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.
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 246 km round trip from Beaumaris - roughly 4 h 26 in the saddle. On the way it passes Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G, Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri, Bryneglwys Slate Quarry and back through Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 25 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 Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G.
Edward I built Caernarfon to be unmistakable. Begun in 1283, after his conquest of Wales, the castle rises beside the Menai Strait with polygonal towers and bands of coloured stone that echo, it is said, the walls of Constantinople, a deliberate reference to imperial power. The King wanted a seat of government as well as a fortress, and the town walls were built to enclose a planted English borough, so the whole thing was an act of colonisation in stone. UNESCO listed Edward's castles and town walls in Gwynedd in 1986, together with Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris, and Caernarfon is the grandest of them.
Read the complete Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G comes up 35 km in. Next is Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri.
High above Porthmadog, in the empty upland between Cwm Pennant and Cwmystradllyn, two abandoned slate quarries sit like ruined castles on the hillside. Gorseddau and the Prince of Wales quarry are part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales, which UNESCO listed in 2021, and they tell a story of big hopes and quick failure. Gorseddau in particular was developed in the 1850s with money and ambition, a tramway and a grand multi-storey mill at Ynys-y-Pandy whose roofless stone shell still looks like an abbey. The slate turned out to be poor, and within a couple of decades the whole enterprise had wound down.
Read the complete Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
71 km in you reach Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri. 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.
Bryneglwys Slate Quarry, about halfway. Next is back through Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri sits at 141 km, about halfway. Next is back through Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G comes up 177 km in. 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.
Beaumaris Castle closes the day.
Beaumaris Castle → Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G → Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri → Bryneglwys Slate Quarry is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bryneglwys Slate Quarry → back through Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Gorseddau and Prince of Wales Slate Quarri → back through Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in G → Beaumaris Castle is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.