Tag Archives: Wales

Training for London Edinburgh London 2025: hard lessons from Bryan Chapman

Posted on by
8

This is the third in a series of posts about my training and preparation for the 1530km London Edinburgh London audax event in August 2025. The series was inspired by LEL supremo Danial Webb asking if anyone was planning to post about their training and preparation for the event. Read part one here and part 2 here.

Crossing the Gospel Pass on Bryan Chapman Memorial audax

They say we learn far more from our failures than our successes. If so, my experience on last weekend’s Bryan Chapman Memorial 600km audax ride should really help me on London Edinburgh London in August.

I’ve written a blow-by-blow account of the ride here, so head over there for the gory details. Or you can watch my five minute highlights video:

Here, I’ll share what I learned on the Bryan Chapman. Let’s start on a positive note: what went well.

The right bike

Should you ride your fastest or your most robust bike on a big audax event? I chose my Specialized Diverge gravel bike. It’s seen me through countless adventures including two editions of London Wales London. It’s not my lightest bike, but its 38mm tyres give me such reassurance, especially when hitting a pothole at speed in the middle of the night.

My Restrap custom frame bag was so useful

One of the disadvantages of riding a small frame bike – in my case 54mm – is that only the smallest frame bags fit. On a 600km or longer audax event that is a pain. But I noticed that Restrap offer a custom frame bag for a very reasonable £119.99. I sent off for the design pack, which helps you work out the dimensions, and where the various straps should go.

My wife Karen and I carefully followed the instructions to design my custom bag, and I placed my order. At first I was afraid the bag wouldn’t arrive in time given the stated lead times, but the Restrap team was brilliant, and I received the bag a week before the Bryan Chapman. It fitted perfectly, and was a huge help on the ride.

Cutting the ride short: the right decision

A few weeks ago, endurance cyclist Emily Chappell invited advice on her Substack post about long-distance cycling. I gave a few tips, including not giving up cheaply when you’re at your lowest ebb. Eat, sleep, and reflect.

So it was ironic that I decided to cut short my Bryan Chapman route, going straight from the Dolgellau control at Kings Youth Hostel to the sleep stop at Aberdyfi. I made the decision after going miles off route because my Garmin led me onto the southbound track when I was still heading north. As a result, I had a massive, additional pass to climb, and lost a huge chunk of time.

I had already made the decision before Kings, and it was undoubtedly the right one. I could enjoy a reviving stay at the control, relish the coastal ride to Aberdyfi, and be in far better condition for the remaining 210km in the morning. Best of all, I was at peace with the failure to get to Menai Bridge. I could do my Welsh end to end another time.

My near midnight finish on the second day shows how right I was.

Taking spare SRAM batteries was vital

If you ride electronic gears, you have to be ready to replace or charge batteries on the road. SRAM eTap batteries theoretically last up to 1,000km, at least when new. I had to pop in a spare one after around 375km. Those constant gear changes on the very hilly Bryan Chapman drained the battery far sooner than I expected. But I was prepared.

The volunteers were amazing

As I spent time recovering at Aberdyfi, I was struck once again by the critical role volunteers play in audax events. One female helper seemed to be ever present – there when I went to sleep past midnight, and again when I went for breakfast just after 6am. She was constantly replenishing supplies and helping weary riders. To her and every other volunteer, and organiser Will Pomeroy: thank you!

So… the lessons I need to learn from

Make your own decisions

I was seriously underfuelled at times on the Bryan Chapman. Twice I allowed myself to be led by other people’s examples. After 74km at the first control, I ordered a small breakfast, as others had done, but it wasn’t enough. Later, after seeing Bryan Chapman riders eating at a bakery I did the same, even after finding the choice very limited.

On an audax like Bryan Chapman, you have to find your own food except at a small number of controls. You really have to make smart choices. I didn’t.

London Edinburgh London is very different, with food on offer at controls throughout the route. (Although judging from accounts of previous editions supplies may be limited if you arrive at a very busy time.) If you feel lethargic, don’t miss the chance to eat proper food – bars and gels can get you only so far.

