Gospel Pass takeaway
Despite three punctures and some ill-advised fish and chips, the highest road pass in Wales didn't disappoint.
This was a 98km loop of two halves: the first from Abergavenny along the towpath of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, the second following National Cycle Network routes through Talgarth and then across the Black Mountains via Gospel Pass and back to Abergavenny. I chose this anticlockwise direction because I wanted to finish the ride with the rush of the 19km-descent down the Vale of Ewyas, from Gospel Pass through the village of Llanthony and its ruined priory. This was to be my reward.
I was prepared for some challenges on the way, but I didn’t expect the first one to confront me as I stepped from the train at Abergavenny. My front tyre was completely flat. I must have picked up a puncture on the half-mile ride from my house to the station. How unlucky is that? No matter, I put in a new tube and then weaved my way through the outskirts of town, crossing the River Usk to join the canal.
Had I been travelling this way in the early nineteenth century I could have expected to see the canal busy with coal boats – in 1809 alone, 150,000 tonnes of the stuff shipped from wharves along the River Usk to the docks in Newport. Today, the canal serves the leisure industry and I encountered only the occasional narrow boat and a swan or two.