Motorcycling holiday in North Wales-Day 1

It's been a very long time since I'd taken a proper holiday. The last time I'd been on a proper holiday was in August 06 to the Andaman islands. I was planning to tour the Shetlands or Ireland. But to certain constraints I suddenly decided to tour North Wales. My wife was happy with the location as well, I suppose. With the location and travel dates finalised, I'd to quickly book the accommodation and there weren't many available. Finally managed to book a room in Bryn Bella in Betws-Y-Coed for our stay as this had a secure garage for bikes. We went and bought new sports panniers for my bike for the tour and was eagerly waiting for the tour to begin. On the weekend before the tour began, took my bike to have a general check-up. Everything was now as planned and we were just waiting for the weekend to over for us to start our tour.

We began the tour on Monday. We wanted to leave our place by 1030 or 1100. But it took us a while to fasten the panniers to the bike which meant we managed to leave the place just after 1200. The bike felt very strange with the extra weight, to the extent I was able to touch the ground very comfortably. After fuelling up at Barking Tesco, the real journey to Betws-Y-Coed began. The weather prediction for the day, and for the week, wasn't great. It was predicted to be a washout week. At least we started in the dry. We took to A406 to get to A1/M1. We had no rain for the first 50 miles or so. We were cruising on M1 when the heavens opened and the visibility from spray was so bad that it slowed us and the Motorway traffic to about 40/50mph.

We had the first break at M1 Watford Gap Services. We had covered 90 out of 240 miles. The eateries in any Services is a rip off. After having a good lunch and changing gloves, filled-up the bike and continued our journey. It had stopped raining and I was quite eager to eat up the miles before the next break and the rain. The next 50 miles was rain-free. We stopped again in Shrewsbury A5/A49 junction Services for some tea and petrol. The rain continued unabated.

I've read a lot about the scenic roads in North Wales. The first taste of the wonderful biking routes I've read about was when we entered Llangollen. From there to Betws-Y-Coed, the A5 was fantastic with sweeping bends and some flowing corners. To our joy, the rain had stopped but the road was still damp. The one thing I hated was getting stuck behind a truck or gaggle of slow moving cars. Enjoying the scenic roads we reached the B&B just after 1830. We had done 240 miles on that day in the worst rainy conditions I've ever ridden. The bike looked like a dirt-bike. Anyway I wasn't going to clean it as the rain was expected for the next few days.

In the evening we went to the town to have some take-away and explore by foot. With the first day of our trip finished we went to bed early to have an early start to take the 0900 Snowdon Mountain train.