Don’t trust your Garmin

My great mistake on the Bryan Chapman was to trust my Garmin’s directions. When it told me to turn off the main road between Machynlleth and Dolgellau I obeyed, and went miles off route, requiring an extra, very big climb. I didn’t realise it was sending me on the following day’s ride. Organiser Will Pomeroy had provided control-to-control GPS files. Had I used those, rather than the complete route version, I’d have been OK. Something to ponder with London Edinburgh London, whose northbound and southbound routes also cross.

Leaving Aberdyfi

You may be slower than you think

I deliberately didn’t try to estimate when I’d reach the various controls on Bryan Chapman. I knew how hilly the route was. Yet on the second day, I still under estimated how slow I’d be. The lack of sleep, and eating too little, had a big impact. I should have left Aberdyfi 90 minutes earlier at least.

Prepare to sleep

I’d brought a sleeping bag liner as I’d heard that the blankets provided at the Bryan Chapman sleep stop could be scratchy. I could have done with ear plugs to block out the constant noise of people coming and going, accompanied by their phone wake up alarms. One for the kit list for London Edinburgh London.

At a low point on a quiet mountain road, I enjoyed a power nap on a grassy verge beside the road. It revived my spirits. On London Edinburgh London, I’ll take the opportunity for a half hour nap at controls during the day if I need to.

Final thoughts

I booked to enter the Bryan Chapman as a test of my readiness for London Edinburgh. I’m glad I did. While I failed to complete the full 600km, I did ride further than I’d ever done before in two days. But I need to learn from my mistakes, and continue to build my endurance fitness. I’m starting a bike ride through France from the English Channel to the Mediterranean tomorrow, which should help!

UPDATE: read the next post in my series about preparing and training for London Edinburgh London: joining the LEL volunteers to create over 2,400 rider starter packs.

‘Works hard not always with success’ – The Guardian features my old school report comments

Posted on by
Reply

The Guardian newspaper has been running an amusing correspondence about school reports in its letters column. My contribution appeared in today’s paper – quoting two of my Cardiff High School reports from the 1970s, the first from my third form (the modern year 9) maths teacher.

I have an almost complete set of my school reports from 1972 to 1982, just before I sat my A levels. Looking back, it is striking how brief primary school reports were in the early 1970s. Take this example from Lakeside Primary School, Cardiff:

(There was a brief summary by the class teacher as well.)

In those primary years, there was a section about handwriting, and few reports went by without a comment about my poor handwriting. ‘If only he could be neater!… Untidy! … Still lacking in shape… poor…’ My mother even bought me a copy of Teach Yourself Handwriting but my attempts to practise neater writing didn’t last long. To be fair, my handwriting had improved by the time I sat my A levels – I can still easily read my mock exam essays.

Rereading the old reports, I was surprised to see a glowing report from the primary teacher I liked least, when I was nine. Miss Lloyd was terrifying, and almost the first thing she said to me was, ‘What language is this – Chinese?’ on seeing my handwriting. One day she told me off for losing so many pens, and threatening dire consequences if I lost another. Needless to say I did, and I vividly remember lying in the bath that evening, stressed about going into school the next day. Nothing happened, but 52 years later I was amused to see her comments in the report: ‘At times he is possibly over-anxious and perhaps takes life rather too seriously’…

Curiously, my Welsh teacher Mrs Davies always praised me for working well or very good work even when giving me a C rating.

My worst ever school report, just before my O levels

I was well into my fifties when Dad gave me a stack of my school reports that he and Mum had kept. It was unusual for him to keep old school materials and books – as I blogged recently he tended to throw these away without telling me. I read the report above, issued just after my O level mocks, with some pain. I had done very badly in some of my subjects, especially chemistry and French, and my teachers stated bluntly that I needed to work much harder to do well in my O levels. (My mother had made a similar point when she found me day dreaming rather than revising over the Christmas holidays.) The warnings worked: I did reasonably well, especially in my favourite subjects, history, commerce and English language and literature, and didn’t disgrace myself in the others.

