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Sunday 16 August:
Pack Ride to Carew Castle & Lawrenny Quay
The 2009 Schedule of Pack Events listed the ride on Sunday 16 August as a ride-out to West Wales for lunch at The Old Point House Inn, right on the beach at Angle. Dee and I recconnoitred this route beforehand and found that whilst it would be a good ride, the final half-mile approach to the pub was along a badly pot-holed off-road track, with a shale and gravel incline to the car park. I thought that this might prove to be unsuitable for some riders, especially those with a pillion passenger, so I decided not to visit the pub, but instead visit Carew Castle and the nearby tidal mill and then route via Cresswell Quay to Lawrenny Quay for lunch.
The weather forecast was for a cloudy but dry day, so 9 people on 7 bikes set off westwards along the M4 from Cardiff West Services, under threatening skies. However, after about 30 miles the skies brightened, just in time for us to turn off the motorway at Junction 48 and take the B4306 from Hendy, out through Pontyberem, to meet the A40 just before St Clears. This delightful back road, with almost no traffic, climbed and fell across the rural west Wales landscape and enabled us to miss out most of the A40. We stopped for coffee just before St Clears at the Forge Restaurant, where one of the staff who took my order told me that we would have to claim our food when she returned with it because we all looked the same with our leathers on! Now let me see.....is that Jill Newberry or Nigel Hicks? Well, they both look the same with bald heads and grey whiskers!
After coffee, we pressed on for the next 30 miles to Carew and stopped in the car park to visit Carew Castle and the nearby Tidal Mill. Carew Castle is a 13th Century castle with Tudor additions. There is a substantial amount of the castle remaining and it is possible to access the upper floor in places, to get a god view or the river and the mill. The nearby 19th Century tidal mill, powered by the rise and fall of tide on the Carew River, is the only Welsh mill of its kind in tact. It was worth the short walk to the mill to see how it was set up with French millstones to grind wheat into flour I bet it was better than the supermarket rubbish we get now!
From the mill, we set off around the single track lanes, through West Williamston and Creswell Quay to Lawrenny Quay, where we stopped for lunch at the stunningly situated Quayside tearooms. The superb food, quick friendly service and a stunning location all combined to make this a memorable lunch stop if you are ever down that way, then seek out the Quayside for a lunch stop.
Biking around the inlets of the Creswell and Carew Rivers is very scenic and so we continued after lunch, eventually picking up the B4315 through Cold Blow and Princes Gate and then the B4313 through Tavernspite and Red Roses to Pendine. From Pendine we routed through Laugharne and then back to Cardiff via the A40 and M4. This enabled us to arrive back indoors at around 5.30 p.m., just in time for the highlights of the Moto GP. Seeing Lorenzo fall off and Rossi win the race and extend his lead in the Championship to 50 points was the perfect way to end a superb 200-mile ride around west Wales with like-minded friends.
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