Introduction... what we're doing and why...

Lon Las Cymru is the Welsh equivalent of Land's End to John O'Groats (End2End) and runs from Holyhead in the north of Wales to Cardiff in the south, it's just over 250 miles long and crosses: Snowdonia, the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains, the picture below shows the route we'll be following.

 Six of us are doing the ride over five days at the end of May 2014: Reg Balmer, Robin Bloor, Bob Brightman, Colin Bycroft (me!), Marty Ellis and Seth Reid. We're all raising funds for various causes... mine is Parkinson's UK, a charity which is very close to my heart since my Dad died indirectly from Parkinson's in 2005, anyway, most of us did a ride last year across Scotland but this is pretty different; it is hilly, hilly, hilly, hilly, hilly, hilly for the whole route apart from day one and - most importantly - we have no support team this year, in other words we'll be carrying everything we need for the whole journey with us on the bikes up some huge hills (did you get the bit about the hills?)!!! I drove quite a lot of the route last November and the car didn't like it at all... I can honestly say, from a personal perspective, this is the hardest ride I've ever attempted, it's not as long as Land's End to John O'Groats but is much more intense, as an example....

... this is the elevation profile for the morning of the second day from Caernarfon to Barmouth, 8 miles of constant climbing followed by a pretty fun descent (for 'fun' read 'vertical and scary'!!).

And here's a photo looking up a section of the first 8 miles... the car wasn't particularly happy about it... I suspect we'll be even less so!

The table below shows the route stopping points and daily mileage etc... in case you're interested...