One postscript to that report. My O level chemistry teacher says that I would be better suited to CSE rather than O level. The Certificate of Secondary Education ran in parallel to O levels, and was designed for less academically able pupils. I was mortified at first to be told I couldn’t sit chemistry O level (although with 22 percent in the mock, it was clear I would fail) but loved my five months in the CSE chemistry class. It was clearly at my ability level, and I got the top CSE grade, 1, in the exam. Years later a school friend, Alison, recalled being surprised when I joined the CSE class: ‘We thought you were brainy!’ My experience showed the importance of adapting education to the needs of the child rather than a one size fits all approach. CSEs and O levels were replaced by GCSE eight years later.

Looking back, I can see that I didn’t work nearly as hard as I should have done especially at high school. My 16 year old son Owen is working far harder and achieving much more consistently high grades. In short, he’s much more conscientious than his father was…

My Dad and Wynford Vaughan-Thomas

Posted on by
Reply
My father Bob Skinner with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, 1977

I was delighted to discover this photo of my late father with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, one of the most illustrious Welshmen of the twentieth century.

Wynford was a wonderful broadcaster and writer. His first prominent role was as the BBC’s Welsh language commentator at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) in 1937.

His most famous broadcast was from a Lancaster bomber on a raid on Berlin in 1943, an experience he told Michael Parkinson in 1981 was “the most terrifying eight hours I’ve spent in my life”. Like his BBC contemporary John Arlott, Vaughan-Thomas had an almost poetic way with words, which isn’t surprising given he was taught by Dylan Thomas’s father. He recalled that burning Berlin was “the most beautifully horrible sight I’ve ever seen, like watching someone throwing jewellery on black velvet, winking rubies, sparkling diamonds, all coming up at you.” He went on to compare the Berlin searchlights with the tentacles of an octopus.

The BBC radio programme Archive on 4 devoted an intriguing episode in 2013 to the raid with audio from the original 1943 broadcast, Vaughan-Thomas’s recollections and most movingly the memories of a survivor of the raid who was a Berlin schoolgirl in 1943. She tells how her mother risked death by going back into their collapsing home to rescue her teddy bear. Her interview brought to mind the terrible human cost of the Allied – and German – bombing raids of the second world war.

When I rediscovered the photo that opens this blogpost amongst Dad’s photo collection. I assumed that it was taken at an Institute of Public Relations dinner during the time Bob was chairman pf the IPR (now CIPR) Wales group in the 1970s. Sure enough, I found confirmation in a box file of Dad’s speeches and articles: the notes of the speech he gave that night:

“The champagne voice of Wales” – how apt!

Bob wrote a short history of the IPR in Wales in 1995, which was launched at an event in (I think) Newport. It includes this photo, which shows that my mother Rosemary also attended, and that the dinner with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas took place in November 1977, a day before Dad’s 51st birthday. Arwyn Owen, seen in the photo above, who ran PR for Welsh Brewers, kindly supported my application to join the IPR in 1990.

Wynford Vaughan-Thomas was a leading figure in Welsh broadcasting, and was one of the founders of Harlech Television (HTV, now ITV Wales). Not long before he died in 1987 he co-presented a wonderful television history of Wales, The Dragon Has Two Tongues. His sparring partner was the equally loquacious Gwyn A Williams, and over 13 episodes the two Welshmen argued passionately about the interpretation of the past. By common consent Williams won the debate, and Vaughan-Thomas was reduced at one point to dismiss his fellow presenter as “a Marxist magpie”.

Sadly this entertaining series has never been repeated in Wales for copyright reasons, although it has been broadcast in Ireland. It was accompanied by two contrasting histories, Wales: a History by Wynford, and When Was Wales? by Alf.

Remembering Pelé, the world’s greatest footballer

Posted on by
Reply

Brazil, and the world, is mourning a legend. The greatest ever footballer, Pelé, has died aged 82.

Meeting a legend: Rob and Pele, London, June 2016

I was privileged to meet Pelé in 2016. He was the star speaker at an event organised by Shell, speaking movingly about his charity work encouraging deprived young people in the favelas of Brazil’s cities.

