The trouble with camping alone with a motorcycle, is carrying the necessary gear. This year, I decided to try taking my Jawa and sidecar.
I left home on a Monday morning. By the time I left Knighton, it was drizzling; by the time I got to Penybont, it was raining steadily. From Beulah, as I took the mountain road to Tregaron, it began to pour down, and kept it up all the way over the mountains. This is a single-track, twisty, steep road, and much of it was accomplished at twenty miles per hour in first gear, either because that was as fast as I could haul the outfit round the bends, or as fast as it would climb, or because it was as fast as I dared go downhill, the Jawa's brakes being notoriously diabolical.
From Tregaron to Lampeter, by the B-road the other side of the valley. Then to Newcastle Emlyn and Cardigan. There's a bypass round Cardigan, which used to be a major bottleneck, with quite good views of the town from Priory Bridge.
Past Newcastle the rain eased. In Fishguard, it hadn't rained much at all; and at St David's, it had been sunny all day. I pitched camp at leisure, and enjoyed an evening walk along the cliffs at Abereiddy.
I was up early next day, and in St David's to look at the cathedral. It's amazing that an edifice of such magnificence should have been constructed in a place which is still remote, and which in the thirteenth century must have been arduous to reach. The bishop's palace is one of the finest, too. The whole design and decoration is to impress visitors with the status of the bishop. There was an organ recital in the cathedral that evening.
Waking for the second time that night at six, I stuck my head out: cold, grey, uninviting. Not actually raining. So I packed everything very quietly and by 7:07 I was ready to go. The gates are locked to vehicles until seven ... no sign of movement in the Warden's caravan. At the bottom of the site there's a disused entry, closed with a chain and a padlock. One of the posts is loose in its concrete block - I sneaked out that way, putting the post back behind me.
In Carmarthen it rained, spilling out of the tops of gutters which couldn't contain the amount, bouncing three inches high off the roads, bubbling out of drains that couldn't handle the flow - there was so much water on the road, I had to worry about not running over trout.
After that things improved. The rain eased and then stopped, the A40 leads along a lovely wooded valley. Llandeilo, Llandovery, Brecon. At Brecon I left the main road and followed lesser roads to bypass Abergavenny to the south by a mile and cut down south-east to Chepstow. It wasn't too easy around Abergavenny, because of the habit planners have of renumbering old roads when they build new ones.
Once over the Severn bridge, short of driving through Bristol, there's no alternative to the motorway. I pottered along at 55, trying not to get in the way of trucks wanting to do 60 - 65, but determined I wasn't going to provoke a breakdown by pushing my little pop-pop too hard. I got to Weston-super-Mare in blazing hot sunshine.
In the evening, surprisingly, it was pretty well dead in Weston, apart from youths driving their ancient XR3s through the town at great speed.
Next day, Thursday, I packed up again and I drove to Lynton. Weston to Bridgend is main-road and trafficky. Bridgend is a dump, with traffic jam. But you can't avoid it - it's the only bridge over the River Parrett. Then there's a ten-mile stretch of twisty A-road back to the sea, and you follow the coast along, sometimes close, sometimes a mile or more inland.
I elected to go up Porlock Hill - 1 in 4 - rather than taking the longer but less steep toll road. First gear, twenty mph, exercise patience and hold on tight because the outfit wants to roll off down the camber to the left. Stopped at the top to look at the breathtaking views of the Severn estuary and let the motor cool down.
There are some more hills as steep at Lynmouth: down Congresbury hill, a mile of 1 in 8 with a steep 1 in 4 bit at the bottom. Then there's the climb up to Lynton, just as steep.
Disaster struck. At the top of this steep stretch, there's a left fork, whilst the road itself doubles back to the right. Descending traffic is supposed to give way to those climbing. A very large motorcaravan didn't. Also, he made a mess of the corner, and ended up on the wrong side of the road. I knew if I stopped I couldn't easily restart, so I tried to go the wrong side of him. If he'd just stayed put we'd have been OK. But he moved off, and blocked my path, forcing me to stop after all.
I let the bike run back across the road, rear to the cliff on the right, expecting him to pass in front of me so that I could then pull off across the width of the road before turning to resume the climb. No: he insisted I go first. So I pulled off OK: but when I tried to steer to the right round his front, with the hill and the acceleration against me, the front wheel skipped and I didn't make the turn in the necessary radius. I ended up jammed against the wall. At this point, the motor caravan went away. Fortunately, a some local lads came and offered to push - and we pushed the whole thing the last fifty feet.
Could have been worse: a broken lens, and unsightly but non-structural gouges in the plastic mudguard.
I spent the rest of the day in The Queens. It's run by a good friend, and he and his wife do the best food and drink in Lynton. Recommended!
It's a long way home, and once past Bridgend I came up the motorway. Quicker than the other routes, even at 55mph, but oh-so-boring. Arrived home on Friday, with about two minutes to spare. Don't think I'll take the sidecar to Lynton again. But for camping, it was just great.
22nd September 1996