Blaenavon Industrial Landscape and Lyme Regis to West Bay

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Blaenavon Industrial Landscape is where the day begins. Next is City of Bath.

2. 2. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   City of Bath comes up about 89 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lyme Regis to West Bay.

3. 3. Lyme Regis to West Bay

   The cliffs between Lyme Regis and West Bay are falling into the sea, and that is precisely why people come. This stretch of the Dorset coast is part of the Jurassic Coast, England's first natural World Heritage Site, and its soft clay and limestone cliffs constantly release fossils from the Jurassic seas of around two hundred million years ago. Ammonites, belemnites and the bones of marine reptiles wash out onto the beaches after every storm, and at Charmouth you will see families combing the shingle with hammers and bags at low tide.

   Read the complete Lyme Regis to West Bay write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 192 km into the recorded legs you reach Lyme Regis to West Bay. Next is back through City of Bath.

4. 4. back through City of Bath

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete City of Bath write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through City of Bath, late in the day. Next is Blaenavon Industrial Landscape.

5. 5. Blaenavon Industrial Landscape

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Blaenavon Industrial Landscape write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Blaenavon Industrial Landscape. That is the ride.