Slaying the
Arrivée149Autumn2020
The land of the red dragon, with its mountains and valleys, has a fearsome reputation for cyclists. Chris Pugh tackled the Mille Cymru in 2018 with friend and fellow Audaxer, Clare Walkeden. It was a punishing 1,000km journey over the toughest of terrains – and it left Chris with a deep personal animosity for Pembrokeshire in particular. This is the story of their ride
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THE MILLE CYMRU is more than just a bike ride. The route takes in literally thousands of hills – the total ascent being twice the height of Mount Everest. The savage scale of the thing made it, without doubt, the hardest, toughest, silliest event I’ve ever done. My journey here was an emotional one. A few years ago I attempted a 400km ride which I quit through sheer boredom. The mental desolation of not having spoken to anyone for 18 hours just did me in. When my cycling friend Clare Walkeden and I decided to do Mille Cymru I knew we had to do it together – neither of us could have ridden this alone.
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Clare has more experience of this type of challenge but even she wondered whether it was actually possible.
FIRST LEG: UPTON MAGNA TO LLANWRTYD WELLS 303KM, 4,500M CLIMB We rolled off at 8am. Everything we’d learned about Mille Cymru had told us that this was going to be hard, both physically and mentally. It was July, so it was also going to be hot. The only way to ride this was to break it down mentally into a section at a time. Ride, sit down, regroup, and off you go to the next section. The miles rolled by – over Long Mynd,
Stiperstones and Red Lion Hill on the first section. Then on to Bwlch Llywn Bank, Llanbedr and the Gospel Pass. Things began to hurt. It was so hot. Other riders were clearly struggling. We’d only done 160km. The third section was mercifully flat, but all ridden in savage heat. By Tintern we’d done 200km. It was 8pm, and still another 100km to go. We rode on into the night with a stunning sunset. I felt privileged just to be rolling along quietly witnessing this sheer beauty. After one final mountain, Mynydd Eppynt, we reached our stop at 1am, with 300km done. Only 715km to go. Sleep was, alas, impossible. I guess that
