The Michael Ride

A Mountain Bike Route in mid-Wales - Simon Hands

I've been coming to Radnorshire in mid-Wales for weekends and holidays for over 15 years, and have found both joy and solace in the essential wildness of its majestically rolling landscape, with bare hillside alternating with pockets of thick forest, where isolated farmhouses and lonely churchyards nestle in steep-sided valleys. I've come to love this place, first as a hill-walker and more recently as a mountain biker. I also frequently take holidays in Suffolk, a completely different country, where I've been intrigued by an annual charity event in which cyclists attempt to visit as many churches as possible in a single day. Planning such a day would be a considerable part of the pleasure, especially when the possibilities of travelling off-road are taken into account.

Within the boundaries of the old county of Radnorshire there are ten churches dedicated to St. Michael. Michael the archangel is reputed to have fought a war in heaven against Lucifer, and is usually portrayed with a sword in his hand subduing the Devil in the form of a writhing dragon at his feet. Michael churches in England and Wales are frequently located on hilltops, since it was thought that the location would lend an advantage in the continuing struggle between light and darkness. Wales has a high concentration of such churches on account of its hilliness; in Radnorshire there is a supposedly a special need due to the old belief that a fearsome dragon lived within Radnor Forest, the huge hilly massif dominating the east of the county, and indeed five Michael churches surround Radnor Forest.

What follows is a sort of hommage to a place I love via an activity I love. I have tried to devise a cycle ride suitable for a mountain bike which visits as many Radnorshire Michael churches as possible. Out of prudence I chose to omit the churches at the northern, western and southern extremes, but the route still traverses almost the full width of the county, and the seven churches visited include the five sentinels surrounding the Forest. Curiously in view of the above, four of the seven churches are approached via fine descents.

I first attempted the Michael Ride on 19th April 2011, and attach here a photographic record of each church visited. The near 60-mile route took me a full 10 hours, which surprised me. See if you can tell at which point I became certain I'd complete the ride! A full guide to the route I took can be found here. However, it is the nature of a point-to-point challenge that other, perhaps better "solutions" are out there, either minimising the distance travelled or maximising the riding pleasure. I'd be very pleased to hear from anyone with their experiences of travelling either this route or a Michael Ride of their own devising. It would be particularly interesting to hear of routes incorporating eight or more churches, or routes suitable for road bikes, and especially fascinating to have data on whether the MTBer or the roadie could complete the challenge more quickly (the roadie would have to promise not to use A roads...).