After visiting the North of Wales the South was next. Breacon Beacons is a National Park with great hiking trails and great scenery. I didn’t have the time to go hiking since this was just another weekend trip but I was hoping to experience the scenery on the bike as well.
The first day was pretty much just spent getting there since I left pretty late on Saturday.
After reaching the western outskirts of Snowdonia I decided to also check out this little island even farther north called Hollyhead.
The villages I passed through on the island all seemed deserted except for a little spot in on village where some jet-skies took off.
It looked so calm, quiet and relaxed. It really seemed like time was standing still.
Hollyhead was my last destination on this trip. I spent an hour on a little beach and afterwards went straight back to London. I wish I had had more time to stop at Liverpool and Manchester which were right beside my route but that will be another trip.
This time I wasn’t so lucky with lateRoom. They had double booked my room so I had to take a different one which was bigger but didn’t have a bathroom en suit. Nonetheless I slept like a rock and left early in the morning after a good English breakfast. I can’t wait to finally switch to camping!
(click image to enlarge)
The scenery was just like I hoped it would be.
On the road I met another rider who had seen me stopping taking pictures. Malcolm, he organizes motorcycle tours and offered me a big discount for one of his trips if I document it with photos and videos. Never having tried it guided tours are not really my thing but he gave me his card so I could get in touch with him.
On Saturday morning I started from London heading straight towards Snowdonia. Since I still didn’t have a tent I again made use of lateRooms.com. The ride up to Snowdonia was uneventful and the motorway scenery was rather underwhelming. However it got better. A lot better.
As soon as I crossed the non existent border to wales the scenery changed. With the setting sun the saturated green of the endless little hills looked like what can only be described as a cheesy movie interpretation of heaven or – Teletubby land. I wouldn’t be surprised if the shot this show there.
After a quick google search: They did in fact shoot this show here ………….
Just a few hundred meters from the B&B I was aiming for I stopped to take advantage of the last sun rays for a few pictures.
Before leaving for Snowdonia I wanted to get my head light fixed. After taking another closer look and having bought the necessary tools (torx Allen wrenches) I realized that I didn’t actually have to take off the front cover with the glass to access the bulbs like I had assumed:
Instead there is an easy access lid at he back of the casing. So on the way up to Snowdonia I stopped at Halfords (Forstinger in Austria), got a new bulb and installed it.
![IMG_20150418_134614[1]](http://davidskorepa.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_20150418_1346141.jpg)
![IMG_20150418_134814[1]](http://davidskorepa.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_20150418_1348141.jpg)
![IMG_20150418_134710[1]](http://davidskorepa.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_20150418_1347101.jpg)
And there was light and it was good … knowing that I could use the high beam for it’s actual purpose again.
![IMG_20150418_134856[1]](http://davidskorepa.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_20150418_1348561.jpg)
Because the weather was supposed to be fantastic over the weekend I decided to add another country to my check list: Wales. More precisely I wanted to see Snowdonia, a National Park with supposedly beautiful scenery. Initially I had planed to also pass through Swansea on the south coast of Wales but I decided to spend the weekend entirely on the north and make a separate trip for the south later.
(As you can see on the map I ended up going a little farther than Snowdonia to see what this Island above Snowdonia looked like.)
After having forgotten the time, spending two hours at the beach instead of 20 minutes I got back on the bike and set course for London.
Traffic was bad and we were slowly crawling up the hilly motorway, stopping countless times. As annoying as that was it made me understand something I had been wondering about for quite some time. The reason for filtering on a motorcycle. It’s probably not what you (or I) thought. What filtering really is all about is that you don’t have to stop. It’s not really about getting ahead. Being stuck in a traffic jam on a bike is very different from being stuck in a car. For one you can’t really drive with the clutch alone like with a car so you constantly have to rev (with your right hand) while squeezing the break leaver every other second while balancing the 150 kg motorcycle uphill. So you have all your muscles tensed up for as long as you are in the jam. This is annoying for 5 minutes let alone two hours. It gets exhausting fast. Especially when you have already been riding 800 miles in the past two days. So filtering is not all about speed but more about convenience or rather fatigue. The only problem is that with a bigger bike like mine with panniers you are not that narrow any more so it’s more difficult and often there just is no getting through.
It was getting dark and I was still stuck in traffic in Cornwall with a regular work day just hours away – in London.
While waiting – one driver had a megaphone out the window asking drivers to honk x amount of times for the correct answer number x to a question – I noticed that my bike was casting two shadows onto the car in front of me whose driver had just honked twice giving the correct answer to the question ‘Which is the capital of Norway?’. That’s when I realized what the yellow triangle warning light must have been about! My head light had to be out for me to see the shadows in front of me. After finally getting a chance to exit the motorway I checked the light at a petrol station that had already closed for the night and sure enough only the parking light was on. I didn’t have enough tools with me to get the bulb out or to check if it had just gotten loose so I adjusting the angle of the lights housing instead so I could switch on the high beam and would not blind anybody.
The tools on the F650GS are under the seat so it had to come off:
This high beam solution worked well and traffic was getting better at this late hour so I continued my journey safely and reached London at around 11pm.
The last stop on the journey, Bude town centre. The weather could not have been any better.
Gigantic satellite dishes on the far left.
These cliffs I found particularly impressive. The way they are folded is just incredible. (Click to enlarge.)
Again not the kind of beach I expected in the UK.
After reaching Lands End I decided to push on to Bude the same day. That way I wouldn’t have to take on the 500 miles back to London in one go the next day and I could spend a little time exploring Bude.
On my way to Bude I noticed an old chapel behind which I found an old tower. (This is only relevant for those of you who have played Age of Empires as you will recognize that this is a wall element that has been built there by mistake.)
I reached a little B&B pub at 10pm and finished the day watching “Skyfall” on TV.
The next day started as British as the previous one had ended, with my first full English breakfast. Bacon and eggs, baked beans, a grilled mushroom and tomato, toast with marmalade, cereal, various juices and tea. Afterwards I cleared my room and got to the bike to go take a look at Bude’s beach which was the reason for coming to this town in the first place.
Once the bike was set ready to go I started the engine and there it was. A yellow warning triangle on the dash.
First I thought the warning was related to the oil level and I feared that I would not be able to continue my journey. But after ruling out the oil which was still at MAX I decided to slowly continue my journey to the beach. Since this was Easter Monday there were no mechanic shops open and my phone battery was running out too. Needless to say I was a little concerned. Luckily the owners manual limited the number of possible problems to about thirteen different ones.. Thanks BMW. But I figured as long as the triangle wasn’t red I was going to be OK.
Exhausted after riding about 500 miles within 24 hours I arrived at Lands End in the afternoon.
I was a little bit surprised to see how touristy and crowded the place was. There are lots of little restaurants, a movie theatre, even an old helicopter on a pole.
The photos of the cliffs don’t do their size justice. They are absolutely massive and breathtaking.
The first and the last house on the west coast.
Looks like Batman has a few emergency exits here.
In a good way this is not what I imagined the UK would look like.
