(Excluding to/from Trafford Park station!)
The astute amongst you will have noticed that this page is one of three relating to Wales. I had to use up a week's worth of holiday before the end of August and so didn't really want to waste the days - and since noone else was available to join me and my car is dying rapidly (the diff's gone), I decided to head over to North Wales on my own, taking my bike on the train. I'd planned it a little in advance, because I didn't know whether I'd be able to cope with the North Wales terrain on my bike; I asked about it on uk.rec.cycling, chatted to a couple of friends about it and borrowed a couple of books from the library. I also invested in a 'Goldeneye' Cycling Country Lanes and Byways Snowdonia & Anglesey map.
After much consideration, I decided I'd go for it and head over to Caernarfon; I'd been there once before so had a bit of reassurance from that perspective, but the first thing that threw me was that it didn't have a BR railway station. This rather changed my plans from the word go! Cutting a long story short, I booked a ticket (and was given the runaround by various train companies when I tried to reserve my bike, but that's a different matter) and I booked a B&B for Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Originally I wanted Friday too, but there was an opera festival going on /plus/ it was bank holiday weekend - so I booked the two nights to start with and thought I'd see how I went and if I wanted to stay on I'd investigate more when I got there. (I stayed at Marianfa, which was great actually - obviously it was premium prices as it was their busiest time of the year but they catered for me and my bike wonderfully, were friendly and stored my bike securely. I would recommend them. Anyway.)
My plan looked like this:
Wed - catch a train to Bangor, then cycle along the 'coast' of the Menai straits to the B&B (est: 8 miles)
Thu - do a round cycle from Caernarfon, see how I get on
Fri - take it from there, perhaps find somewhere else to stay, or cycle to Bangor and come home
So, Wednesday. I cycled from home to Trafford Park, no problems (not included in the map above!) - and surprisingly I had no real problems with the trains. Got to Bangor, and realised that although I had a large map of the area I didn't really know where to go from the station! I ended up in the town centre, and found the information place, where the nice man pointed me in the right direction! At this point I was beginning to realise that cycling with an extra couple of stone in a backpack on my back was actually a lot harder than I'd anticipated. Normally I don't carry much more than a bottle of water, a bike pump and waterproofs, so carrying a few days' worth of stuff was a lot more than I was used to. It didn't affect my balance too much (although I couldn't turn round/look behind as much) but it made life a lot more difficult than I was expecting. Ah well.
The other major thing I hadn't anticipated was that Bangor was surrounded by hills and in order to leave the place I had to cycle uphill quite a bit. I managed the immediate hills (although it did probably tire me more than it should have done, particualrly with the backpack). I got to the first Menai Bridge eventually, when I was faced with another uphill slope leading away from that roundabout. At this point I felt quite down, really, because I was fearing that I'd bitten off more than I could chew; the constant inclines that I'd encountered, all within about 2 miles of the station, combined with my bag and general knackeredness meant I was ready to give up at that point. Still, somehow I persevered - I think I just told myself that I could walk to Caernarfon if necessary.
I made progress - and once I was out of Bangor and away from the bridges the cycle path becomes part of the National Cycle Network route 8, and becomes much better paved as it goes past the National Trust property there (where the aformentioned festival was taking place!). There were some cracking blackberries to be had on that road there, too - it's a main road, so few motorists stop, and I can only imagine other cyclists don't stop on the cycle path either!
The path continued down by a dock/marina, which was slightly irritating as it seemed to go downhill for the sake of it just to show us the bay - irritating because, of course, we had to rise up the other side again. Anyway, from that point onwards it got a lot better as the track joined the route of the old railway line that used to link Bangor and Caernarfon. This track was much better, flatter and I got into Caernarfon mid-afternoon. The rest of the day I used to settle into the B&B, walk into the town, have a quick look round and get some food.
So, that was day one - I got there in one piece, and although I was majorly demoralised by the hills of Bangor I still managed to do 12 miles - the sort of distance I'd have normally done on a random ride. The weather was spitting with rain and damp all day; fortunately I didn't get too wet - and there was a nice sunset that evening indicating that the next day was to be a decent one...