This isn’t a race and there isn’t a prize in sight, but the Audax ride, set amid rolling hills, mountains and pristine country, is a cycling adventure unlike any

A resonant ‘twang” was the last thing I wanted to hear as I struggled through Snowdonia in the dark – it was an audible harbinger of mechanical doom. If I stopped now I’d lose the group of riders I was with. And that would mean pedalling the next 32 miles alone, at night, trying to decipher a cryptic route sheet through the sleep-deprived eyeballs.



Clack, clack, clack ... this wasn’t good. Gear cables? Still working. Brakes? All intact. It had to be a spoke. Vrrrrrrrr ... yes that was the wheel bending out of shape and the tyre starting to grate against the brake blocks. Baaaa ... a lamb stared over a stone wall as I switched on my headlight to inspect the damage, as seven rear lights disappear out of view.

I was alone, exhausted, in the dark with all the right tools, but really not convinced I could use them in the right order.

The adventure had started in Chepstow at six the previous morning, where a few hundred riders set out to pedal though Builth Wells, Aberystwyth, Dolgellau and over Snowdonia’s Pen-y-Pass to Menai Bridge. Now we just had to get home.

People like to tell you that cycling is the new golf – a magnet for middle-age chaps who like to dress like Bradley Wiggins and live out their peloton fantasies. Hundreds of cycle sportive events have sprung up to fill the gap in the market, allowing riders to test their competitive mettle.

Audax rides are very different. There’s no headline sponsor or commemorative T-shirt and the entry fees are a fraction of the cost. And while a carbon fibre bike might get admiring glances at a sportive, it’s a slightly eccentric three-wheeler that attracted an appreciative crowd at the start of the Bryan Chapman Memorial, a 373 miles (600km) ride from south to north Wales and back.

The classic Audax bike is made of steel, hand-built, quite often with a weathered canvas Carradice bag hanging from a leather saddle. Helmets are optional, but the ability to look after yourself and your bike is not. And this is strictly not a race. Getting round the course within the time limit (40 hours in this case, starting Saturday 6AM) is the only challenge, which means there’s enormous camaraderie on the road.

So it’s only a matter of time before the lights of another rider appear outside Beddgelert. It’s Simon Proven, an experienced rider who has unfathomably decided to tackle the mountains of north Wales on a single speed bike. His generosity matches his enormous fitness and he does enough to get me back under way.

Just seven hours earlier I’d been riding across Barmouth bridge with trike rider Dan Howard, the sun low in the sky and the mountainous Llyn Peninsular on the horizon. As we headed through Harlech and into Snowdonia I kept finding myself in the company of new riders, some of them tight huddles moving at speed and others riding by themselves, keen for a bit of company.

Just like their bikes, riders come in all shapes and sizes from svelte racer to prop forward. And while the Mamil (middle age man in Lycra) might be a stalwart of the cycle sportive, it’s gnarly folk in their later years who really impress here.

As I finally finish the gruelling ascent Pen-y-Pass and haul on the brakes levers for the drop into Llanberis, I watch one guy in his late 60s (wearing a knitted cycling top) flash past me at speeds in excess of 38mph . Possibly for the first time in my life, I know what I want to be when I grow up.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest A trike rider on a quiet road. Photograph: Matt Swaine

The 249-mile mark is Dolgellau YHA and the chance to eat and sleep. It’s 4AM, I’ve been cycling for 22 hours and I’m too nauseous to stomach the pasta, soup and cake on offer. I need to sleep. A lack of bunks means there’s a two-hour sleep limit, but I haven’t the heart or the reasoning power to haul someone out of their bed. So I put on everything I own, curl up on the floor and I’m asleep almost instantly.

Three hours later, I’m miraculously back on my bike and grinding up the side of a mountain in the rain, compiling a list of reasonable excuses for taking the train back home. My Achilles hurts, but so does every other bit of my body in contact with the bike. I decide the only plausible exit is full mechanical failure, so I get out of the saddle for the rest of the climb half wishing another spoke would pop under the pressure.

But somehow I make it to a checkpoint in the middle of nowhere, where I tuck into bacon sandwiches and coffee and meet yet another group of incredibly friendly riders. The sun comes out and the countryside of mid-Wales continues to amaze. And before we know it we are just 50 miles from the finishing line.

And then it’s just 32 miles left, 23 miles, 11 miles ... until, after the most delicious snooze by the banks of the River Wye, I can see the Severn Bridge and I know I’m as good as home.

For most of the riders at the finishing line, this ride means qualification for the classic Paris-Brest-Paris, a 746 miles ride through northern France that takes place every four years. To earn yourself a place in that race you have to have completed a 124, 186, 249 and 373 miles (200, 300, 400 and 600km) Audax in the same year.

At this stage I’ve no idea how I’d get back on my bike for another 373 miles, but my first year of Audaxing has already taught me so much. So I’ll be aiming for Paris in 2019 with a little more mechanical nous, tougher legs and having seen a lot more of the British countryside from the saddle.