Brecon Beacons Big Day

A 598 km loop

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Why this ride

Scenery first, traffic last, with checkpoints that make sense on a bike. A 598 km loop that starts and ends near London, about 10 h 52 of riding. It goes by way of Fairford and Brecon. Long stretches are under trees.

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. Fairford fuel

   Fairford is a small, quiet town on the southern edge of the Cotswolds, built of honey-coloured stone along the River Coln, and it hides one of the great treasures of English medieval art. The parish church of St Mary has the only complete set of medieval stained glass windows to survive in any parish church in England: twenty-eight windows, made around 1500, telling the story of the Christian faith from the Creation to the Last Judgement. How they survived the iconoclasm of the Reformation and the Civil War is a mystery, but they did, and they are well worth twenty minutes of your time.

   The town's other claim to fame is very different. Just south of Fairford lies RAF Fairford, a base used by the United States Air Force, and every July it hosts the Royal International Air Tattoo, one of the largest military air shows in the world, when the skies fill with jets and the roads fill with traffic. Outside that week, you might still hear the occasional roar of aircraft.

   The landscape around Fairford is gentle and pastoral, with water meadows, stone villages and gravel pits, many now flooded and used as lakes for sailing and fishing in the Cotswold Water Park. A few kilometres east, Lechlade is the town where the Thames becomes navigable, and its riverside meadows are made for a short break. To the north, the roads climb into the Cotswold hills, with wide views, beautiful villages and quiet lanes, and further west lie the Welsh borders and the Brecon Beacons, the destination of the day.

   As a fuel stop, Fairford is small, so options are limited; Cirencester and Swindon are the nearest large towns with plenty of choice. The town has a few pubs and cafés where you can get a coffee or a quick lunch. The roads around Fairford are flat and easy, with gentle curves, but the Cotswold lanes can be narrow and winding, with blind bends and stone walls close to the road. Watch for tractors, horses and cyclists.

3. Brecon food

   Brecon is a small market town at the meeting of the Usk and the Honddu, in the shadow of the highest mountains in southern Britain. To the south rise the Brecon Beacons, now officially known by their Welsh name, Bannau Brycheiniog: a range of grassy, flat-topped sandstone summits with steep north-facing scarps, culminating in Pen y Fan, 886 metres high. On a clear day, the view of the mountains from the town is magnificent; on a wet day, which is often, they disappear into the clouds.

   The town has a cathedral, a small, solid building on a hill above the river, and a long military tradition: the army has used the Beacons for training for generations, and you may see soldiers marching up the hills with heavy packs. The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal ends here, and its towpath is good for a quiet half hour on foot. In August, Brecon hosts a well-known jazz festival.

   For riders, Brecon is a gateway to some of the best roads in Britain. The A470 south through the Beacons, past the Storey Arms and down towards Merthyr Tydfil, is a fast, flowing road with long views over the mountains and reservoirs. To the west, the A4069 over the Black Mountain, between Llangadog and Brynamman, is a spectacular mountain road with hairpins and wide-open moorland that has featured on television as one of the best driving roads in Britain. To the north-east, the Gospel Pass, a single-track road from Hay-on-Wye over the Black Mountains, is the highest road in Wales.

   The roads here demand respect. Sheep wander freely, cattle grids are common, and the weather can change in minutes, with rain, wind and fog sweeping in from the west. Mountain roads can be greasy and narrow, with sharp bends and steep drops. Brecon has fuel, supermarkets, cafés and pubs, and nobody will hurry you out of a café before or after the mountains. Welsh cakes and a cup of tea are a traditional and very welcome snack.

4. London finish

Where this sits

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