The River Severn

The River Severn begins its journey, quiet, almost unnoticeable at first. Just another stream like thousands of others. Emerging from the peat bog that soaks up the rainwater; water trickles from the bog to form a small brook.

Over 220 miles, winding through mid-Wales, crossing the border into England. And winding its way through countryside, growing as it goes, fed by rainfall and joined by other rivers along the way.

The Route

If you want to take on this route then the good news is that it’s pretty easy as it mostly in a downhill direction. The hardest part of the ride will be getting to the source of the river as it does sit quite high up. Around 2000ft up in the Cambrian mountains. If you follow the route I used then you will start at Machynlleth, the source from here is a bout 12 miles and for the most part is all rideable, with a quiet road climb about 9 miles of this then you will head off-road, continuing along some nice double track. After about 10 miles you will need to start pushing though. About a 2-mile hike a bike through some grassy trails. If it has been raining lots some of this be definitely become very boggy. If you do what I did there is a really beautiful camp spot just half a mile from the source of the river.

The start of this route is technically along a footpath, so I’d advise either walking down it or make sure you start very early as the trail could get busy with walkers and is quite narrow. The part where the source is will be mostly a hike a bike anyway as it quite narrow and hard to ride. You can avoid the path and follow the forest tracks. It will take you away from the river a little though, and you will miss the waterfall. Either way you will come down to the forest track where you will continue descending. The river descends from 2000ft to about 500ft in 12 miles but does take another 200 miles to reach sea level. So although you will be going downhill it is very gradual. Couple hills on the surrounding roads for you to enjoy though.

Although the route does go off-road between the off-road sections there are quite a lot of paved sections. Mostly very quiet, but expect the odd car here and there and off course a bit more as you approach the built-up towns. Unfortunately if you wanted to follow the river right beside it then you must know that most of them trails are technically footpaths. For the most part I just avoided them as they tend to have annoying kissing gates. I did use them a couple of times and I think if I game across two gates in total where you will need to pick your bike up this was around Bridgnorth area. Would be very easy to avoid.

Along the route it is very easy to find shops cafes etc for resupply points so you dont need to carry to much. Just have enough snacks to get through any bonking you might occure.

Camping

I wild camped along this trip with a tent but i actually only used it the day before the trip and a night when I finished. Along the river there are quite a lot of built-up places houses etc so it can be a little hard to find good camp spots, there are a few here and there, but you will need to practice stealth camping. Easy enough to get a BnB/hotel for the night though.

Bike

None of the trails are really that technical once you have dropped from the initial 2000ft and are either canal path wide double tracks or fields alongside the river. Possibly a couple of slightly overgrown sections also. You don’t really need anything special for this one just something with good puncture protection. And id avoid very wide bars as the canal towpaths are quite narrow on this one. With lots of paved sections something like a gravel bike or a hybrid type bike would do the job fine.

This was a really fun beautiful ride, if you wanted to go more off road you definely could but you would have to head away from the river as a lot of the off-road parts around there are technically footpaths. This route was created for the purpose of creating the video and not so much a official route for people to take on but if you want to follow it then you can download below or grab it from komoot.