Route 82 ...WTF !

[godivatrailrider]

WRT took us along sections of Route 82 , particularly between Barmouth & Machynlleth ... who the fluff designated that as a cycle route

From the Sustrans website ...

"Dolgellau to Machynlleth via Tywyn is challenging and takes you through the heart of Snowdonia, and along some of the amazing Welsh coastline.

You traverse the coastal hills with stunning views north and out to sea, before dropping to Tywyn, home of the Talallyn Railway, and then going out to traverse the hills once again to Machynlleth."

Challenging - understatement . Attempting this on anything less than a mountain bike would be fool hardy.
Views? - What views! We spent the night up there and could barely see 100m in any direction ever!
Talallyn Railway ... absolutely the best cafe and facilities Lifesaver.
More hills up Happy Valley.
Was character building on a 29+ with low gears. Benji managed it on a Singlespeed. Nutter. I cannot imagine someone on a traditional touring bike having much fun up there.

[ootini]

Attempting this on anything less than a mountain bike would be fool hardy.

Yes, yes it was.

[ctznsmith]

Welcome to the wonderful world of the NCN.

Sustrans did a review of it in 2015/2016 and I had the frankly amazing (temporary) job of being one of the people surveying it. I didn't do Wales but did various other parts of the country including parts of Scotland where I had similar experiences to yours on NCN 82.

There are sections that can be quite 'challenging'. When creating the NCN routes the idea was that it could be ridden by an unaccompanied 12 year old, which means that they tried to select 'quieter'* routes. Sadly this can on occasion lead to routing on surfaces that are less than wonderful on a standard bike or smaller roads that are more hilly than the direct route. In Sustran's defence trying to find a decent route in Wales without massive hills would be tricky!
(*in parts of the UK this leads to riding through seemingly endless miles of industrial estates! )

They did remove a bunch of stuff from the NCN off the back of the survey because it was either awful, went nowhere or wasn't really a long distance route from A to B. Obviously they decided route 82 was still ok.

p.s. Happy valley was lovely though!

[RIP]

Pickers was saying it's really deteriorated recently. When I last did it, it were nae bother at all.

[godivatrailrider]

Yeah Happy Valley was superb.

Unaccompanied 12yr old ....up there

There's one near me , Route 44, section is sort of Shrewsbury to Hereford. ... 54 miles and 5 hours, station to station avoiding as much of the A49 as possible on Google maps, and that's pretty direct.
Route 44 is meandering, goes over to the Stiperstones , far from direct ...... from their website .
"Route 44 is a route on the National Cycle Network, open in sections between Shrewsbury and Hereford.
Key Facts
31.1 miles, 50.1 kilometres

2 hours 40 minutes
10 hours 20 minutes
21.8% Traffic-free | 99.4% Asphalt, 0.6% Unsealed loose


Please be aware that this route may not be accessible to everyone."

Somehow they shrink the indirect distance from Shrewsbury to Hereford from 54 mile to 31 !
I have contacted them regarding this ... no response.
In reality ... it stops at Ludlow, not Hereford. So why not just say Shrewsbury to Ludlow.

It seems to take a cyclist up the steepest nastiest hills ... yes they're quiet lanes but for most folks on a bike, an unaccompanied 12yr old, you'd be off and walking.

There are lovely lanes that are simply much nicer to ride through this beautiful area.

[ctznsmith]

I think the NCN was created in the 80's / 90's on a wing and a prayer mainly because the director/founder of Sustran's wanted it to exist.

These days I'm not sure there is much in the way of funding attached to it within Sustrans in order to change the routes. I know a lot of the actual surfaces/paths it uses are actually maintained by local authorities and signposted by volunteers so it's slightly at the mercy of local politics. Maybe see if you have a local Sustrans volunteer group and contact them and you might get more of a response.

Nobody in our house is now currently employed by Sustrans so I don't know the internal landscape/people anymore.

[JackT]

I think the NCN was created in the 80's / 90's on a wing and a prayer mainly because the director/founder of Sustran's wanted it to exist.

True dat. Sustrans does / has done some amazing stuff, but the proposition of the NCN is an awkward compromise between urban/suburban utility routes and rural touring routes.

The NCN predates digital routing and smartphone navigation. With the excellent cycle.travel website and app offering a powerful and free 'quiet lanes' routing engine, there's no need to use the NCN as a starting point when planning a journey. Incidentally, Richard Fairhurst who built and runs cycle.travel is also a Sustrans volunteer ranger. So it all connects as they say.

[jameso]

I was just here thinking how much I've enjoyed Route 82 there in the past but I'd have to agree it's not quite what most would expect on an NCN. We rode a fair bit of it as an MTB loop back in the 26" MTB heydays. It's a great route going S into the Ogwen valley too.

Jack, interesting that you mention that about cycle.travel - I'd been looking at routes into mid Wales from the FoD towards Abergavenny or up through the valleys on there, it's excellent.