Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain

by Steven Primrose-Smith

  I clipped the chain into position. It was as good as new, except that there was a weird rubbing sound. I looked at the chain and couldn't see where the noise was coming from. But at least now I wouldn't have to push the remaining nine miles.

  Since 1994, St Davids is officially Britain's smallest city by both size and population. In reality it's a village with a cathedral. You walk through quaint streets filled with little shops and then suddenly you see it below you, a building out of all proportion to its surroundings, like someone deciding to build the Gherkin in a window box.

  Some believe the cathedral contains the bones of St David, the patron saint of Wales, although carbon dating says they're only 12th century whereas St David lived six hundred years earlier. Disregarding such trivial detail, the cathedral became an important pilgrimage destination, worth 50% of a trip to Rome or 33% of one to Jerusalem in God's eyes, according to the people who knew these things, or made them up on His behalf.

  As far as sainthood goes, young David got off to a good start by being the child of a holy-sounding king called Sanctus and a nun. He was also supposedly born during a violent storm, but then again so is everybody in Wales.

  To become a saint you must have performed at least two miracles. By rights, for keeping Blackburn Rovers in the Premier League during the 2008-9 and 2009-10 seasons, Sam Allardyce is in with a shout. St David had a bagful. He did all the normal, mundane stuff like resurrecting kids by splashing them with tears and de-blinding old fellas but his most famous one was quite showy. He was addressing a large crowd but couldn't be heard. A dove landed on his shoulder and then the ground beneath him rose up to form a hill to aid his performance. That would have been pretty impressive back then, but he would still have had a problem with amplification. Surely a more effective miracle would have been to magic up an auditorium and a decent Powerpoint presentation.

  A sign outside the cathedral said that visiting time was until five thirty. Thanks to examining a massive pile of dust all afternoon it was now six. I stuck my head in the door and could see a service, an evensong, in the distance and decided to leave them to it.

  Outside, in the cathedral grounds, a guy was playing a ukelele. I hung around and listened for a bit but it was clear he wasn't going to do any George Formby.

  At the campsite I tried to fix the rubbing chain by turning the bike upside down, but the back wheel was buckled too badly to turn the pedals by hand. This bike needed professional attention, or at least the attention of someone who knew what the hell they were doing.

  *

  The sixteen miles to Haverfordwest and the nearest bicycle repair place took a slow two hours thanks to a strong headwind, the rubbing wheel, plenty of hills and frequent rubbish surfaces. Annoyingly, the route went from being relatively high all the way down to the coast at Newgale although there seemed to be nothing there to warrant the descent but a surf shop. Still, there was no denying the Pembrokeshire coast was spectacular.

  In Haverfordwest, in the absence of any easy-to-find local bike shop, I stumbled upon a Halfords. It put its car spares on the ground floor and its bike repair on the first floor, which was hardly convenient with a loaded bike, especially when it wouldn't fit into their tiny lift. I removed the panniers and hid them in a corner of the store before lugging the bike upstairs. They were going to see what was wrong with the chain and, at the same time, replace the back wheel. I had to come back in an hour.

  The guy on the bike desk had recommended Morrison's café next door as somewhere cheap and nearby to wait. I got a coffee and a pastry, and then saw they did eggs Benedict - one of my favourites – and so had that as well. I still hadn't killed enough time. I bought a newspaper and returned to the busy café for a Coke. With no other seats available a bloke asked if he and his wife and baby could share my table. They sat there for a few minutes but as soon as another one became available they scarpered. I suspect my now funky trainers were responsible for their hasty departure.

  I returned to Halfords but the bike wasn't ready. It was hardly surprising. They had two guys on the desk to answer the phone and serve customers as well as do bike repairs. They were constantly interrupted.

  “I'm not sure how you got here,” said the repairman. “When we took the tyre off, your wheel fell to pieces.”

  I spoke to another member of staff there after he'd asked about my ride.

