London · Black Mountain Wales Long Day

One real Welsh pass, long distance and no pretending it is casual.

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Why this ride

One real Welsh pass, long distance and no pretending it is casual. 568 km round from London - plan on about 10 h 19 of riding. The stops in between: Kettering and Wales.

Roadbook

1. London start

   London is the one place on the map where the best advice is to leave the bike at the edge. The centre around Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square is a maze of one-way streets, bus lanes, taxis and tourists, and parking is limited and expensive. The city also has a congestion charge and a low-emission zone, whose rules for motorcycles have changed over the years, so check the current conditions for your own machine before you ride in. For a start and finish, a quiet side street or a secure garage on the outskirts is a better plan.

   What you are stopping for here is history on a large scale. St Martin-in-the-Fields, a handsome eighteenth-century church with a tall steeple and a classical portico, stands at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square, and its crypt hosts a café, a gallery and a brass-rubbing centre. It is famous for its lunchtime concerts and for its work with homeless people. Across the road, Nelson's Column rises over the square, with its bronze lions, and the National Gallery stretches along the north side.

   The city has some 7.5 million people, and it is never quite finished with itself. Roman Londinium was a muddy trading post on the Thames, and the medieval city grew into a great port, burning down in 1666 and rebuilding in brick and stone. Westminster, a short walk south, holds the Palace of Parliament and the Abbey, where English monarchs have been crowned for nearly a thousand years. The riding here is entirely about getting out: the A3, A4 and A40 lead to quiet lanes in Surrey, the Chilterns and Kent, and a very early start on a Sunday morning makes it easy.

   Fuel is available, but it is among the most expensive in the country, so top up on the outskirts. For a drink, a pub in the side streets off Whitehall, with its brass and etched glass, is as London as it gets. And when the light fades, the square is full of buskers, pigeons and people, and the lamps along the Mall glow.

2. Kettering fuel

   Kettering grew rich on shoes, like its neighbours in Northamptonshire, and its streets of red-brick terraces and old factories still tell the story. Today it is a busy market town on the A14, a convenient fuel stop between the Midlands and East Anglia, and the countryside around it hides some remarkable buildings.

   Boughton House, a few miles north, is the home of the Duke of Buccleuch, and its French-style facade has earned it the nickname of the English Versailles. It is full of art and furniture, and the parkland around it is beautiful. Rushton Triangular Lodge, to the north-west, is a strange little building, built in the 1590s by Thomas Tresham, a Catholic, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity. Everything about it is based on the number three: three sides, three floors, three windows on each side, and inscriptions of thirty-three letters.

   Wicksteed Park, on the edge of Kettering, is one of the oldest amusement parks in Britain, opened in the 1920s by a local engineer who believed children should have places to play. Its playground equipment was famous across the country.

   The riding around Kettering is a mix of fast A-roads and lanes through the old Rockingham Forest, with gentle hills, stone villages and quiet roads. The A14 is busy with lorries, and the junctions around the town can be congested.

   On a long day towards the Black Mountains, this is a practical halt rather than a sightseeing one: fuel by the A14 junctions, a coffee, a look at the map. But if you are ahead of schedule, ten minutes at the Triangular Lodge will give you something to puzzle over for the next hundred miles.

3. Wales food

   Yes, it really is called Wales, and no, it is nowhere near the Welsh border. This village sits in South Yorkshire, a few miles south-east of Sheffield, next to Kiveton Park, and the name probably comes from an Old English word for foreigners or Britons, the same root that gave the country its name. The joke never gets old for travellers, and the village sign is a favourite photo.

   This was coal-mining country until the pits closed in the 1980s and 1990s, and the villages around grew up around the collieries, with rows of terraced houses for the miners. The landscape has since healed, with old spoil heaps turned into parks and woodland.

   Rother Valley Country Park, to the west, is a large area of lakes and meadows created from old opencast mines, with watersports, walking paths and a café. Roche Abbey, to the north-east, is a ruined Cistercian monastery in a wooded valley, its grounds landscaped by Capability Brown in the eighteenth century. The ruins are atmospheric, with a stream running through them.

   The M1 is close, at junction 31, and the A57 runs towards Worksop and the Dukeries, where Clumber Park and Sherwood Forest offer quiet roads through woodland. The riding around Wales is mostly about getting from one place to another, but the lanes to the south and east are pleasant.

   As a food stop it is honest and unpretentious: a pub, a chippy or two, a café that does a proper breakfast. Eat well, take the photo by the sign, and head off knowing you have already been to Wales once today.

4. London finish

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