Participants travelling by train will be picked up and transferred from Newport Railway Station. There is ample parking at the hotel for those preferring to drive and cars can be left at the first hotel for the duration of the tour since we will be transferring back here on departure.

There is no formal schedule for our arrival day however there is much to enjoy ranging from taking advantage of the hotel’s spa facilities and indoor pool to a short orientation spin around the surrounding roads or a visit to the pretty riverside town of Usk itself.

• Meals: Breakfast, lunch
• Ascent: 1,200 Metres Approx.

A rolling road leads us away from our hotel and almost immediately into the bottom of the Usk River Valley. It’s not long however before the road starts heading upwards and by 25km into our journey we find ourselves at the highest point of our day as we ride along the ridge that separates the Usk and Wye valleys.

We descend from the village of Trellech and into a beautiful woodland via a road that follows the Anghidi River until we reach the village of Tintern in the Wye Valley, an officially-designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

We then make short diversion back into the forest to an idyllic picnic spot before dropping back down to the Wye for a post-lunch coffee in the shadows of the iconic, roofless ruins of the famous Gothic abbey.

Our return journey, via a network of minor roads, climbs once again into the countryside north of the Severn Estuary before finally dropping us back down to the Usk and ultimately back to base.

• Meals: Breakfast, lunch
• Ascent: 750 Metres Approx.

Our route today takes us in the opposite direction as we head west towards Pontypool and then onwards, and upwards, to Blaenavon, a once important industrial town (and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site) which grew up around its ironworks.

Having made our way through Pontypool’s suburbs, we join the old disused Pontypool to Blaenavon Railway line. What was once a busy line linking the two communities and serving the local industry, is now a virtually traffic-free ribbon of smooth asphalt which rises gently upwards for almost 10 miles into the leafy southern slopes of a mountain known locally as The Blorenge.

Close to the summit, three miles of actual railway have been preserved and are, to the delight of generations of steam enthusiasts, home to the UK’s highest functioning standard gauge track, two platforms and a host of fully operational steam locomotives.

We’ll take a breather at the summit beside the Garn Lakes Nature Reserve before descending, circling the northern slopes of The Blorenge and finally returning via a series of scenic minor roads, all the way back to our hotel.

• Meals: Breakfast, lunch
• Ascent: 1,100 Metres Approx.

Having spent three evenings and two full days enjoying some of Monmouthshire’s best riding, it’s time to change locations and scenery as we head off into the heart of the Brecon Beacons.

Our transition ride begins relatively sedately as we head upstream along the Usk Valley, following the course of the river as it rises gently and meanders through numerous towns and villages such as Abbergavenny, Govilon and Crickhowell.

Approximately 30 miles into the ride we turn away from the Usk and, crossing a tiny swing bridge in the village of Talybont, temporarily head south into a more dramatic, much more rural and more challenging terrain.

After riding along the shoreline of the Talybont Reservoir, the first of three that we shall encounter in the final stages of today’s ride, the road rises sharply for just under a mile before plunging back down, equally sharply for a similar distance.

A final ten miles of mainly rolling, occasionally cheeky, country lanes deliver us to our second boutique spa hotel which will be our home for the next four evenings.

• Meals: Breakfast, lunch
• Ascent: 1,400 Metres Approx.

Our first ride into the heart of the Brecon Beacons National Park is a strikingly different experience to last few days as we enter a sparsely populated, wild and open landscape characterised by far reaching views, huge skies and, what people who don’t ride bikes often describe as, “rolling” hills!

We begin the day with a gentle, leg-warming, three miles of climbing which is quickly followed by a succession of ups and downs. By the time we’ve pedalled 15 miles, the road, and the hillside, seem to fall away beneath us as we reach a ridge overlooking the unrealistically steep walled valley of Afon Senni.

As we know, what goes down must also go up, so after carefully negotiating the sharp switchbacks that lead us down to the valley floor and the tiny hamlet of Heol Senni, it isn’t long before we‘re pushing ourselves up the equally sharp but thankfully short, climb on the opposite side.

By now the theme of the day has been well and truly set and the dragon’s tooth profile just keeps on giving as we pedal onwards through the wilderness of the Beacons, up and over the numerous small climbs, past the remote lakes and through the sporadic small villages. 

• Meals: Breakfast, lunch
• Ascent: 1,300 Metres Approx.

The Rhondda actually flows through two enormous U-shaped glacial valleys and today, our figure-of-eight-shaped route allows us travel through each of them.

Firstly though we have to reach them, which we do via three climbs, the third of which, Rhigos Mountain, with its broad sweeping hairpins close to the summit, is the most dramatic and most significant. 

After a similarly dramatic and significant decent we arrive in the town of Treorchy in Rhondda Fawr (Big Rhondda) and continue through Gelli and then onwards, after rising over a steep ridge, into Rhondda Fach (Little Rhondda) and the towns of Ferndale & Maerdy.

The dense urbanisation and the incredibly long terraces that line the narrow floors of the valleys come as something of a surprise having spent the last few days in such sparsely populated countryside, but it isn’t long before we‘re rising out of them into more familiar, rural terrain.

We end the day with a gradual 13 mile climb that leads us back to the hotel.

• Meals: Breakfast, lunch
• Ascent: 1,100 Metres Approx.

For the first section of our final day on the bikes we retrace, in reverse, some of the roads we explored during our transition from Usk earlier in the week. Once past the reservoirs and having crossed the swing bridge at Talybont however, despite being back in the Usk Valley for a short time, we find ourselves on new and unexplored roads.

From Talybont the roads undulate in a generally upwards direction until we reach the Brecon, the bustling little market town which lent its name to the whole region.

Beyond Brecon the road rises once again and leads us onto the lovely green expanse of Mynydd Illtud Common before one last up and over back to the hotel at Nant Ddu.

• Meals: Breakfast

Alas we have reached the end of our adventure and all that remains is to enjoy a final breakfast and transfer back to our first hotel in Usk from where drivers can collect their vehicles and from where those travelling by train will be transferred a little further to the train station in Newport.