  “There's a local tree around here that's supposedly the birthplace of Merlin,” he said.

  “But Merlin didn't actually exist, did he?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and continued.

  “There was a legend that if they chopped the tree down then there'd be a great flood.”

  “And did they chop it down?”

  “Yeah, and there was a flood and it killed a few people.”

  “So the prophesy came true?”

  “Yeah, it was great!” he laughed. Then he realised what he'd said and sobered up. “Well, not the dead people part.”

  The bike was eventually finished and I set off. With a fully functioning back wheel I floated along the roads. There was still a noise coming from the chain though and life on the A40 was fairly miserable for cyclists. It had a grate every ten metres or so, but they'd sunk over time and the tarmac around them had cracked, making each one a little death trap and forcing me farther out into the traffic than any life-loving cyclist would ever want to be.

  County number eighteen was Carmarthenshire. Having discovered there were two campsites nearby I loaded the bike with some shopping at St Clears. Unfortunately, after lugging myself up a hill, I found the first site had closed down and was up for sale. The sign showing the way to the second one looked discouragingly old. Despite there being only one road on which it could've been, over loads of steep hills, I never found it. With no other option I cycled the additional ten miles into Carmarthen and a few miles beyond to find a field covered in caravans. I knocked on the door of the attached house. An old fella answered it

  “Could I camp here for the night please?”

  “Eh?” said the old man.

  “Camping?”

  He looked blank.

  “Is this the house for the campsite?”

  “The campsite?”

  “Yes, there's a campsite just there, behind your house.”

  “What?”

  “A campsite.”

  “Oh yes, the campsite,” he finally said.

  “So this is the right place?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn't know what all that was about. Maybe I'd just woken him from this winter's hibernation, or perhaps he'd been doing meth.

  “Have you got showers and stuff? I didn't see any.”

  “Nah. No shower. There's a toilet.”

  “Ah, right.” It had been a warm day and after all the hills I needed a wash but it'd have to wait. “How much is it?”

  “Fifteen pounds.”

  “Wow, that's a bit steep for a site with no showers.”

  “I have to pay rates for that field. And you're paying for the location,” he replied.

  To be honest it didn't seem like a great location.

  “Is there a pub nearby or something?”

  “No.”

  “Any shops?”

  “No.”

  “Anything?”

  “There's the castle.”

  “That's miles away,” I said.

  He shrugged. I thought for a moment.

  “I can do it for fourteen,” he said.

  It was still too much but I didn't want to cycle any further after today's hills and headwinds. I paid up, set up the tent and realised there was no one else in any of those caravans. It looked like I was paying his rates for the entire site.

  *

  Oh, what a beautiful morning! The sun was shining and the birds celebrated that – at last – spring was finally here. Only a few miles down the road was the National Botanical Garden of Wales. I popped inside for a look.

  On its 568-acre site they have a vegetable
garden, an apothecary, a double-walled flower garden, a tropical greenhouse and that giant bubble dome thing that enclosed Springfield in Simpsons The Movie. At 95 metres long and 55 metres wide it's the largest single-span greenhouse in the world and houses rare and, in some cases, lost species of plants from each continent. It's mightily impressive. Unfortunately, in 2015, the site made a £300,000 loss and its funding is to be reduced further still. It needs more visitors. Go and see it while you can. It's well worth it.

  I learnt about the dragon tree and its bright red sap, that Cape Town's Table Mountain has more plant species than the whole of Britain, that the chaparral and its dormant seeds can survive fire, and that a mobility scooter can go really fast on a slight downhill. The old fella even screamed out an exhilarated “Wheeeeee!”

  The whole place made me pine for the garden we'd had as children. Although it was obviously nothing on this scale it had seemed huge to us as little kids, the top part a flat, well-manicured lawn about the size of half a tennis court with shrubs and flowers and then a slope of semi-abandoned land terminating in a pond my then ten-year-old brother had dug and filled with frogs and newts. One of my more morose, early teenage friends, Mark, used to go down there by himself and stare into the black water for hours contemplating the misery of existence. Those were happy childhood memories of Britain. Well, probably not for Mark.

