Just how good is the gravel in the Elan Valley?

We arrive in the pretty mid-Wales market town of Rhayader at the start of its July carnival. The outdoor seats of the Elan Hotel are busy with officials stamping the cards of people who have completed the carnival’s Treasure Hunt so we share a table with a gentleman supping a pint who introduces himself as Pete the Gas. He’s the town’s gas appliance fitter who is waiting for a lift home from Bob the Butcher.

“He’s a bit late because he’s been busy dealing with Trev the Barbecue,” he explains. It turns out Trev the Barbecue is also Pete’s “apprentice”, despite being 78-years old. “He’s a fit fella but he does like his sausages,” explains Pete.

Then Pete greets a couple of community police offers who are making their rounds, one of whom cheerfully reveals a couple of treasure hunters have “gone missing”. They are on their way down to the bottom of Bridge Street where local youngsters have been enjoying the early evening sunshine by jumping off the eponymous bridge into the River Wye a terrifying 15 metres below.

All of which is a fitting introduction to Rhayader – pronounced “Ray-der” – the self-declared “Outdoors Capital of Wales”.

Though the attractions of the carnival are tempting – a hill run and wheelbarrow race are also on the programme – and the fate of the missing treasure hunters is mildly concerning, we are here to go for a bike ride in the nearby Elan Valley to see if Rhayader lives up to its billing.

The next morning we meet Phill the Guide. Cyclists’ sartorial choices are always interesting. As a roadie, I view a gravel ride as a welcome excuse to ditch the Lycra in favour of baggies and SPD cleats.

As a mountain biker who runs his own guiding business, however, Phill has grasped the opportunity to put on his sleekest road cycling gear. We really should have conferred the evening before to discuss an appropriate dress code.

Roller coaster

We leave Rhayader via a bike path that instead of simply running parallel with the B-road next to it elects to take us on a mini roller coaster ride up and down several short but steep lumps. Clicking down to the small ring so soon seems a gratuitously severe way to start the day but I don’t have the respiratory capacity to be able to protest and pedal at the same time.

At Elan village – a collection of immaculately preserved buildings that used to house the workers constructing the nearby dams but now resembles a film set straight out of Downton Abbey – we join the road and ride over a handsome, multi-arched stone bridge.

The bridge was built on top of the submerged Garreg Ddu dam which, Phill informs me, maintains a constant flow of drinking water to the population of Birmingham.

We are now on a single-lane road that leads us to a dead end at the biggest of the six dams in the Elan Valley, the Claerwen, that – *consults notes* – is 56 metres high, 355 metres wide and took six years to build. More pertinently for us, this is where the tarmac ends and the gravel starts.

Under a leaden sky

The Claerwen reservoir extends before us like an inland sea. A leaden sky is trying to compress the tops of the Cambrian mountains and a faint spittle of rain is in the air. This year’s record-breaking heatwave is a distant rumour at this point.

The track is wide, but the gravel is of the Fred Flintstone, cartoon boulder variety. These jagged lumps of rock have been used to fill in potholes, making for an intense couple of hours as we try to thread lines without sacrificing too much speed or risking punctures.

It’s not a direct circumnavigation as there are several inlets we have to skirt, each usually followed by a short, stiff climb. The loose rocks make these ascents a challenge. I have to regularly remind myself that Phill is an accomplished mountain biker who is able to charge people for his services so I’d be stupid trying to follow his trajectory and speed. Instead, I grit my teeth and keep myself planted in the saddle to avoid wheelslip.

The landscape on this side of the reservoir varies between craggy outcrops at the water’s edge and grassy moorland disappearing towards the horizon. At the top of one climb we encounter an imperious-looking ram resting behind a mound of exposed rock. It’s only as it struggles to its feet and limps off down the track we realise he’s an old fella whose peaceful solitude we’ve interrupted.

Apart from the occasional sheep or low-flying stonechat, the landscape appears empty of life. Rhayader carnival seems a million miles away. I find myself wondering if those missing treasure hunters were ever found.

Halfway to the end of the reservoir, we meet some other humans – the crew that has been filling in all those potholes with boulder-sized lumps of gravel. We resist the urge to ask them if they could make them a bit smaller next time and continue the remaining five kilometres to the end of the water.

Welsh wilderness

The track snakes up a slight rise, through a cluster of ramshackle farm buildings and past a series of ‘llyns’, or lakes, before we are reunited with tarmac in the form of a single-lane road. Its silky-smooth charms are a short-lived blessing, however. One of the great pleasures of gravel rides is that they can take you well off the beaten track to places that Flash Harry or Harriet and the giant SUV they use for the school run fear to roam.

The wilderness we’ve just ridden through is barred to motorised traffic and accessible only on foot or two wheels. On the downside, however, this means you are unlikely to encounter any cafes dispensing tea and cake, so Phill and I have packed our own lunches. And though our water bottles are now almost empty, Phill has prepared for this.

