More than a wet weekend in Wales
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 2 ~ May 16 ~ Severn Bridge to Brecon
So we didn't bring our portable fridge, and we've not gone for a posh Premier Plus room that has a minibar-type fridge, so Amanda put this outside the room to keep it cool overnight. The local birds said “Thank you very much” and pecked straight through the plastic. We admit defeat and take out what's left of the quiche and leave it on the balcony for them. It will be gone before we check out.
Checkout is a way off, though, and we have things to do first. Yes, parkrun, remember?
It's a short drive away. We have realised that we could have stayed at the “Severn View” Travelodge which is cheaper and closer – arguably walking distance – but Premier Inn remains our cheap-and-cheerful of choice. Anyway, here we are now in Wales, hence the dragon.
One of the marshals takes this picture for us with my phone, though it's a pity about the cone. I think he could have used a wider-angle setting and moved closer to diminish it or miss it out entirely, but I can't be certain now.
Anyway, to the start.
We head towards England.
I have another picture that I initially chose for this slot, a bit further along where you can clearly see the bridge ahead. However, I'm only carrying my phone, not a proper camera, and it makes quite a poor job of determining the correct exposure. Unadjusted, it's very dark, but making it lighter on the computer shows the intrinsic limits of the picture very quickly. I have various tools available, but there's only so much I can do without massive amounts of work or maybe asking AI to fake it for me. I'm not yet resorting to the latter.
So here: this is about the best compromise I have managed, and it's only because I think it's contextually important that I'm including it at all. But enough of me being photo-nerd, we have a parkrun to finish!
Well into England at the turnaround point. If this is how she reacts to a mere phone, imagine what she'd do if I had brought one of my big cameras!
And I'll ruin my time by stopping and taking a picture of the people even slower than me, to show the context of the run on the bridge.
Well we have to pose with the dragon: we're back in Wales now.
I don't know her, but it's her hen party parkrun! By pure coincidence, she finishes just as I'm taking some general photos and I get this picture of her on the finishing straight. I find her and tell her I will be delighted to send it from my phone to hers, but this turns out to be more difficult than expected: me Android, you iPhone... In the end we do it with email as the lowest common denominator, even though we both have apps that would make it easy if they only worked. Since the 1980s, Apple devices have been the bane of my life: if you buy in to the whole package they do what they do beautifully, and they work together perfectly, but they really don't want to play nicely with anything else.
(I digress.)
After parkrun, we return to the Premier Inn, get showered and changed and head back deeper into Wales. Tonight we're staying at a place near Brecon, so on the way we stop off in town to have look around.
What could be better than a shop that sells fine locally made chocolate? Why, a shop that sells fine locally made chocolate and fine locally made gin!
And you can even combine them if you want, although we feel that a selection of chocolates and a separate bottle of gin are more useful generally.
We're not actually in the Beacons, but there are some walks we can do nearby. We're heading for a hill called Pen-y-Crug which sounds like it should have some good views – if we don't find ourselves in the clouds or getting rained on.
The path passes through some fields where the cows eye us suspiciously. The sheep don't seem to care.
A most substantial stile: three steps and still a bit of a stretch to get over the top.
We have seen absolutely no sign of the summit until we pass through a small gap in a ridge and we are virtually there.
And here we are, getting a bit rained on. It's just a brief shower, though.
For sustenance after our climb, some crystallised ginger chocolates from the shop earlier. Note that the trig point has a Welsh dragon painted on two of its sides, but not the other two. It's not at all clear why.
This isn't a natural hill, it's an Iron Age fort, and the website of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales has this page about it. There's clearly more to it than is initially apparent. That website references the “old county” name of Brecknockshire, and I can't say I can remember ever hearing of such a county before. (It's now part of the Powys unitary authority and who knows if the old name survives anywhere? Not me.)
Despite the weather, it's still an attractive view over farmland and hills.
Back down now, back in the car, and on to our stop for the night.
The right hand side of this building is a family home and the left hand side is two self-contained apartments, upstairs and downstairs. We are upstairs. It's called “The Slow House Apartments” and slow is fine by us.
The main living room with kitchen area.
Bathroom.
The bedroom is unexciting but perfectly functional. We're not entirely convinced by the artworks, from Papua New Guinea according to the artist's signature, but presumably the owner likes them. [Aside: as I am finishing this blog, some months later, we have just paid the deposit for a trip to PNG for my birthday in 2028!]
Dinner is simple, just some chunks of white fish and sautéed veg on a corn tortilla.
[Oh, yeah, as with every self-catering establishment in the known universe, the knives provided would not so much cut things as bludgeon them to death, until I got out my whetstone and spent a bit of time restoring them to a long-forgotten state of sharpness. I used to take my own knives whenever we went self-catering, but the whetstone is less bulk and, when travelling abroad, potentially a lot less hassle. It's quite surprising to think I only got it in 2022 in Grenada.]
We really like this place. Although it's just a stop on the way for us, we'd happily choose it as a base for a longer stay in the area.
Check them out here – “up to 10% cheaper than booking.com”, they claim, which is fair enough, but without booking.com we'd probably never have found them. You may therefore benefit from out learning experience.
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