National Cycle Route 4
Caerphilly Castle
672km Complete Route
The 670km National Cycle Route 4 is the perfect week-long adventure. In any other country, the route would be have been co-opted by the National Tourist Board and its joys would have been plastered over posters, leaflets and flyers. There’d be promotional pictures of smiling couples pootling along through bucolic countryside and beside sweeping beaches. But this is Great Britain and we avoid great clamations and boastings of our heritage. Connecting Greenwich in London to Fishguard in Wales, you ride on a mix of largely traffic-free by-ways, cycle paths, minor roads and tow paths, through the gentle downlands of southern England and along the coastal beauty of South Wales. The ride is not just about the countryside as it passes many of the nations most iconic places, including four cities, six UNESCO World Heritage sites, three cathedrals, two abbeys, two palaces and five massive castles. There are too, quintessential villages with their pubs and community shops, rose adorned cottages, market towns as well as the former industrial coal and steel lands of Wales. As a coast to coast ride, from the biggest to the smallest city in the land, the National Cycle Route 4 is one of the least heralded of Britain’s long distance routes, but also its most varied and gracious.
Ride Notes
As a departure point, ‘Bella Court’ or ‘Placentia’ (Pleasant Place) as Greenwich was once named, is hard to beat. Everything about its geography make it one of the most spectacular places in the land with its position on a bend of a river, its hill rising behind it, its proximity to the City of London. For centuries it was home to Kings and Queens. Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I were both born here. Today, thanks to the efforts of Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Nicholas Hawksmoor who built the Royal Naval Hospital, it is as dramatic a place as it ever was.
Heading into London on almost entirely traffic-free cycle paths is a joy. You glide along the Thames, passing old Naval Dockyards which victualled the fleets, former homes of great men, a Shakespeare theatre, a Norman fortress, an Abbey where monarchs are crowned, as well as the home of democracy, The Palace of Westminster. A very British route.
Once out of town, you stick to the river, passing through Kingston-upon-Thames and onto the Tudor Palace of Hampton Court. Then comes the suburban countryside of willows draping their branches in the water and sentinel poplars on the banks. The river putters with pleasure craft and the splash of rowers as they blade their boats through the water. People amble along the path, enjoying the pace of river life.
The route skirts the water meadows of Runnymede, where in 1215 King John was forced to seal the Magna Carta which has bound us all, both Princes and the Common Man to the Rule of Law. Beyond the meadows is the Windsor Great Park and its eponymous castle. The roads through the park are used only by Royalty, their households and cyclists and you’ll never ride (in the UK at least) on a smoother surface.
Beyond Reading, the countryside becomes the champion attraction, with the Berkshire Downs and their wooded slopes beside you. Cattle graze in fields. Chaffinches bullet across the road from one hedgerow to the other, singing as they do. You pass through villages where cottages are thatched, where pubs and village shops still exist as pillars of a community. As you head gently west, your tyres quietly whirr on near deserted country lanes and well-surfaced bridlepaths. You have a spell beside the Kennet and Avon Canal, which eighty years ago formed the ‘Blue Line’, one of the nation’s key defences against invasion. Boats chug and people greet you from their crafts as they pass. There are ample opportunities for coffee and cake.
Bath, a UNESCO world heritage city, is impossible just to ride through. The sirens of the Roman Baths, the glorious Abbey, the harmonious honey-coloured architecture, and even tea at the Pump rooms, lure you into parking the bike for a while and just wandering. Once you’ve torn yourself away, you ride on Britain’s first dedicated cycle lane which links Bath to Bristol. It is full of cyclists of all shapes and speed. In Bristol, there are more distractions; the SS Great Britain, once the world’s largest ship. There’s Colston, slaver and Bristol benefactor, lying defaced and dented on his new plinth inside the excellent M Shed museum. There’s the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Once across the Severn Bridge, castles and a rougher countryside become the showmen. The whiff of the Atlantic ocean permeates the air of the valleys. You ride on well-signed cycle lanes through the old coal and steel towns which huddle in the valleys, and whose names are part of the fabric of Rugby history, Pontypridd, Llanelli, Swansea. There are enormous muscular fortresses, remnants of medieval military occupation, at Chepstow, Caerphilly and Pembroke, each still cold, mesmerising and forbidding.
And having ridden through London, through a green and pleasant land, through places of great industry and history, you have the sea as your companion for the remainder of the ride. It whispers, or thrashes, against the cliffs and on the wide sandy beaches, depending on the Atlantic’s mood. And when the route heads a little way inland, the lanes become narrower and you almost squeeze between the hedgerows. Sheep graze on the rough pastured hills.
Having begun in the UK’s biggest city, you finish in its smallest, St. David’s. The cathedral, and the many independent pubs, cafés, restaurants and shops force you to stop again. The local gin is made from hand harvested sea-weed, the beer from the produce of the fields, the oysters fresh from the bay.
With all your senses sublimely satiated, there are just a few more kilometres to the place where Britain ends; Fishguard. You’ll park your bike against a post with the shiny sea behind it. And this being a very British ride, there will be no fanfare to greet you, not even a line across the road which says, ‘Finish’. You’ll not stand holding your bike above your head whilst you grin as others do on ‘challenge routes’, but instead in the British manner, you will with quiet satisfaction of a journey completed, head to the station where a train will return you home.
Stage 1 80km