We met the day before the Wales men’s football team played in the quarter-final of Euro 2016. I commented to Pelé that the last time Wales appeared in a quarter-final he had scored the goal that knocked us out of the 1956 FIFA world cup finals. It was a magical moment: Pelé’s face transformed into a dazzling smile as he remembered the game and tournament that made his reputation.

I will never forget the moment I shared with the true gentleman who was the world’s greatest footballer.

PS: the BBC invited me to talk about my memories of Pelé on the World Service OS programme this evening. I enjoyed hearing of the experiences of the other guests, especially one taking part from India who saw Pelé play in Brazil in 1972 when his ship docked there.

Dewch ymlaen, Cymru!

Posted on by
Reply
Talking to Pele about 1958. London, 2016

It’s taken a lifetime. Cymru (Wales) tonight play our first game in the FIFA men’s World Cup finals since Pele knocked us out of the 1958 tournament in Sweden. Pele was 17 years old at the time. He’s now 82. But more on Brazil’s greatest legend later.

Ticket to disappointment

We’re used to heartache and disappointment. I was selling programmes at Ninian Park on the night in 1985 when Scotland denied Wales a place at the 1986 World Cup. I was standing on the touchline with my friend Anthony Beer watching the drama as Wales took the lead early in the game. We seemed to be heading for Mexico until Scotland equalised in the second half. But the drama didn’t end there. As the game ended and we left the ground we saw an ambulance arriving to take Scotland manager Jock Stein to hospital. The legendary coach had collapsed as the game ended, and sadly died that evening.

That wasn’t the first time I’d experienced heartache following Wales. In May 1976 I saw us lose narrowly to England in the old British home international tournament, grabbing the autograph of Southampton’s FA Cup giant killing manager Lawrie McMenemy as a slight consolation. Just weeks later I was back in Ninian Park for the home leg of Wales’s quarter-final against Yugoslavia in the European Nations Cup 1976. We needed to win after losing the first leg, but a draw that day in Cardiff saw us knocked out, a disappointment mixed with shame as hooligans invaded the pitch and pelted the referee with coins. (I watched the scenes with a sinking feeling.) Wales were banned from playing at home, and so the next disappointment, defeat to Scotland in the 1978 World Cup qualifier, took place in Liverpool.

C’mon Cymru!

The great Welsh footballing resurgence began with Euro 2016 in France, when we exceeded everyone’s expectations and reached the semi-finals, losing narrowly to Portugal. The highlight of that campaign was a magnificent 3-1 win over Belgium, with magical goals by Williams, Robson-Kanu and Vokes putting Cymru through to the semis. We also reached the delayed Euro 2020 finals.

All credit to the Wales FA, who have been masterful in linking the national football team with our identity as a nation. It uses the Welsh name Cymru for the team, and brilliantly adopted Dafydd Iwan’s 1980s protest song Yma O Hyd (‘Still Here’) as a second anthem to inspire the team and fans alike. The eve-of-tournament Yma O Hyd video used footage of defining moments in modern Welsh history including the destruction of Welsh village of Tryweryn for a reservoir for Liverpool, the Aberfan tragedy of 1966 and the 1984-5 miners’ strike.

Wales take on the United States in the first game of the campaign. Just think: a nation of three million taking on one with 331 million people! Wales is the second smallest country in the tournament after hosts Qatar.

The tainted tournament

This is one of the most controversial World Cup finals. Back in 2010 many were shocked that FIFA had awarded the tournament to a country with no footballing tradition. The finals are happening in November as Qatar is too hot for football during the normal summer slot. Still worse is the host’s attitude to LGBT people, and women. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, while many migrant workers have suffered injury or death in the construction bonanza the world cup unleashed. The BBC chose to highlight criticisms of Qatar rather than show the opening ceremony yesterday. Today, Wales and England, alongside five other national football associations, abandoned plans for their captains to wear OneLove armbands promoting diversity and inclusion. They caved in after FIFA threatened to book the players, continuing FIFA’s shameful surrender to Qatar’s regime.

