Part 1 - Cardiff Bay to Abercynon!

A nice summary of events from our first half of the Taff Trail...



Firstly I have to admit I wasn't the most prepared for this bike ride. The night before happened to be my leaving do at work so cocktails were the main preparation I had for the next day. Of course I was very responsible and tucked up in bed by 2am to get a good nights sleep.


The next morning was a slight chaotic panic as I realised I had no time to get ready and no idea of the route that we were supposed to be cycling. I decided that knowing where to go was more important than breakfast so jotted down the route from Brecon to Pontypridd so we'd have at least some idea of where to go once we got started. At about 10.30am, joined by my wonderful friends Kat and Ro, we set off to catch the bus to Brecon and in the first of a series of unfortunate events we were turned away and informed that bikes weren't allowed on the bus (despite ringing up the day before to confirm that they would be!)

So - plan B - we cycled down to Cardiff Bay to find the marker for the beginning of the Taff Trail, took some photos and set off on our way. It took slightly longer than expected and due to my only jotting down the second half of the trail meant that we were on strict lookout for signposts and may have taken unnecessarily long detours quite a lot. Still, we were off! We cycled our way back out of Cardiff Bay, through the city centre, past Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, and up north towards Hailey Park. Fortunately after about 8 miles we came across a lovely little tea shop selling teacakes and ice cream - breakfast at last!!! We caught a lovely view of Castell Coch which I don't think I would have admired quite so much if I'd known what was soon to come.

We happily hit the road again, full of toasted teacakes and ice creamy goodness and cycled onwards and upwards to Tongwynlais where the second of our many misfortunes occurred. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a little voice reminding me of reading about two routes from Tongwynlais - the steep horrible one up the hill to Castell Coch, or a nice, easy, friendly one that avoided hills and carried on smoothly up to Taffs Well and Pontypridd. Unfortunately, this was a very quiet little voice so we decided to play it safe and follow the signs. Two horrible, soul-destroying hills later we'd reached Castell Coch, we stopped for a minute to catch our breath and get back on our bikes (after giving up and pushing them very slowly up the hill) and looked for the next sign. The sign pointed up another hill. One more horrible, soul-destroying hill later we were sure we were at the top and, with no signs to say otherwise, carried on going for another two miles up a nice gradual incline. Needless to say our legs were falling off at this point (apart from Kat's - she must have some kind of innate superglue). We eventually reached a fork in the road with distinct lack of Taff Trail signposts so went back, asked some other cyclists and realised we'd cycled 2 miles up a hill in completely the wrong direction. Another 2 miles later we found the unsignposted turning we were supposed to have taken and found a lovely downhill path to get us back on track.

The trail was fairly easy-going from here onwards - smooth paths, slight hills that seemed like nothing compared to the hills we'd seen before, and a light drizzle of rain that was more refreshing that anything. Sadly, in the last of our unfortunate events for the day, in typical Welsh fashion the light rain soon turned into a downpour and we cycled on past Rhydyfelin and Pontypridd in the hope that it wouldn't last too long. By the time we reached Abercynon we were pretty soaked, so with limbs falling off, hypothermia setting in, and the next stop with a train station 10 miles away, we decided to call it a day.