We arrive at a remote farmhouse where Phill has an informal arrangement to bring his mtb clients to refill their bottles during his multi-stage tours. The owner, Barbara, is cheery and chatty as we fill our bottles via her garden hosepipe. Her lawn provides a stunning panorama of the Cambrian mountains to the south and Cardigan Bay to the west.

What does she grow or rear on the farm, I ask. “Llamas,” she replies. “But I can’t introduce you as they’re all having a lie-in in the barn.”

After Phill has confirmed arrangements for the next party he’ll be bringing at the weekend, we set off. Instead of taking the smooth tarmac that tilts invitingly down the hill – and to a pub, I later discover on an Ordnance Survey map – we head up a cart track whose surface gets rougher as the gradient gets steeper.

Phill once worked in the ‘comms’ office of the local NHS Trust. At the height of the covid-19 pandemic, he had to put a positive spin on a press-release informing the local media that a former burger processing plant was being used as a temporary morgue. He is now using the same tactics to lull me into a false sense of security about the next section of our ride.

He calls it “scenic and challenging” but all I see is a technical and tricky section of singletrack. While he’s able to coast through it with the ease and agility of an experienced mountain biker, my roadie’s mentality is severely inhibiting me. Having to trace a line through six-inch deep ruts while avoiding my pedals catching the sides is a tense affair.

Gatecrasher

I don't crash, but I’m forced to dismount and walk a couple of short sections. But at least Phill has the good grace to say nothing and do all the opening and closing of the gates we have to pass through.

After closing the final gate, I can see a thin line of gravel threading its way into the folds of the hills, which are dotted with specks of sheep. But at least I’m no longer in a rut.

Phill informs me we are now out of the most technical section of the day and wants to take me off-route slightly to show me a hidden treasure. I’ve heard of lone roadies being lured by mountain bikers to strange gatherings involving cargo shorts and goatee beards so I am a bit wary until we arrive at an ornamental stone archway topped with the sculpted relief of a gentleman’s smirking face.

Well hidden treasure

This is the entrance to a recently restored walled garden that was originally built in 1784 and ‘furnished’ with all the latest botanical trends from North America. These days it’s more of an overgrown lawn surrounded by wooded slopes but at least there’s no sign of any goatees. The most striking feature is how on earth anyone could find this place without a compass and sextant.

We climb back on our bikes for another short climb on loose gravel.

“That’s Bruce’s house,” says Phill, pointing to a white house largely obscured behind trees. He’s referring to the appropriately remote home of TV anthropologist Bruce Parry.

The final piece of off-road is on a narrow footpath where we encounter a group of walkers heading in the opposite direction to us. We murmur polite greetings but it’s obvious we are all deeply sceptical about each other’s chosen mode of travel.

The smooth tarmac, when we finally reach it, points steeply upwards. Once over the crest, we are confronted by a lush valley of gently sloping hills that is dissected by the road we are on and the River Ystwyth (which reaches the sea at the university town of Aberystwyth).

A bench overlooking the river seems the perfect place for lunch. I dig out the squashed remnants of my Bara Brith (Welsh fruitcake) from my saddlebag and look down the valley. The slopes on the left are dotted with ruins from the area’s former lead mining industry. I can see the road being sucked up into the throat of the valley. We haven’t finished with the climbing yet.

Sure enough, the road rises higher until the slopes on either side of it have squeezed it like a tube of toothpaste and left just a thin dribble of tarmac. Once through the gap in the hills, the road widens again and arcs across a plateau.

In the distance is another reservoir and the final challenge of the day, a modestly steep ascent that drags on for three kilometres. Once over the top, the descent into Rhayader seems to last forever, though it’s actually only six kilometres.

We freewheel across the stone bridge where the local kids are still plunging bravely into the River Wye, past Bob the Butcher’s where Trev the Barbecue is probably buying his sausages, past the pub where Pete the Gas is no doubt having a quick one after work, and stop at the Elan Hotel where I buy Phill the Guide a well-earned pint. We raise our glasses to the Outdoors Capital of Wales just as the sun is finally breaking through the cloud.

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Key info

Ride stats:

Distance: 71km

Climbing: 1,248m

Where to stay

We stayed in a luxury, cyclist-friendly six-bedroom house in the centre of Rhayader provided by Mid-Wales Holiday Lets. Glandwr House sleeps up to 16, with en suite facilities in every bedroom, a well-equipped kitchen, large dining room, TV lounge, bike workshop and storage, garden, sauna and hot tub.

For details of all their properties, visit: www.midwalesholidaylets.co.uk

Where to eat

For excellent pub grub and friendly service we can recommend the Elan Hotel or Castle Carvery, both in the centre of Rhayader.

Where to get stuff fixed

Given the terrain most bike shops are mtb-centric but Clive Powell Bikes in Rhayader also caters for roadies and is your best bet for gravel spares.

Thanks to:
Phill Stasiw from www.mtb.wales and Duncan Foulkes from www.visitmidwales.co.uk helped with the logistics.