My New Favourite Ride

I went out on a solo mission on the road bike today, with the winter drawing in I want to get in as many ‘climbing rides’ as possible before it gets too wet and cold to be riding up and over mountains. Right out of my front door I headed upwards (easy when you live by the sea) and onwards towards a great climb that starts with a sharp 25% corner.

This climb starts from the 1:4 warning sign and you climb about 540ft over about a mile and a quarter, after the initial kick it’s a really nice steady gradient that lets you get into a good rhythm.

At the top of this first climb I found a discarded jazz mag at the side of the road, who the hell is still buying jazz mags in this day and age and what the hell are they doing throwing them away 3/4 of the way up a mountain??? This sort of behaviour used to be quite normal back in the days, me and my mates found one in a car park and another one in the woods when we were kids, the stress involved with keeping them hidden became too much though and we burnt them on a fire. It probably wasn’t a great idea doing it in Chris’ garden because his dad caught us, haha.

There is a short descent into a big valley just after the jazz mag, I wish it was possible to convey just how amazing these views are with an iPhone but it’s really not. This area is absolutely amazing and far deeper than it looks in this photo. There’s a second sharp kick up at the bottom of the valley, this part seems to always be damp and slippy and results in the back wheel spinning on the spot at times. Quite near the top of this climb is a disgusting old house on the left, it seems to be inhabited by ducks and dogs, though I have seen a woman there with them once. I tell you, in Wales you don’t have to ride far out of the cities before things start to get really weird.

At the top, which is pretty much on this cattle grid, you will have climbed roughly 900ft over about 3 miles I think, you’ll feel lovely. This is definitely one of my favourite climbs in Swansea, it has the lot: short and sharp, long and steady, a little descent to rest your legs and a freaky old lady with a house full of ducks; what more could you want?

There is a lethal decent down into Ammanford with great big drops on the right and very often a bunch of sheep running amok trying to knock you over the edge to your death at all times. But what goes up must come down, by road or in a bloody broken mess on some rocks.

I headed off towards the Black Mountain from Ammanford, looking at my Endomondo graph this was about an hour and 20 minutes of almost solid climbing, mmmmmmmmmm, climbing. There was an absolutely incredible piece of land about midway along…

Showing how great this part of the ride was with phone photos is impossible but it blew my socks off. It was basically a single lane road through a kind of micro-valley with rad rocky sides, loads of leafless windswept trees and a bunch of sheep staring down on both sides.

I felt completely out of place but at the same time completely at one with my surroundings. This is the sort of feeling you simply can’t get in a car or even walking. There’s something about gliding silently on a bike through terrain like this that is otherworldly, it’s spooky, beautiful and actually quite moving. Maybe I’m blowing this out of all proportion but there we go, I’m an emo cyclist.

The Black Mountain switchbacks are pretty well known but not in the slightest bit difficult, it’s like a climb for kids. In fact it’s so easy I shot the photo above whilst riding along. I rode down the other side, weeeeeeeeeeeee all the way home and had a wee and a quick session on the foam roller. Over 50 miles I had climbed about 5000ft, I could feel the cold trying to play havoc with my throat at times, I don’t think there’ll be many more rides like this before the spring.

ROUTE MAP AND GRADIENT GRAPH ON ENDOMONDO

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