Ep64 | Britain’s Best Coast Road?

Having nearly completed the coast trip we think we may have found the best stretch of coast road yet.

Hello and welcome to the Great British Biking Adventures Coast Series. In this series we are travelling around the coast on our motorcycle, a Honda VFR1200X Crosstourer.

A lot of our viewers are bike enthusiasts but this series will appeal to a wider audience. Why? Because there’s so much more to the Coast series than motorcycles. There’s the challenges, the journey, geography, history and people. You get to travel the entire coast of England and Wales with us, see how we did it, share our ups and downs, experience English culture, the history and hear about the people that made Britain ‘Great’!

What’s also good about the coast series is it doesn’t matter when you start watching, it’s like one of those open top bus tours – you can get on at any point and just keep going until you arrive back where you started.

Who are we? We’re a husband & wife living in an unremarkable coastal town in England. We’ve been married 35 years and were brought together by motorcycles. One day, Esther’s Honda Melody broke down and she brought it to Jarrod’s motorcycle shop – the rest (as they say) is history.

One cold February day, we started riding along the seafront and just kept going. We wanted to record the experience to have something to watch in the future – the YouTube channel was an afterthought. Take a look at those first few episodes to see just how novice we were, cobbling together what little phone footage we had to try to make a story. To make up for our amateur recording and shyness we added information in the editing. This set the tone and style of our videos, we hope you like it. We like to think we’ve improved and hopefully you’ll agree, take a look, compare our earlier videos with the later ones and let us know in the comments.

There’s also the filming and production journey. When we started we knew nothing about filming, video and audio production, editing, YouTube and the like. We’ve learnt loads and spent loads in time and money along the way but it’s been almost as enjoyable as the journey itself. You’ll hopefully appreciate how far we’ve come.

But what’s with all those bible verses we hear you say. We know some of you don’t appreciate this aspect, one or two have told us in the comments! That’s fine – it really is. All are equally welcome here, believers and unbelievers. It would be a pity if you enjoyed everything else but just stopped watching because of the Christian references but we completely accept you’re free to do as you please.

Our faith has prompted us to include a bible verse in our videos and sometimes a Christian perspective on the things we talk about. The channel is not about Christianity but our faith cannot be separated from it. We hope and pray that it will make you think, inquire and even bring you into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Hello and welcome back to Great British biking Adventures if you’re new here and even if you’re not be prepared for something perhaps a little bit different grab a drink sit back relax and enjoy the ride as many of you will know in this series we’re traveling the coastline of

England and Wales on our Honda VFR 1200X cross Tor where as the last few episodes have been somewhat dramatic in this episode we chill out and take in the stunning scenery while experiencing some of Britain’s Best Coast Roads in the last episode we left barmouth and now we’re making our way down the west coast of Wales to our right is the Glorious cardigan Bay and the southern end of the Irish sea where it meets the Atlantic Ocean having navigated various Islands peninsulas and esteres we have a fairly straight run ahead of us today apart from the estery at the river doy there’s some lovely places on the way but I sense this episode will be less information and more about the ride so we thought we’d take the opportunity

To tell you a little more about this adventure of ours our old Honda Blackbird was getting a a bit tired and we’d been on the lookout for a replacement for a while we decided to go for the motorcycle equivalent of an SUV an adventure bike

Okay so the cross tour is no KTM but for what we need it’s ideal it’s best described as a hybrid between a sports tour and an adventure bike it has what is likely to be the last of Honda’s awesome V4 engines that has a pride lineage some say the V4 makes the ideal

Motorcycle engine and yet there are only a few that have been developed until ducatti finally accepted the limitations of a v twin the only modern bike you could buy with a V4 was a Honda apart from some rare Curiosities I think there’s only one other make that

Has mass-produced a V4 model Yamaha used a V4 engine in their Venture and Vmax models where where will be ah yes several bikes were on our short list including offerings from KTM Suzuki Triumph Yamaha kawazaki and even BMW one of the things that swayed us towards the Honda was the DCT automatic

Transmission we’d never had DCT before and now I don’t think we could ever go back especially for all day riding anyway 2 weeks after picking up the cross Tor there was a glimmer of sunshine breaking through the February clouds and we were off it was fairly impulsive we thought we’d take a ride

Down the coast and if we ended up staying out overnight so be it we ended up staying out two Nights we didn’t really do those early days Justice especially the first day when we get to the end we’re going to do that first section again we still feel bad about missing ilru a couple of episodes ago we met Ashley the first and only other motorcyclist doing the same our paths crossed in

Barmouth we spoke about the challenges of taking as much in as possible while still making progress the bottom line is had we ventured down to every Coastal nook and cranny we would still be somewhere on the East Coast now Ashley was more pragmatic than us and explained how unless there was something particularly

Significant heo Ed dead ends we have included many dead ends and even sort out byways consequently much of our journey has been on unclassified roads these narrow winding Lanes absorb a lot of time and it’s not been unusual for us to be riding for 10 hours a day we’ve