  After a couple of hours of smelling flowers and watching death-defying geriatrics I continued. The route took me up a giant hill through a village that would have been aptly named had I been travelling in the opposite direction, Tumble.

  Through an afternoon of lanes and woods I arrived just north of the town of Llanelli and found a campsite farm up a hill. I set up my tent and then walked into town. I was looking for a beer and I found some in the Greyhound, next to its brewery, Felinfeol, pronounced “Feeling Foul”, perhaps an appropriate name for anyone partaking too excessively.

  There were a few people dotted around inside including a large Welshman, Justin, sitting at the bar.

  “Yes, see, I did Land's End to John o'Groats 'bout five year ago,” he said in a strong Welsh accent. He was very enthusiastic and showed me photos he had on his phone. “Course I were a lot slimmer then. Great fun though.”

  The lounge was slowly starting to empty. Eventually Justin had to leave too.

  “Bet you're glad he's gone,” said another fella. I didn't manage a response before he continued. “He's a pillock.”

  Another man entered the pub. He was wearing orange hi-vis and was very tanned, as though he worked outdoors in a country considerably warmer than this one.

  “Who are we talking about?” he asked.

  “Justin.”

  “Yeah. He's a right dick.”

  He'd seemed alright to me.

  “Anyway, you'll be fine on your bike,” he said. “We've got this sunny weather for a month.”

  The last time I'd cycled through this land and experienced a so-called Welsh heatwave it had managed a single day.

  *

  I set off at ten and, on flat roads, an hour and a quarter later reached Swansea. This city is a whole host of British capitals: the bingo capital of Britain, the cooked breakfast capital, the knotweed capital, whatever the hell that means, and, more amusingly, the casual sex capital.

  Swansea was my first of the eleven new, tiny counties in Wales's south-east. Although it's one of the largest of these, it's still smaller than Rutland, the smallest county in England outside of the City of London's square mile. In order to see them all, the next few days would see me cycling a more wiggly route than of late, up and down the Valleys.

  Approaching the city I was nearly wiped out by a bus. So far, the driving in Britain had been unusually terror-free. My mum, who has predicted my death before every other bike ride, hadn't given this one a moment's worry despite Britain's statistically murderous roads; it's second only to Portugal for the number of deaths per cycle journey made. And as always, as in this case, the commercial drivers, the ones supposedly with the most experience, were the worst.

  That stretch of dual carriageway on the way into Swansea was once the location of possibly the most heinous crime in British history. In 2011 a man called Andre Varciana threw a chicken bone at his friend. Unwisely, he launched it across the two-laned road in front of an unmarked police car, which performed an emergency stop and caused a four-car pile-up. The bone thrower got off lightly. He only had to pay £85 costs in a case the judge described as the most bizarre he'd ever known. I looked online expecting a headline writers' field day – y'know, things like “Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?”, “Chicken Man Given Poultry Fine” or “All KFC'ed Up!” – but it seemed the press weren't going to be egged on so easily.

  It wasn't the only interesting crime to happen in Swansea in the last few years. In 2013, a newly married couple, the Barnetts, went on a bender before returning to their room at the five-star Morgans Hotel. They then proceeded to steal just about everything inside it, including slippers, dressing gowns, linen sheets, the entire contents of the minibar, the telephone and the paintings on the walls. They even passed the flat-screen telly out of the window. They'd have taken the bed and carpet too if only they'd had a bigger van. Their plan was rumbled when, checking out, they were presented with a bill for a pay-per-view movie.

  “But our room doesn't have a telly,” Mr Barnett argued. Which was true. But only since very recently.

