WALES

While in Freshford John met a local couple down the road who came from Brecon in Wales. They said it was a lovely place and since it sat on the northern side of the Brecon Beacons, a National Park, we decided to book in there for our next night. On the way to Brecon we passed Abergavenny and I immediately thought of a song I knew from my childhood. Who else remembers it? Click here for the YouTube clip. Bring back memories?

The weather was still beautiful as we drove through south-east Wales. There was one particularly beautiful bridge that we crossed over. It was on the River Usk at Crick Howell. We decided to pull up and have a drink at the pub beside the bridge. The beer was expensive but the view was lovely. Apparently the bridge was very badly damaged in the recent floods and had to have major repairs.

 

As we continued on we had a hard time finding a roadside stop where we could have lunch. It seems that there is very little public infrastructure anywhere over here. We did manage to find a rare roadside park with one rickety old picnic table which we shared with a lovely old local couple.

After settling in at our guest house in Brecon, we took a drive south through the Brecon Beacons through Penderyn and then back up to Brecon via Glyn-neath and Sennybridge. The countryside was totally different to that in southern England.

 

 

 

Most of the roads were unfenced up on the mountains, there were very few trees and sheep, cattle and ponies roamed freely. One unusual sight was the sheep without docked tails. They just don’t look right with long tails! We did notice however that the sheep here seem decidedly more road wise than the ones at home. Didn’t see one dead one beside the road but saw lots looking both ways before crossing!

 

Before we went to the local pub for dinner we took a stroll along the Brecon Canal which is part of a small network of canals in South Wales. For most of its 35-mile (56 km) length it runs through Brecon Beacons National Park. Its original purpose was as an industrial corridor for coal and iron, which were brought to the canal by a network of tramways and/or railroads, many of which were built and owned by the canal company. Today, the old towpath where horses trod is used as a walking track and the canal itself is used for pleasure cruises for locals and tourists who can either take a traditional long boat or hire their own to stop off at any of a number of different spots for a picnic.

 

 

The locals usually know the best places to visit so when someone told us the New Quay was a lovely spot we decided to take that route next day on our way to Caernarfon, our next stop in Wales. It turned out to be a lovely little fishing village which is very obviously popular with holiday makers.  I even found a roll up bamboo beach mat to replace the ones I had bought in Bali years ago.

New Quay - North Wales coast

 

 

 

 

 

We were surprised to see plastic being used for weed control
on the farms here just as it is used back home in Bowen

It was a lovely drive, and further on we came upon an unusual building with a great wheel attached to the side. It turned out to be the Dyfi furnace – an old cast iron furnace that had been built beside the river so that the water mill could work the bellows. The iron ore was transported by ship from far away in Cumbria to be turned into cast iron here.

 

Just upstream we discovered a lovey waterfall and a landscape that reminded us of Tasmania.

 

 

There is obviously no shortage of slate around Dyfi.
We saw slate fances like this for miles.

A fortuitous change of mind on our route led our GPS to take us via a side road which took us through a back-road which was both picturesque and interesting.

We saw these signs frequently in countryside England and Wales.



Check out the thickness of this rock wall, centre.




No shortage of rock here!!



Hedges are still the fence of choice though.

John did not linger too long to take a photo of an obviously run-down house which was inhabited by who knows what kind of people. There was scaffolding around the building as if renovations were being done but the front yard looked like something out of the Beverly Hillbillies. We took the photo and took off in the car, all the while laughing. We could hardly believe what we had just seen! Pigs, chooks etc had taken over the front yard while cars were squeezed into small spaces across the road. We were just left wondering what the hell was happening at the place.

When we arrive at Tywyn, we stopped to check which route to take and the weather suddenly looked ominous. By the time we decided to get going again, we were in the middle of a hail storm and then all the way to Caernarfon it was rain, thunder and lightning. We made it there OK obviously and the rain stopped just long enough for us to get settled at our guest house and stroll up town for dinner.

Caernarfon sits at the mouth of the River Seiont on the north coast of Wales and is flanked by the famous Snowdonia National Park.

Our B&B in Caernarfon. That's Patrick, our host, at the window!

The view from our hotel. With 5 metre tides it was not so pretty at low tide.

On 1 July 1969 the investiture ceremony for Charles, Prince of Wales was held at Caernarfon Castle. The ceremony itself went ahead without incident despite terrorist threats and protests, which culminated in the death of two members of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru (Welsh Defence Movement), Alwyn Jones and George Taylor, who were killed when their bomb – intended for the railway line at Abergele in order to stop the British Royal Train – exploded prematurely. The bomb campaign (one in Abergele, two in Caernarfon and finally one on Llandudno Pier) was organised by the leader of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru, John Jenkins. He was later arrested after a tip-off and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.

Caernarfon Castle is quite imposing and we really enjoyed exploring its high turrets and the many rooms within the castle. The Welsh language is alive and well and it is a lovely language to listen to. John reckons it sounds like two garden gnomes chatting but many local people spoke it as their first language. Apart from the castle and its proximity to the sea, it seemed that the town was also popular as a nightspot for this part of Wales, with quite nightlife at local nightclubs etc. We didn’t investigate further though. All the driving and climbing of stairs takes its toll on old bodies!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The spiral stairwells up to the tower tops are not ffor the claustrophobic.

 


The local gulls have found the best places to nest.



We had quite a long day ahead of us when we left Caernarfon next day, headed for Whitby, all the way across the country on the coast of the North Sea.

North coast of Wales

A lovely church near Chester, south of Liverpool.

We followed the north coast of Wales as far as we could then jumped on the motorways to navigate our way around the industrial cities of Liverpool and Manchester, past York and on to the east coast and the moors of North Yorkshire.