As Ross had to work in the next days, I decided to continue my tour in Wales and come back on Friday evening. Therefore I had 3 days at my disposal to discover Wales. I checked the best bikers routes online and it was clear I had to drive up to the North of Wales. Ross provided me with another advice, this time a nice café for breakfast and so I ended up at the „Departure Lounge Café“ near Alton.

With the stylishbreakfast behind me, I began to put some kilometres (or better miles) under my wheels. The Wales Tour I had in mind was going to be over 1.000 Kms long. I usually don’t drive motorways but this time, if I wanted to have enough time later for the nicer roads, I had to. After several hours riding, I conceded myself a lunch brake with a typical fish & chips at the Green Dragon Inn.

In the late afternoon, I finally crossed the border between England and Wales. After I took the photo, I noticed on the bridge above , another black dressed biker with a dark helmet, showing me thumbs up for caring about Wales 😁

You could also tell, I was Wales based on the road signs in Welsh. Try to pronounce the first word. 🥳

As I was too tired to camp, I booked a room at the Crown Hotel in Crowen and went out in search for a pub. That’s how I met Phil, Welsh owner and barman of The Harp.

The local beer was a Llangollen IPA from a town nearby and Phil showed his barman skills producing a gorgeous pint. He asked where I was from and I told him the story of how I ended up buying Lollo the year of COVID. He replied that, he had been lucky as at that time, he was in his house in Bulgaria where the situation was much better than in the UK. So I asked, where in Bulgaria?

Phil looked at me as if he didn’t expect me to know it and said: it’s a small town called Veliko Tarnovo.

Oh nice, that’s the old Bulgarian capital with a beautiful castle, I replied. His faced looked surprised. I told him about my last tour of 2021 and how I spent some time visiting Bulgaria, showing him some of the photos I took. And so the conversation went on, we talked about Plovdiv, the Devil’s Throat cave, the Seven Rila lakes and all the other wonderful places in Bulgaria. Obviously the beer was flowing 😁

What an interesting encounter. Phils is a natural born story teller, the kind that everyone would listen to his stories for hours. My day ended with a spicy curry in the Indian restaurant nearby. The next days was going to be an epic ride.