So i loaded my bike on the back of my Mini, off to Libanus i went, i find Graham and he suggests we go and drop the car off at Forest Lodge, and Drive his van to Ystradfeltte and Ride the SarnHelen road back to Forrest lodge.. "Its only short mostly down hill" Sounds good right..
So we started making our way up the Helter Skelter to Ystradfeltte, Parked up and unloaded the Bike's..
I could tell instantly this ride was not going to be as simple as it sounded. We started making our way up a long rough old Roman type road, Graham points and says.... when we get on that hill, its all down hill from there.. Sounds good to me.. I'm not shy of going uphill, but its now 7 o'clock and getting dark, we get to the top of said hill, Short fun down hill piece, very rough through some streams and fords. We were faced with more up hill.. then a really rough piece down hill, huge rocks, my bike decided it wanted to attempt to flip me over my handlebars at one point, thankfully i managed to stop that happening, we carried on down hill for a little while, before apparently the last climb before the final decent back to the car, with the wind trying to blow us off the mountain riding was getting pretty tough, the rain started and was getting quite dark, it was now about 8 o'clock and all of a sudden there was a horrible Hail Storm, my face was stinging and we were soaked to the bone, Graham managed to take us slightly in the wrong direction, going through a forrest where it got really dark. we were having to navigate some large rocks and fallen tree's which in the dark was quite hard work, as we was pushing on to get back to the car as quickly as possible i manages to ride straight through a fallen branch which was a bit of a shack, when we finally reached a road we recognised, we were probably about a mile away from the car, we got back to the car at about 8.30pm soaking and stinking dirty. 
Altho this ride was only 5.8 Mile's, we climbed 580ft, with the day light disappearing fast and the wind and rain it was still very challenging. Brilliant fun but i won't be listening to Graham at 6.30 saying it won't take long, it's all down hill. Lier!
As you can see in the pictures the track is pretty rough, known as part of a Roman road that ran between Neath and Brecon, and joined a similar track between Aberconwy and Carmarthen. This 160mile long Sarn Helen Road Network was built in the Late 4th Century. Many of the Tracks have now Disappeared.
Thank you for reading..
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| Thanks Graham for this Pretty Awful picture. This is at about 7pm, and still dry. |
