CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 269 km round trip from Cardiff - roughly 4 h 18 in the saddle. The stops in between: Blaenavon Industrial Landscape, City of Bath, back through City of Bath and back through Blaenavon Industrial Landscape. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Cardiff Castle tells you a lot about the city in one place. There is a Roman fort wall, a Norman keep on a mound, and, behind it, a fantastical Victorian palace designed by William Burges for the third Marquess of Bute, one of the richest men in Britain, whose money came from the coal that was shipped through the docks. In the nineteenth century, Cardiff was the world's biggest coal-exporting port, and it grew from a small town into a capital in a few decades. Wales formally recognised it as capital in 1955.
Read the complete Cardiff write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cardiff is where the day begins. Next is Blaenavon Industrial Landscape.
Blaenavon is a town on a hill that ought to be a mountain, with a shape and a story that suit the mountain. It stands high at the head of a valley in south Wales, at the edge of the Brecon Beacons, and in the late eighteenth century it became one of the great ironmaking centres of the world. The ironworks, built in 1789 and now preserved, shows how the furnaces, the casting house and the workers' cottages fitted together, and Stack Square, where the ironworkers lived, is still a place you can walk through. The whole landscape, with its quarries, tramroads, reservoirs and spoil heaps, was listed by UNESCO in 2000.
Read the complete Blaenavon Industrial Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Blaenavon Industrial Landscape comes up 34 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Blaenavon Industrial Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
68 km in you reach Blaenavon Industrial Landscape. Next is City of Bath.
Bath is one of the few whole cities on the UNESCO list, and it earns it twice over. Underneath lie the Roman baths of Aquae Sulis, built around the only natural hot springs in Britain, where water still comes up at around forty-six degrees and the great pool, with its later colonnade above, steams in the cold. On top sits the Georgian city that eighteenth-century society built when Bath became the place to see and be seen, in honey-coloured local limestone: the Circus, the sweep of the Royal Crescent, the shops on Pulteney Bridge over the Avon and the long elegant terraces climbing the hills.
Read the complete City of Bath write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Bath, about halfway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Bath write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Bath sits at 136 km, about halfway. Next is back through City of Bath.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Bath write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through City of Bath comes up 169 km in. Next is back through Blaenavon Industrial Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Blaenavon Industrial Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
203 km in you reach back through Blaenavon Industrial Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Blaenavon Industrial Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Blaenavon Industrial Landscape, late in the day. Next is Cardiff.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cardiff write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 269 km.
Cardiff → Blaenavon Industrial Landscape is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Blaenavon Industrial Landscape → City of Bath is 90 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through City of Bath → back through Blaenavon Industrial Landscape is 90 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Blaenavon Industrial Landscape → Cardiff is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.