  The condition of the roads into Swansea is awful, the worst yet, broken and cracked and giving the bike a right hammering. That future Prime Minister in the double-decker bus café just before Ludlow had told me Wales took loads of EU money for roads – he was pro-Brexit and so I wasn't sure why he was so down on money finding its way back here, but he was – but if that were true then none of it had ended up in Swansea.

  In the town centre I saw a short bloke in a massively oversized, dark flak jacket wearing a black face mask. He looked like he was auditioning for a part in a new Mortal Kombat movie, a sort of goth Scorpion. I figured I'd give him a wide berth. I've played that game. I didn't want him grabbing my head and pulling my spine out of my body.

  Cycling along the coastal cycle path through Swansea and out past the marina was joyous. And then it turned into what seemed like a giant industrial estate and, oddly out of place, there was a museum with a sign that said something like “Go Back In Time To 1940”, which seemed a bit cruel. If I were going back in time, 1940 wouldn't be a year I'd have chosen.

  I paid a fiver and went into the war museum. I was the only one there. Its Anderson shelter, with an air raid siren blaring in the background, was chilling. But as well as bringing home the horrors of war it also made you realise the horrors of 1940s houses and their grim furnishings.

  There was an interesting collection of wartime posters. One of them seemed to put a little too much trust in God for my liking. I mean, even if He existed, how would you know He was on your side?

  “The secret of steadiness and inner strength is to listen to God and do what He says. God speaks directly to the heart of every man and woman who is prepared to listen and obey. Write down the thoughts He gives you. His voice can be heard wherever you are, in the home, in the factory, in the air-raid shelter, in the first-aid post.”

  I think the author was confusing God with schizophrenia.

  There was another one about wasting food that said, “Better Pot Luck with Churchill than Humble Pie with Hitler.” That wasn't exactly confidence boosting.

  They had a nice collection of kit, shells and gas masks and a cookbook detailing recipes that could be made from war rations, like the original Jack Munroe.

  I continued into Port Talbot, in the next countylet of Neath Port Talbot, the largest of these little sections of Wales. The town was once dubbed “the wife-stealing capital of Britain” although it was only described thus by one bloke who was sick of being cuckolded rather than by any scientific body like, say, The Sun. Port Talbot is also one of the five places in Britai
n you're most likely to find a blonde. Its Superdrug apparently sells double the amount of blonde hair dye than any other product.

  From a distance Port Talbot is a fairly hideous place, despite all the blondes, but rather than cycle past as I'd done when we came this way last year, this time I wanted to find another museum, one I'd suspected to be a myth, the Baked Bean Museum. I found its location on my phone and headed to it, but the route took me into a road that contained nothing but council flats. Maybe the museum was just some bloke's spare room housing a collection of tins, but without a sign outside, I'd never know which one it was. Or maybe my phone was playing up. But at least I was now back on the coast and the front of Port Talbot was a vast improvement on its other aspects.

  I contemplated stealing a wife or two but time was getting on and I decided instead to return to the cycle path I'd followed since Swansea, National Cycle Route 4. In the past, some of these NCR paths have had a tendency to throw up some weirdnesses, like ridiculously steep hills when a flatter option is just around the corner, or a three-mile detour to miss a one hundred metre stretch of quiet A-road. Today would be no different. After cycling around a labyrinth of urban decay, I found myself on a boulder-strewn path and then through some woods before being presented by an iron gate so narrow I had to remove all the bags from my bike. The route continued high on a hill on a tiny path that didn't seem like cyclists should be on it, before another iron gate had me stripping the bike for a second time.

  Eventually I reached another town and county, Bridgend. Sadly, it's another place reported as the suicide capital of Britain, but here with good reason. In the ten years to 2006, there was a fairly normal average of three suicides a year. However, over the next six years, 79 people in this tiny county committed suicide, mostly young people and almost exclusively by hanging. None of the deaths are linked, except by the possibility of copycat behaviour, but it hasn't stopped people reaching for more occult explanations.