Day 1: Garage to Snowdonia HQ

 

It is Saturday, the 7th September of the Year of the Lord 2019. To be more precise, it is 8:08 in the morning. In this exact minute, the engine of my BMW Boxer (a 2014 R1200RT) starts, emitting that distinctive tone I love to call the “depressed chainsaw”. Instantly, I miss being on a Moto Guzzi. Sadly, my 1985, absolutely spiffing, wonderfully-sounding, carburettors Moto Guzzi 1000 SP is too old for this kind of travel, and must therefore stay in the garage for the duration of this trip. Not for the first time, or the last, I fantasise about how beautiful it would be to have a modern, 2-cylinder, proper, problem-free, big-bore Moto Guzzi tourer with all the bells and whistles to go touring around Europe.

Alas, Moto Guzzi does not produce any tourer of any description (small or big bore), and the last of the breed, the Norge, was never reliable enough for me to risk a purchase. However, Moto Guzzi is now producing, to great popular acclaim, a mid-engine adventure bike, called V85 TT (which means “tuttoterreno”, “all terrain”). Not my cup of tea for both travel style (I am not very tall, and do not feel very comfortable on “adventure” bikes) and engine size (sadly, when you have tried 125 HP it is difficult to go back to 80 HP), but this leads one to hope that there will be more in the future. Also, I am confident that the Moto Guzzi count during the holiday will go further than last journey’s one, also due to the said V85 TT, of which I still have to see one “in the wild”. I am confident that, this time, things will be better, because the V85 is selling very well to raving Internet reviews. We shall see.

It is a beautiful morning, as it was when I started for the Lake District in June. But that one proved a very wet holiday, so my enthusiasm is rather limited now. I start, as always on these occasions, with the boring part. The M25 is already fairly busy on this fine Saturday morning, then it’s the M11, then M6, then M42. One immediately notices how the speed cameras almost disappear once out of the M25.

The plan is to ride in the general direction of Ludlow, and from there to my Snowdonia headquarter. At 12, and then at 12:20, I have rain for a couple of minutes. However, the roads stay dry and I will file this one as “dry day” anyway.  As I enter Staffordshire the road are very nice, and I enjoy a pleasantly rolling landscape and nice roads with well-kept tarmac and sweeping curves. I already know Ludlow and the surrounding region, the sun is smiling at me, and all is fine in the world.

At some point down the road I read “Alaf” on top of “Slow”, and I realise I have missed the big “welcome to Wales” indication I had been waiting for. I am now officially in Wales, a region where people speak (or at least write) their own language  – which is largely unintelligible, if more than vaguely Tolkenian, to the likes of the undersigned -.

The landscape becomes gradually more “savage” now, and the weather is slowly changing from beautiful to wonderful. The cool breeze invites to keep the windscreen on “high” and the visor open, as the sun plays with me going in and out from behind the trees. It is very green now, thick forests substituting for open views of rolling hills. The view of Lake Bala coming from the hills up above is quite something, from there the road is flatter for a while before slowly getting up again as I approach my destination.

2019 Wales HQ is reached at 1:35 pm of a still glorious day. It takes a while to find the cottage, as in these little Welsh villages it does not seem obligatory to write the name of the roads. I ask a local and discover that “Cefn” is actually pronounced “Kevn”, besides being told where the street is. The village of Trawsfynydd (no idea how it is pronounced) has all I wanted for my chosen HQ: centrally located within the “operation zone”, big enough to make a walk pleasant if I so wish, with a grocery store and a petrol station for convenience. The description of the cottage also mentioned a pub, but the pub is now closed.

The landlord, who is also the neighbour, immediately comes out and greets me. He explains how the electronic and the heating work and where everything is, then I go to buy some victuals at the local shop. The sausages are a big disappointment but, luckily, the cidre is not!

2019 Wales HQ

No power nap today as when all is bought, cooked and eaten 4pm is fast approaching. The weather is still glorious, and experience teaches me that one has to make the most of beautiful days, because what seems normal today can look like a distant dream tomorrow.

I decide to head north west and touch on the first part of the Wales “coastal road”, following a route I have prepared at home. I head towards Porthmadog (which, conveniently, also has a big Tesco complete with fueling station) and then head for the Llyn peninsula, which is the strange “finger” south and west of the Snowdonia AONB proper. Besides the beautiful views of the sea, one notices that, for those accustomed to the Home Counties, the traffic is really limited on a Saturday afternoon.

Llyn Peninsula, 5:30 PM. No cars.

LLyn Peninsula, 5:30 PM. No grey skies.

Once again, though, Garmin Boy seems unable to follow straight lines, and keeps sending me on single tracks roads and on strange diversions on micro streets. Unnerved by the constant attempts to sidetrack me, I decide to forget the prepared route and just ride around according to feeling. I end up touching Criccieth, Pwllheli, then I find myself on the way to Caernarfon. From there, I steer toward Betws-Y-Coed, the village where I resided (three night, four days) in my previous and only visit to Wales up to now.

This was in May 2007, and I rode the Guzzi California I have written about in the past, and with which I never came to terms (seating position bad for my back after three hours; too little weight on the front wheel and, therefore, no “feeling”; sound not really comparable to a carburettor Guzzi; seating position does not invite to throttle opening). That short sojourn saw an awful lot of rain (two full days!) and an awful lot of really strong winds, with the end result that I did not see much of Wales, though what I saw I certainly liked.

Betws-y-Coed is as nice as I remembered it, albeit a little too “stretched” along the main road, with no “piazza” or pedestrian part to call its own. But the roads to and from it are, as I remembered, very good. It is late at this point, and I steer home via Capel Curig, Beddgelert and Porthmadog, where I buy more victuals and refuel.

Back at HQ, the same old guy who had greeted me in the morning, as I was approaching the cottage, comes in the garden and starts to chat. He is 80 years old if he is 3, but very lively. His dialect is not easy for me to understand, but what I gather is that he had a dirt bike as a boy, with his motorcycling ambitions cut short by the fact that his mother never wanted him to have a road bike (mine neither, but hey…). It is now almost 8 pm and both the old guy and myself want to have our respective dinner. I get in the cottage in the advanced dusk and reflect on what a beautiful day this one has been. Dry day, 332 miles, beautiful sun, great landscapes, and surprisingly empty roads! No Guzzis, but I am not worried.

Tomorrow should, hopefully, be just as good as today, with very bad weather forecast for Monday, then all fair until Thursday, or so the forecast says. It is fair to say that this day alone brought me more enjoyment than the entire 4 days in Wales in 2007. This is a really good start, and let us hope it stays this way.