Rat Race Run Britannia - Week 2, day 1 - Bristol to Monmouth


Cymru calls!

Distance: 57.07km (total so far 443.42km)
Total climb: 1007m (total so far 9286m)
Steps: 68,881(total so far 541,509)

Also:

Number of countries visited: 2
Number of bridges visited: 2

New week, new adventure. Today we ran and walked out of England into Wales, which gave us some appreciation of how far we had come the previous week. I wouldn't say that any of us were fresh, but the day off in Bristol had done a lot of good.

We started back at the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which it was good to get another look at - it really is an impressive bit of engineering, and made a good start to the day.


The next part was roads and parks to get out of Bristol to the north west. It rapidly became less built up, and a lot of the route was nice paths through wooded areas. The surfaces were good, which meant we could skip along in our road shoes with no issues.


We had one climb early, up to a big stately home - Kings Weston House, from memory and a quick online check.


After that, we were clear of Bristol and into the farmlands on our way to the old Severn Bridge (which I still think of as the real Severn bridge, rather than the new upstart!). However, we had our first feedstation of the morning to pick up, and the route there passed through a churchyard with both a very weird lock:


and what looked like a gallows on the way out:


Where I come, you just get glared at when you talk during the sermon, but they clearly have a more direct attitude around here!

The orange arrows are important - our route is not marked, as it would be obviously impossible to waymark a thousand miles of paths, but we get orange arrows to let us know that a feedstation is coming up, and to direct us to it if it is slightly off the route. By the time we've finished this, orange arrows are going to me almost Pavlovian to the team - we'll start to salivate if someone waves one in front of us!

Once we were clear of that, it was straight for the Severn Bridge and Wales - our next feedstation was the other side of the bridge. Soon we got our first view:


And it wasn't long after that that we approached the bridge itself. There was a big cycle/walk/run route along the side, and we took time to get a proper photo: 


The Rat Race team were on the bridge cheering us on, which was nice - it felt like a big milestone on the overall route.

At the end of the bridge, we assumed that we were in Wales - there appeared to be no sign to say so. However, we were definitely in Chepstow, and the view from the lunch feedstation was impressive.


Lunch included a change of shoes, as we were on the trails for the rest of the day - a couple of big climbs as we worked up the Wye Valley Trail towards Monmouth. We'd done a bit of this route as part of the Wyedean Ultra last year, but their approach to Chepstow was a very different route, and I didn't recognise much for a while.

There was quite a climb steadily up from the school where we'd finished the previous year, but on narrow paths through the trees. At one point it looked as if we'd navigated ourselves into a dead end, but it turned out that the route went through a cave!


The climbing got steeper, and the path maintainers had put some proper steel steps in in places to make it possible at all:


Finally we came out on top, just in time to start going down again to Tintern Abbey, where our third feedstation was - its was a great day for scenic feedstation locations.


All that remained after that was one more big climb and descent, and we could finish off along the river to Monmouth.


The luxury of today was that the route finished at the actual hotel, which saved the inevitable delay of waiting at the finish for a busload and then the transfer time to a hotel. We all know that its inevitable - its the only way something like this can work - buts its very nice when we don't have to do it. We've been promised another one of those this week - something to look forward to!

A good day to start week 2.

Song of the day: "River Deep, Mountain High" by Tina Turner. Her mountains may have been higher and her rivers deeper, but I enjoyed ours.




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