The spirit of 1958

I’ll end as I began, with Pele. The night before Wales played Belgium in that 2016 quarter-final I was lucky enough to meet Pele at an event in London, organised by Shell. He spoke eloquently about his work with deprived young people in Brazil. I mentioned that Wales was about to play a quarter-final for the first time since that Wales v Brazil match in 1958, and that he’d scored the winning goal that ended Wales’s World Cup. His eyes lit up as he recalled the tournament that made his reputation. It was a priceless moment.

May the spirit of 1958 light up Cymru’s 2022 World Cup campaign.

PS: Cymru drew 1-1 after Gareth Bale scored an emphatic penalty to level the scores. Ry’n ni yma o hyd!

Own goal: Prince of Wales supports England

Posted on by
Reply
The Prince of Wales – supporting England. FA/PA Wire

No one asked the people of Wales whether they wanted an English prince William to be Prince of Wales in September. We’ve had no say in the matter since England’s Edward I named his son prince of Wales in the 14th century.

So it was no surprise that William didn’t give a moment’s thought before his crass decision to visit the England football team to say “I’m really here to point out that the rest of the country is behind you. We are all rooting for you, enjoy it.”

How could he be so foolish, so insensitive? Did he give no thought to how his actions and comments would be received in Wales? Did none of his advisers tell him to step back from cheerleading England?

It should have been obvious that he should have stepped down as president of the English football association the moment he was named Prince of Wales. Yet he chose to support England, a country in the same group as Wales in the FIFA men’s world cup in Qatar.

it’s time to ditch the anachronistic, imperial title of Prince of Wales. The country is not a principality, but has its own government and parliament, the Senedd. William backtracked today when challenged to the Llwydd of the Senedd: “I’m supporting both [countries] definitely.” He should have thought this through and avoided scoring this spectacular own goal.

Here’s to Cymru’s success in the world cup…

The Falklands war, 40 years on

Posted on by
1
HMS Ardent explodes, May 1982

I never expected Britain to be at war when I prepared to sit my A levels in 1982. Let alone at war with Argentina over a group of islands 8,000 miles away.

Yet that was the reality as I woke on the morning of Friday 2 April 1982. Barely awake at the start of the last day of the school term, I heard on Radio 4’s Today programme some armchair general talking of nuking Buenos Aires. Later that day, we learned that Argentina had invaded the Falkland islands, one of the few remaining British overseas territories. Margaret Thatcher’s British government was stunned.

Contrary to popular belief, the invasion wasn’t a complete bolt from the blue. Two days earlier. I noted in my 1982 diary: ‘Falkland island crisis worsening: Guardian front page lead’. Yet the legend holds that many people in Britain were shocked, thinking the Falklands were off the coast of Scotland. Recovering them would have been a lot easier had that been true.

Going to war was a novel and shocking experience in 1982, almost 40 years after the end of the second world war. Yet it felt like an echo of the past. I described it in my 1982 diary as Britain’s last colonial war, a description that has stood the test of time. (Although there was no doubt that the islanders wanted to live under British rule.) Several of the warships involved in the Falklands took part in or were laid down during the second world war: the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano, sunk by the Royal Navy, survived Pearl Harbor as USS Phoenix. In 1982, it was not so lucky. HMS Hermes, the Royal Navy’s Falklands flagship was laid down in 1944. And the RAF Vulcan bombers that flew 8,000 miles to bomb Stanley airfield relied on an updated version of the wartime H2S navigation radar system to find their target.

Continue reading →

COP26: the end of King Coal?

Posted on by
2
Penrhos Junction, 1920. Gwyn Briwnant Jones, Photo credit: Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

It was a symbol of Welsh industrial might: a locomotive hauling a coal train that seemed to go on for ever. A century ago Welsh steam coal powered the world. Yet Wales has become one of the first countries to join a global coalition of nations aiming to phase out fossil fuels: the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance. It’s comes as criticism grows of the weak response of the COP26 climate conference to the climate crisis.

