Elvie's Year in Photos 2011: Day 272 Cycle to Cardiff Bay

The heatwave continues so today we cycled to Cardiff Bay for lunch. We did this back in June when we first had the bikes and that time we took the bikes on the back of the car, to Tongwynlais to avoid having to cycle up the big hill to our house on the way back. Today we set off from home, confident we could make it back. We were pleased to see the improvement in our cycling compared to last time. We were faster, smoother and less tired.

At the Bay we had a super lunch in a French restaurant "Le Garcon" We sat outside on the balcony enjoying the hot sun. The food was excellent ham, venison & chicken terrine with onion chutney to start for both of us then moules frites for me and beetroot and goats cheese tart for Ian. They were the nicest mussels I've ever had, fat, soft & juicy. Yum! We moved indoors for the coffee as the sun & heat were getting too much for us. Riding back we had shade for much of the way as the route runs mainly through wooded parkland and river paths. The last half mile was a bit of a killer though. There's no shade on Power Station Hill and by then the thermometer on my bike computer read 82 degrees ( bizarrely the bike computer gives the temperature in Fahrenheit if you set it to measure miles and celsius if you use kilometres!). We walked up the first steepest part of the hill but cycled the rest, by the time we reached home we were very hot, sweaty & tired. We've done nothing but loll around this evening waiting for a respectable hour to go to bed! Here's the photos