Gower Bivi 2 of 12… 18th & 19th of Feb
We abandoned our car at the Heritage Centre and headed out via Park woods and out onto the ridgeline at Penmean, this offers 360deg views of the surrounding countryside and gives you stunning views down into three cliffs bay and across to Oxwich and beyond.
We dropped off the ridgeline around the Frog Moor area to do one of the few road sections across to Llanddewi, and as always made the same jokes referencing a certain well known tv show character…. If you can’t work that out you aren’t old enough to remember. From here we followed some old bridleways across to Kings hall and skirted around the bottom of Rhossilli mountain to Talgarths Well and took a sheep track across the side of the mountain to get to a old ROC post that I wanted to look at as I’ve become a bit obsessed with bagging them.
It’s a pretty steep decent off the mountain and we both took different routes down, I thought mine looked fine, a nice rocky Shute leading to a grassed area where are exit point was.
As I hit the grass it all went pete tong the back end slid away front end dug in and before I new it I was flat on my back and the bike had slid away, what I thought was firm grass was water logged and about 2” deep in water and mud.
I new I’d hurt something as I’d had a big jolt of pain in my hand, I laid still for a sec running a mental body check as you do, then crouched and looked at my hand, my left thumb looked odd, I had a feel and realised it had dislocated as I fell on it.
By now my bivi companion was with me and I told him id hurt myself. We were no where near any medical help and I didn’t want to quit so did the only thing I could, with a quick pull out and up and across I put the thumb back in its joint, I have to admit to squeeling a bit and my mate did gipp as he said he heard it pop back into place.
We gathered my bike back up and headed to the Café at Rhossilli and asked for ice and sat for about 30 mins taking it easy and popping a few pills.
Just to see how my hand was we decided just to bimble down to Worms head to see what the surf was like. As we rode across my mate spotted something in the water and for the next 30-40 mins we watched as Porpoises hunted off the shore, I can honestly say it made up for my spill as ive lived down here for 13 years and ridden this route many times and never seen them.
So feeling renewed we dropped down onto Rhossilli beach and headed up to Spaniard rocks, dodging huge dead jelly fish on our way up the beach. We rode through Broughton Burrows down onto Broughton Bay then headed across the dunes to Cwm Ivy and into Whiteford Burrows where we would spend the night.
If you bivy here water is in short supply so enter the burrows from the base of Cwm Ivy and locate the small lodge just inside of the gate, there’s a tap there open all year round and is safe to drink without a filter.
We found a cracking spot and set up tarps and got all the bedding faff sorted out. It was then onto digging and building our fire pit for the night and collecting wood.
Over the last few bivi trips I’ve introduced my mate into the subtle art of drinking whisky, so on this trip I leant him a hip flask, which he filled with Penderyn Legend and I went for a nice 10-year-old McCallan.
By 1800hrs the fire was lit, by 1830hrs we had eaten and by 1900hrs we were well on our way, and by around 2030hrs the whisky and food was all gone, and we were lets say very chilled.
With the fire dying down we headed off to our doss bags around 2230 and both dropped off. Total days riding 21.10 miles on Fat Bikes
The morning arrived all to soon and was a lot colder than expected, we went about the routine of eating drinking and packing and as I pulled my bike up to pack arghhh flat tyre!! After much swearing I had a new tube on and then realise the dam tyre had seated correctly not always easy to do in the wild with a fat bike tyre, so deflate re seat then pump again. Bike loaded up we head down to path and POP my tyre drops off the rim!!! So with much swearing and frustration I re seated the tyre for a third time and triple checked it.
We headed up into Llanmadoc and out of the village towards Ryers Down, dropped down onto the Bridleway and across towards Fairyhill Hotel to join back up with the ridgeline we had ridden out on.
Doing the route this way is a tad rude as it pretty much uphill all the way back to the ridgeline and as the weather had turned proper Welsh on us we didn’t hang about.
If you look hard you can just about see my slogging up sweating out the whisky
We got back to the Heritage centre soaking wet, Very cold and smelling like tramps knowing we’d had a cracking ride, finishing off with a grand total of 33.5 Miles ridden … its not about the distance, the speed for me, its about the views, being outside and the craic, cant wait for number 3 and a return to a fav place of mine the Doethie Valley.