A tale of two valleys

Author: Jim

With a few fine days weather behind me, I had high hopes of another sunny day.  Waking up, I had a sense of foreboding as the sun light failed to illuminate the wall above my bed; and I realised, as is so often the case in Snowdonia, that my ride was going to be a grey and wet one. I got out of bed, threw a few extra warm layer options in my bags and was ready to go.

For a while I have been trying to create a route that covers 1000m of ascent with as near to 30km of distance as I can. This has to have minimum road sections, as little going over the same ground twice other than for access and egress of the gravel and I want it to flow as much as possible and feel like an authentic journey. The next rule sounds a little arbitrary, but I don’t want to pre plan it on the computer, the fun is trying to estimate and create these journeys in my mind and see what I can piece together to try to make it happen.

I started this ride from the layby at Beaver Pool (GR ) but you could as easily start this from Betws y Coed if you were staying there, it would add nothing bad and in all honesty would probably give you a nice warm up to get the legs spinning before the first climb. From the layby follow the cycle path on the RH side of the A470 towards Dolwyddelan, when it runs out you will see a little bridge on the opposite side of the road, go over this and start climbing.