Well, we went, despite my having been ill immediately before, we rode the route as far as Llanfair PG and at 180km we bailed. It was a hot and beautiful day out there, and we had both really enjoyed the fast run from Shrewsbury to Vyrynwy. The climb over Bwlch y Groes was steep in places, but we made steady time out to Llanuwchllyn and on up the 2nd of the big ascents towards Trawsfynydd via the road of a thousand gates (I think there were 5 actually).
We arrived at Coed-y-Brenin in a reasonable time and after a bite to eat were soon heading North past King Arthur's Castle (or the power station to you English tourists...). A slightly different route down the valley to Maentwrog and we were soon on the valley floor taking the turning for Rhyd and what turned out to be a significant climb that kept on going up. We plodded on and eventually found ourselves at the foot of the Pen-y-Pass climb familiar to us from the BCM two weeks earlier, but resplendent in rather more sunshine than when we were last acquainted with it. We had a few niggling problems here. Our map trap is a big mofo and kept getting in the way of Jasmine's legs preventing us from standing and honking. We had both mis-managed our water and failed to fill at Coed-y-Brenin so were pretty dehydrated by the top. We plodded on up the climb, managing to resist the roadside ice cream van and eventually took the left turn to take us to the summit. The low point here was struggling to overtake a red sock who appeared to be hiking at around our speed up the main road. We eventually passed him though and crested the pass to our mutual relief.
We descended with a little more care than on our last visit (we lost the back end for a couple of seconds on the BCM) and somewhat slowed by a strong headwind eventually made it to Pete's Eats in Llanberis for a little food and much liquid.
The road from Llanberis to Bangor ought to be down hill, but as we well know it isn't. We pressed on though and eventually got to Y Felinheli and the one final climb before crossing the Menai. In Llanfair PG, we took a comfort stop and took stock. I had a really bad knee and was generally aching a lot more than I ought to be after only riding 180km, I think this is largely a function of my riding so soon after being unwell and my own stupid thought. Application of deep heat gel did nothing to ease the discomfort, but I was prepared to press on a little further at least to get Jasmine to her solo bike on the other side of the island and to allow her to carry on. Jasmine appeared to have a mild case of heatstroke, was exhausted and had a number of other aches and pains. I also think that Jasmine had had a hard time trying to make up for my weakness relative to usual form.
Ultimately, we decided to bail. It's only a bike ride, we weren't enjoying it anymore and we didn't want to do any lasting damage to our respective bodies. We crawled back to Bangor, go hold of some carrier bags from Morrisons and decoupled the tandem before heading back to Shrewsbury via train (despite Jasmine living on Angelsey, we still had to retrieve the car). Fully sectionned, we managed to fit the various bits of tandem into the trains luggage rack, which was just as well as the bike racks were all full. We made it to Shrewsbury in the daylight, opted for a taxi out to Upton Magna as we'd both stiffened up and after a brief chat to John H and partner were soon on our way home.
Hope some of the others have slightly better stories to tell. This was a well-planned, well-organised ride, and I hope to have another go some time.
AC
