We left first thing in the morning to make sure we made it back to Fowlers before it opened, as we had chained Paul’s bike up to their fence. We stayed on the highway all the way there… hit a little morning commute traffic, and made it a few minutes before they opened. We talked through the issues, unchained the bike, and told them about our issue, hoping it would be easy to fix… (they had told us they had a 4 week wait on maintenance, so if they couldn’t bypass the fried alarm wires, then we’d have to figure out what plan C would be. While we were waiting, and definitely praying, we roamed around their three story building, and talked through our new plan for the day. about 4o minutes later, they walked over and told us it was “toast… na man, just kidding… 40 quid.” So, we were ready to roll! We decided to re-schedule the ferry ride at 11:45 pm that night, instead of the 1 pm we had originally scheduled. We ate a full english at Fowlers Diner upstairs, and then headed off for a leisurely ride through the Brecon in Wales.

Got our selfie with some sheep

After we cleared the traffic, we hit some great roads, before stopping off in a valley just inside the Brecon, at a local pub called The Red Lion in Llangynidr… (anyone else notice how much the Welsh like duplicating letters?!). We split two sausage pies (foxed by the box on this one… turns out a sausage pie doesn’t actually contain any sausage.. to Paul’s utter disappointment, it contained no meat of any kind!), and a pint each, before continuing on our journey. We then ran into some of the best roads so far! A small winding road through a hilly pass, with the sun actually making an appearance… Gorgeous! Still early for our ferry, we started heading that way, planning to eat some grub beforehand.

We were also watching the sky closely, because that sun had disappeared, and turned into rain. We filled up gas and on a recommendation, headed to a pub, just as it had started raining. Turns out they don’t cook dinner on Tuesdays…(Paul was sure that this was because we were Englishmen in the Welsh countryside) so while it was raining, we attempted to get our gear on. This took a long time, partially because it was the first time we had put it on, and turns out, rain gear goes on easier, and works best when you are not already wet! We eventually got ourselves sorted, and rode through the rain for the next 45 minutes, until it stopped as we arrived at our ferry port. We were early, so we parked the bikes and walked to a fancy pub just down the street called The Rose and Crown.

We ate some delicious grub, the pork belly was especially good, and then walked back and got ourselves on the ferry. The bikes were chained down, we found an open spot to crash, shared a nightcap of Auchentoshan whiskey, and then slept for a few hours. End of day, right? NO! We all got up at 4 am to ride to our hostel stay that we would have to be out of in 5 hours. It took us an hour and a half to find this place, with a few backtracks on the same road we had just come off… Needless to say we questioned leaving the leading to Mike more than once…  We did finally get there, and slept for 3 more hours. This was one long day. 306 miles traveled over a 22 hour period.

Here is what we had planned for Day 4!