CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 239 km round trip from Beaumaris - roughly 4 h 02 in the saddle. The stops in between: Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape, Bryneglwys Slate Quarry and back through Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 34 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Beaumaris is often called the most perfect castle never finished. Edward I began it in 1295 on the shore of Anglesey, at the northern entrance to the Menai Strait, as the last of his great chain of fortresses built to hold down Wales after his conquest. His architect, Master James of St George, designed it as a perfectly symmetrical concentric castle: an inner ring of high walls and towers, an outer ring of lower walls, and a moat linked to the sea so that supply ships could sail up to a dock at the gate. Money ran out, the Scottish wars took priority, and the towers never reached their planned height. Even so, it is a masterpiece of military design, and with the castles of Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech it is listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beaumaris Castle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beaumaris Castle is where the day begins. Next is Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape.
Look at the Nantlle valley from the road and you see a green bowl with a ragged grey edge, as if someone had bitten the mountain. It is a place where the quarrying went down instead of along. The pits here are enormous, cut deep below the level of the lakes, with sheer sides, and the biggest of them, the Dorothea, became a flooded hole of cold green water. On the skyline, tips of waste slate lean against each other like broken plates. This is part of the slate landscape of north-west Wales that UNESCO listed in 2021, and the quarries here are among the oldest in the area, producing roofing slate from the eighteenth century and earlier.
Read the complete Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bryneglwys Slate Quarry.
High above the village of Abergynolwyn, in a side valley where the sheep outnumber everyone, the spoil heaps of Bryneglwys tell you that this quiet corner of southern Snowdonia was once an industrial place. Slate was cut here through the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and the whole reason the little Talyllyn Railway exists is to carry it down the valley to the coast at Tywyn. The quarry finally closed just after the Second World War, and the railway, which should have died with it, was taken over by volunteers in 1951 and became the first preserved railway in the world. You can still walk up from the old incline at Nant Gwernol into the quarry workings, past roofless barracks and wheel pits, with streams running through all of it.
Read the complete Bryneglwys Slate Quarry write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 120 km into the recorded legs you reach Bryneglwys Slate Quarry. Next is back through Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape, late in the day. Next is Beaumaris Castle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beaumaris Castle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Beaumaris Castle. That is the ride.
Beaumaris Castle → Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape → Bryneglwys Slate Quarry is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Bryneglwys Slate Quarry → back through Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape → Beaumaris Castle is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.