Route from South Wales to West Wales

courtmed

This is around 150km so probably doesn't count as touring, but I'm cycling to meet family members carrying camping stuff & I've never ridden past Swansea - so it's pretty close to touring for me!

I'd appreciate any advice on the route, particularly Swansea onwards - I'm in two minds about staying on the A40 or taking some of the quieter but less direct roads that the CarTen ride uses. Also not against using any traffic-free paths if anyone's had good experiences with them. I used the Strava heatmaps feature to come up with this route provisionally so hopefully I haven't gone too far wrong. Cheers

https://www.strava.com/routes/8368312

jlloyd

Hi there,

I would avoid as much of the A40 as poss. It's fairly local to me but have probably spent about 10 mins (of bib filling fear) riding in it. It's a fast road with lots of lorries going down west. there is a path that runs alongside it, but seems to disapear at points and doesn't look a great surface tbh.

The route is mostly decent cycle path from Swansea - to Pembrey (there's a good cafe at Pwll which is popular with cyclists)
Then A roads to Carmarthen. (could do a poss detour thru ferryside at kidwelly - which avoids the windy climb through llandafelog - would prob add 3ish miles)

When you get to Carmarthen head for Llansteffan road. Then take a right onto alltycnap road then follow this to Banc y felin . You'll then only have a cple of miles on the a40 until you reach st clears. Think you're pretty much ok from there.

jameses

Sustrans route 4 pretty much follows your route, except on smaller roads. From what I remember, it's mostly fine from Swansea onwards. There are a few light off road bits between Cardiff and Swansea that are best avoided (the gate cages Margam Country park are particularly annoying if you have panniers).

redjeepǃ

Check out the sustrans route 4. It goes from London to St Davids but obviously you can jump on anywhere you want.

I did a similar tour a couple of weeks ago from Newgale to Cardiff, but via Aberystwth. I headed North and then came down the Lon Las Cymru into Cardiff.

I found Google maps was pretty good for setting out the route, I plotted it for a bike and then chose the national cycle route version.

redjeepǃ

Oh, I meant to say that I was surprised at how 'rustic' a lot of the routes were and included long (several miles at a time) stretches of muddy tracks and coarse gravel.