To St David's, Saturday 19th.

Autumn colours
Set off at 11, only an hour later than I planned, leaving just enough time for a straightforward run to the start of my left-to-right tour in St David's.

Glorious Autumn day ... or is it late Summer?  ... or early Winter?  It's dry and mostly sunny and warm enough to make me wonder if I should have left the thermal lining from my riding suite at home.  The hedgerow colours are magnificent, but confused.  Oaks are reseplendent in gold and green.  Hazel and birch is mostly yellow.  Willow is everything from dusty green through rusty brown to completely bare.  Gorse is a fanfare of yellow blossom against the deep green.  And this is mid-November?  The seasons have gone bonkers!

"The road goes ever on / from the door where it began..."  Actually, this one doesn't.  Not since they rerouted the A350 about fifty yards to the right.  But it's a nice little tucked away corner where I often stop for a gulp from the flask while out on my rambles.  The autumn leaves here are still thick enough to allow calls of nature to be answered without embarrassment.  



Crossing the Severn, Croeso i Gymru
Wow!  Now granted, I have a bit of a thing about civil engineering, but I reckon the new Severn Bridge is breathtaking.  Half way across and glancing through the barriers to the West, it felt like I was on a bridge over the open ocean.

The Magor services just after the bridge were outstanding, too, though in a different way. I used to think that Knutsford was the most hideous motorway services in the country, narrowly beating Fleet into second place.  But no, I was wrong.  All the time it is Magor that has been the standard bearer for everything that is tacky, shabby and downright shameful on the public face of Britain.

Scenic ride
Back on the road; what a ride!  Even the M4 is a pleasant journey.  A not-too-potholed motorway wriggling its way along the foot of the mountains, all brilliant green with their shawls of brown bracken tucked around their shoulders.
Then the A48 and A40 through Carmarther, St Clears and Haverfordwest.  Glorious!  Especially in the late afternoon light, with Autumn snuggling the wooded hills up for the night with blankets of mist.
Then the final hop along the A487 to St Davids, all along the edge of St Bride's Bay.  At a little place called Newgate, roughly at the mid point of the bay, magnificent Atlantic breakers were rolling in.  Where on earth are all the surfers, I thought.  They're missing a trick here.

Just made it to St David's by sunset!  I couldn't see much of it in the dusk, but it looks really pretty.  The cathedral - which gives the town it's claim to be the country's smallest city - is tucked in at the foot of a hill.  I'll take a quick look in the morning before setting off eastwards.  For now, it's a bit of work on the other laptop then a bar meal dinner.


Nice little hotel here on the market square in St David's.  I couldn't find a Gideon bible in any of the drawers, but there were these two hot watter bottles in the wardrobe!  Y'don't get that in the standard corporate hotel.



Atlantic rollers in St Bride's Bay.
(Rubbish photo! Sorry.)