I grew up in Cardiff on tales of King Coal. As I lay in bed I could hear the growl of locomotives hauling coal trains along the old Rhymney Railway line from Caerphilly. And I loved visiting the mock coal mine at the National Museum of Wales – appropriately located in the basement. The museum is in Cardiff’s magnificent civic centre, part of the impressive architectural legacy of the immense wealth created by the coal boom, along with elegant ship and coal owners’ mansions such as Insole Court, Llandaff.

Continue reading →

Flintshire detached: remembering our old counties

Posted on by
6

Flintshire detached county

Flintshire detached: our old blurred county lines

Forty years ago today, many of Britain’s most cherished counties disappeared under local government reorganisation. The changes also ended a curious historic anomaly: ‘Flintshire detached’: the area of Flintshire, Maelor Saesneg, which was detached from the rest of the county of Flint and surrounded by the Welsh county of Denbigh and the English counties of Shropshire and Chester.

Maelor Saesneg (‘English Maelor’) was one of the very last ‘exclaves‘: detached county territory. Most of these exclaves were tidied up in the 19th century. For example, much of Minety, Wiltshire, was part of neighbouring Gloucestershire until 1844, the year parliament started the tidying process.

I remember being curious about ‘Flintshire detached’ on childhood maps of Wales. I had a reminder of those long-gone days last Sunday on a bike ride in Buckinghamshire. Near Amersham, I passed a handsome property called Hertfordshire House. Its name reveals that it was once in an exclave of Hertfordshire in neighbouring Bucks, centred on the village of Coleshill. Centuries ago, the house was owned by Thomas Ellwood, who held illegal Quaker meetings there, safe in the knowledge that it was too remote for Herts justices of the peace to interfere. (It was Ellwood who rented a cottage for John Milton in Chalfont St Giles, where the great poet lived during London’s great plague of 1665 and completed Paradise Lost.)

Back to 1974. An even greater historical anomaly was Monmouthshire. Until 40 years ago, that border county was regarded by many as technically part of England rather than Wales, having been annexed as an English county following the forced acts of union in the 16th century. The 1974 local government reorganisation in Wales put an end to such nonsense. Never again would acts of parliament refer to South Wales and Monmouthshire.

I was there: the night Jock Stein died

Posted on by
1

Ticket to tragedy: the night Jock Stein died

Wales are playing Scotland in a FIFA world cup qualifier tonight. It’s a fixture freighted with ill luck for Wales and tragedy for everyone. On a September night 27 years ago, Scotland’s revered manager Jock Stein collapsed and died at Ninian Park after his team qualified for Mexico 1986 at our expense. As Max Boyce would say, I was there.

I had a pitch-side view of the events of that extraordinary night, although I didn’t see Jock himself. I described the experience in my blog five tears ago:

“My friend Anthony Beer and I sold programmes at the dramatic Wales v Scotland World Cup qualifier game at Ninian Park, Cardiff. My diary notes that we were the only sellers inside the ground; we went down the players’ tunnel as the Welsh national anthem was played. We had to exchange programmes for cash through the netting that kept fans from the pitch – not so easy when many fans wanted five or more! We soon ran out of our initial 500 – the Welsh FA had printed just 20,000 programmes for a crowd of 40,000.

“We saw Mark Hughes give Wales an early lead before Scotland snatched a draw through a very dubious penalty, ending Wales’ hopes of playing in the 1986 Mexico finals. Afterwards, we passed Scotland’s Willie Miller being interviewed live on ITV as we took our takings in to the offices under the grandstand next to the dressing room. It was there that we heard that the Scotland manager, Jock Stein, had collapsed. Later, we heard the tragic news that he had died. We collected our £10 seller’s fees and walked out of the ground as an ambulance driver manoeuvred to avoid a Securicor van. Scottish and British football had lost a legend – the first manager to lead a club from these islands to victory in the European Cup.”

PS: Wales won! Cymru am byth. That will help overcome the painful memories of 1977 and 1985.