Even had a couple of days that have gone over 12 hours for accommodation we’ve done a variety of b&bs guest houses hotels and even camping we rarely book ahead because we quickly realized it’s nonon impossible to predict the journey times we get to about 4:00 p.m. and start

Thinking about where to stay sometimes we’ll put in somewhere early but we’ve had a few late days we’ve got caught out a couple of times and find it difficult to find somewhere but on balance we prefer to keep our options open that way occasionally we find a real gem as we did this Day But that tells for on oncoming trains the barriers are open and it can say hang on that red light just always will flash if those barriers are open does that make sense yeah yeah I presume that just goes to the beach well perhaps we better have a look wow that’s what I was Thinking let’s go for it ah here this they can yeah static Park oh very nice well I think they may have a color code a color code no like a dress code I think they have a color code rule for the Caravan so the mobile home to oh you

Not you’re not no yeah I just see brown green yeah yeah yeah they’re all they’re all white yeah really they’re all green for what I can see oh no they’re brown on the right there some white as you can imagine we found some stunning Coast roads every time we had a

Reasonable stretch of tarmac we were elated however I think we may have to concede the prize of the best way to travel the coast to the train there are significant stretches of coastal Railways especially down the West Coast as well as the amazing Coastal section between fui and abis

Withth the Cambrian line straddles Wales taking in some wonderful Countryside if that’s not enough to tempt you on this panoramic Feast then there’s also an opportunity to connect with not one not two not three not four not five but six Heritage Railways on the journey you can

Leave your car at Shrewsbury pack a posh lunch and immerse yourself in the experience the old buts to the left W Army B yeah I would say it’s more military we’ve done the trip in stages like Jared said we stayed out two nights on that first stage a couple couple of

Weeks later we returned to where we left off and did another 3 days before returning home we had got as far as Waymouth and now needed to ramp it up we couldn’t keep coming home every 3 days so for the third stage we packed the bike with camping gear and set off

To see how far we could get in 10 days we did really well which I put down to waking up in the tent early on those chilly April mornings we got all the way around the south coast in Kent crossed the temps and made it as far as the wash in

Lincolnshire before coming home by now we were committed but what about the YouTube thing I hear you say the filming is primarily so we have something to look back on the YouTube series was secondary but has become the motivation to record The Journey properly rather than have hundreds of separate clips of course

We’ve done a bit more than had we done it just for ourselves because we wanted to try to make it engaging for you to watch we’ve said it before but we really were video camera and YouTube novices it’s been a very steep learning curve but it has been fun I’m not saying we’re

Perfect but with practice hopefully we’ve got better looking back at episode 1 we have to chuckle finally it’s been great seeing the channel grow and getting to know our regular viewers through the comments we know a lot of you watch on TV where it’s difficult to leave

Comments but as we always say it would be great to hear from You If you will be kind to me be I be kind as you shall see ding dong 1 2 3 4 5 6 2 d 1 2 3 4 5 6 the Bell there are several stories about the bells of abui they mostly followed the same theme there was once a rich Kingdom

Of towns and villages on a low-lying fertile plane just offshore from here one day a great catastrophe struck some say because of slle gates left open others blame a fairy for allowing a well to overflow While others say it was caused by a drowning giant whatever happened the land was

Consumed by the Sea never to be seen again all versions of the legend agree that if you listen carefully particularly on a quiet night a Sunday morning or in times of danger the bells can still be heard from abidi ringing under the Sea the legend inspired a well-known song although embraced by the Welsh the song first appeared in the English Opera Liberty Hall in 1785 and is not thought to be a traditional folk song as Welsh lyrics weren’t written until the 19th century if you will be kind to me I’ll

Be kind as you shall see ding dong one two 3 And Oh Well we’ve taken a long trip Inland I say a long trip what is it about 7 8 miles to get across this River yeah at Mac can’t say it it’s a difficult one isn’t it Ma there it is MTH mckin mckin mckin anyway we’re here along with everybody

Else because this is the first crossing point from the sea and I think it’s probably been here a while this bridge lovely very lovely or as the Welsh would say there’s lovely there’s lovely this is morha b or just B Mora is the Welsh word for reclaimed land when

Researching and writing scripts for these videos I often say I could say more to indicate I just picked out a few Snippets of information but I really couldn’t find anything more to say than you can’t see for yourselves it’s not just me it seems even Wikipedia has

Struggled to provide any more than I’ve already said so I was going to say it has the shortest Wikipedia entry of any time in the UK and then though sooner had we left both behind we entered glan wor well what I can tell you is that it

Has the shortest Wikipedia entry of any time in the UK I’m sure both of for lovely places to visit and live but it seems we and now you have experienced all there is sorry both and glan wor I’m sure you’ll let us know in the comments what if anything I

Missed nothing CL slim isn’t it oh it’s gorgeous absolutely gorgeous so we went exploring up a hill hoping it would carry on around the corner but it didn’t so we’ve had to do a uturn off to go again off to go Again