time.

Ensconced in our B&B (Kiwi hosts this time), I'm really looking forward to tomorrow - Roman Baths! Woohoo! I can almost guarantee we will disappoint those Jane Austen fans in the audience; author-tripping is not something that appeals. And the Georgians are waaay too modern.

Finally, because I can never resist the Kates: