THE PLAN

Empty keyring - I don't need a room anymore - just the road!

Cymru Cycle starts on Monday, the 5th of May.
Here's THE PLAN:

Day 1

  Cardiff - Brecon (50 miles / 80,4 kilometres)

Day 2

  Brecon - Machynlleth (72,8 miles / 117 kilometres)

Day 3

  Machynlleth - Caernarfon (60,8 miles / 97,8 kilometres)

Day 4

  Caernarfon - Holyhead - Caernarfon ( 66,1 / 106 kilometres)

Day 5

  Caernarfon - Machynlleth (72,8 miles / 117 kilometres)

Day 6

  Machynlleth - Felinwynt (53,9 miles / 86,7 kilometres )

Day 7

  Felinwynt - St. David's - Haverfordwest (60,3 miles / 97,1 kilometres)

Day 8

  Haverfordwest - Llanelli (51,2 miles / 82,4 kilometres)

Day 9

  Llanelli - Cardiff (60,9 miles / 98 kilometres)

+ one wild card rest-day when I want (or need!!!) one.

At the Rocky statue in Žitište, Serbia on a cycle tour in 2011

After receiving lots of good luck wishes from family and friends, and getting amazing support and sponsorship from my workplace, Café Junior, the time had come to say thanks to all of them, and to my very special Hannah and her family for their kindness (especially for lending me a bicycle - quite an important part of the trip). 

Your help will be a very good downwind up the hills!

I'll keep you updated from the valleys!

Tandem

traffic jam in Romania (2007)

In a previous post I mentioned  The Bards of Wales by János Arany which is all the knowledge that Hungarian kids have of the country. Using my travels and this blog in tandem, I've found a goal which is as important as my fundraising. I would like to give a little more information, on top of the bard poem, to anyone who doesn't know much about Wales. 
This region really deserves to be part of a wider international discussion, as a secret corner of the islands of Europe.
Besides this blog I have published a few comments about my impressions of the British world in Képes Ifjúság, a youth magazine based in Serbia, and will report on the trip and the (so far really positive) experience of fundraising in Press Szó, an online magazine for young journalists.

There is a fellow cyclist from my home town, I just call him Spiritleader. 

He and I didn't have many chances to cycle together, but when we did manage to hit the road, it was always like being in a very bright dream, pedalling away from reality into the haze.

illustration by EdE Sinkovics

As he wanted to join me this time, too, I'm  inviting him here on my blog for a tandem cycle with his blog, the site of his latest book, Cycling with Zoli the Turk!

Risca mistery

Learning from my mistake, this time I chose my destination based on the simplicity of the town's name, so that I wouldn't have the same problem I had on the way to Llantrisant the other day.

That's why I was heading to Risca this time. It wasn't easy to remember just because it's shorter; it also reminds me of the most popular Hungarian cow name "Riska" very much.

I wanted to test my orientation on a bigger scale - avoid any highways and big avenues; find a way out of the city in a very random place and continue the journey, avoiding busy roads.

The landscape is beautiful; the roads are peaceful. I don't meet anybody except horses and (probably not riska) cows. It is all very nice, but I still don't feel that I'm on the right track. No signs for a few miles, so I am following my senses.

Farmland pals

pink Hobbit house  and some landscape

I'm following it, following it. There are some signs here and there, but not the ones I am looking for; none of them leads to Risca. I don't give up, especially because there are such nice hills I can crawl up, so I continue following my senses. Then there is a sign saying Town Centre, straight on. Okay, even if it's not Risca I will go there, look around and cycle back to Cardiff.

I can see some towers of a castle from a distance, but I realise that I am in Caerphilly when I get to the same shop/café that we ran into last time before the thunderstorm.

flying above Castell Coch

That's never happened to me - heading to one place, and arriving at an other one in the opposite direction. Anyway, it was a good chance to buy some traditional Caerphilly cheese for dinner and to finally try out the tough Taff Trail through the woods, passing by Castell Coch, finishing the journey in the almighty Bute Park.

Visiting Llantrisant

After I got a message from a fellow cyclist saying how much will I enjoy my tour if I like hills, I realised I should start getting used to them as my previous bicycle adventures were very enjoyable, amazing aaaand 99% of it was on flatland.

I was looking for a place, about 2 hours away by bike, to check out. As I was free from  1p.m. Llantrisant seemed to be the perfect circular route from Cardiff. I wanted to try out a local main road  on the way there, and to come back an alternative way which connects farms with the surrounding villages.

I decided to do it in reverse > so, I cycled on the way there on the country lane. I think I found the tightest road I've ever been on in my life - maybe only the Romanian rubbish-shoot with a bulldozered lane in the middle, presented on the map as a secondary road, could beat this. 

So, I find it just as I expected - thanks to Google street view. There is just one way, no chance of taking a wrong turn, but at the end of one short section under the cover of hugging trees on both sides of the road, there are two possible directions. One is closed, so no hesitation, I turn left- I would have chosen the left anyway, because in Hungarian "right" means "better", but for me the left is the better. Left-handed people are more sensitive about these implicit lingual codes. Anyway, after my left turn I reach a village where I have to ask for help.

BOOM! I CAN'T PRONOUNCE THE NAME OF THE PLACE WHERE I AM HEADING.

I don't know the name of the city. Luckily my guy is patient and starts giving me the names of all the towns around here. Oh, yeah! he says it. Even better, he gives me clear directions - I can't believe that in the UK there are so many Tescos, there is always one which you will be passing by or where you have to turn...

I want to see the castle - which is actually one high wall (similar to the one in my village called Pecze kastely). To get there I have to face a 16% gradient. No problem, I am here to fall in love with hills. On the way to the castle-wall Dr. Druid says hello in his self-designed wolf costume.

Pecze kastely in the 2000s

Llantrisant castle c. 1910

After sunbathing in the castle garden, and realizing that in this town everybody is walking at least one dog, it creates a very friendly atmosphere. It reminds me of the Serbian village Jankov Most where are more geese living there than humans. Maybe that's a bit more creepy, but there is no druid power radiation, so let's say they are similar.

Banat Geese Gang

Dr. William Price in his uniform

Okay, this post has gone on too long. I just wanted to say that I chose the farmer's path on the way back as well, because the A4119 road gets very busy after a while. Even if its cyclable , listening to the tweets of the lorries are much less fun than the puddly valleys. 

Road signs = cultural maps

My first day in Wales started with a culture-shock - or an uncultured-shock, more like. 

Not that there is no culture in Wales, but I didn't know, there is an ancient language called Welsh until I got there. I thought all the road signs with lots of LLs, DDs, Ys and Ws are probably normal here and they are weird for me just as the Serbian Cyrillic would be for a British person. Then I realized that one half of the sign was always clear; most of the Ys and Ws were all on the unclear half - the Welsh version.

This old Celtic language is not in a dying state but as a small language it really needs the attention. Being able to read it everywhere on the streets with an instant English translation under (or above) is a very cool way of promoting the Welsh culture.

I would always get excited about multilingual signs wherever I saw one.

In the region (Vajdaság/Vojvodina) where I am from most of the towns have multiple names. There, you see an everyday usage of road signs that I haven't seen in Wales yet; people post "messages" about either national, political or love conflicts through traffic signs.

These (love-)vandalised signs still communicate with travellers - in their own way.

Another case in point: I once heard from fellow travellers how shocked they had been at the Russians' pride(?) in their own alphabet, putting out signs only in Cyrillic.

All these signs are brilliant, how they always lead us somewhere...

Countdown

The final countdown started yesterday - two more weeks before the proper pedalling starts.

As there is not much time left, I decided to do cycle sessions around Cardiff every day as warm-up training.

Yesterday I rolled up to Barry.

Googlemaps said it was 10 miles away and would take 1 hour by bike. Pff, Google underestimated me - or so I thought. I was wrong.

The way to Barry was UUUUUUUp  'n downhill. Thankfully, there were a few hundred metres when the terrain was quite flat. I remember two of these stretches.

One was between Lavernock and Sully. There I had a feeling, a sort of flashback, from when I was in Serbia, on my way from Moravica to Kishegyes. I am on my way home from a wedding party, hung-over, feeling like a blossoming tree, sweating out the past, and breathing in a memory with every curve.

Fruska Gora and the white smoke of Kovin

Later, heading from Barry to the Knap beach, the town with all its closed down shops, and a street with all the too-colourful petrol stations/car services look like a mix of the crumbling industrial zone of Kovin in Serbia and the tax-free Andorra`s "petrol avenue".

But these are just minutes, and then I'm Running Up The Hill again.

Road sign photography

I was always passionate about damaged, funny/funny-by-mistake road signs and until a few weeks ago I'd totally forgotten that my phone has a camera.

The time had come to pay my debts and take pictures of all the road-"sirens" of Wales calling me with just one click from my saddle.

The first ever (failed) selfie...

THE CAUSE

A very economical, ecological tourist guide...

Alright, the last two aren't actually funny, but all the super-Celtic "subtitles" looked so exotic, that I just couldn't miss them.

First ride

As Easter was always the third most important spring holiday for me - it was in the shadow of my name-day (19 March) and the amazing post-communist 1st of May celebration - I decided to do a bike ride, publish the first post of this blog, watch some Family Guy and wish happy Easter when it was all done.

Looking up the possible routes for cycle training in the surroundings of Cardiff, the combination of Sultan the Pit Pony and Caerphilly Castle turned out to be perfect for an Easter ride.

There is a very rich network of cycling roads in Wales and they're all available on Sustrans' website.

Routes 8 and 4 are the ones to look out for to get to the "Leaning Tower" of Caerphilly and to Sultan, the largest pony in Europe. Even if you are infallible with maps, you can never plan over 50 kilometres - the weather can always surprise you. Our's was over 50 kilometres.

leaning like a tower

and leaning like a tower

So, we had some wrong turns as well as some thunder and lightning. We couldn't make it to the land-pony, but it was still worth it as that was Hannah's first cycling holiday and she is already looking for an upgraded bike for her next ones.

Fundraising for Tŷ Hafan

the plan of my rolling

A blog was kind of originally in my plans to extend the tour with some notes, pictures, comment, whatever, but later on I decided to add an other layer to this whole story. 

I've read about many cycling, running and climbing events for charity. As a guy growing up in Serbia, this "doing something good while on holiday" was an unknown gesture for me, but it sounded very positive, similar to voluntary work but not quite the same... I thought the only way to really understand it is to try it. 

To show my thanks for this very welcoming environment in Cardiff and for the people around Wales who offered a place to stay during the coming ten days long adventure I want to support Tŷ Hafan as a local, Wales based charity.

About the charity:

Tŷ Hafan is the charity I want to help with my sponsored cycle. They offer comfort, care and support to life-limited children, young people and their families, helping them make the most of the time they have left together. 

Tŷ Hafan is not part of the health service and in 2012-13 received just under 4% statutory funding towards more than £3.5 million needed and to continue to offer its unique service to families, it relies on the generosity of the public, its corporate sponsors and volunteers. 

I was working in Café Junior, a family-friendly café during my staying in Cardiff. Besides the café's menu the most I could learn there is the importance of the love in the family and the children's need of their parents' care every minute. I couldn't imagine a cause that is closer to my experience in Cardiff. I would like to give as much as I've received from this society before I leave.

Here is my justgiving page where you can sponsor my round-trip in Wales.

https://www.justgiving.com/jozsefracz

About me:

My name is József Rácz - in Hungarian the surname goes first, so it is actually Rácz József, but I am used to having more versions of my name as I was born in Yugoslavia - three years before it fall apart, so I have a Serbian version of my name as well. Every time I introduce myself, this Serbo-Hungarian identity question takes up the most time and I still don't have a short version of it, so I am just going to skip it now!

As a cyclist I have been to most of Serbia's neighbouring countries with an organized cycling tour group, Tour de Délvidék. These events were always fun, almost party-time, for me cycling and relaxing with lots of friends - during the years most of my folks bought a bike and joined the team. This trip will be my first longer solo pedalling.

I never took cycling too seriously, like doing it as a sport, race or a super-healthy lifestyle, but it became my favorite hobby, and then an everyday thing, the main transportation in my life. For me cycling means freedom, either from a city bus or from a stinky tourist bus and not just from buses but cycling gives me that freedom-feeling that you just can't explain through any bus metaphor.

Every Hungarian kid has heard about Wales through a very famous (required reading) lay poem, The Bards of Wales by János Arany.

Last year at the time of my usual cycling tour I moved to Wales for a few months, but it ended up lasting almost a year. Now, before I leave this place I want to look/cycle around this region.