Monday, 23 July 2007

A weekend in the Brecon Beacons


On Friday we travelled to Trecastle in the Brecon Beacons. We had booked two nights at the Castle Coaching House, where we have stayed twice before. It is a lovely place to stay as it only takes about three hours to drive to the location. It is an ideal location to just get away from all the daily hassles and pressures, which we have got plenty of at the moment!

John and Val run the establishment and they always provide a warm and friendly welcome. The weather in Plymouth was fine when we left, but as we got into Somerset it took a turn for the worse! Torrential rain continued for the remainder of the journey. The M5 had been closed only a junction further on from where we turned off, so we were lucky. The news later reported people having to sleep in their cars due to being stuck in the floods.

We had a lovely meal on Friday night and also too much to drink! The fillet steak is without a doubt the best i have had anywhere. After our meal we sat in the bar and got chatting to two Kiwi's, Rob and Donna. They were from Dunedin on the south island. They gave us some useful information and Hayley had the pleasure of having poetry recited to her by Rob, who fancies himself as the new Charles Dickens! Judging by the look on Hayley's face, I don't think he will be winning any prizes soon!

We planned to spend the day walking in the mountains on Saturday, but the weather was pretty grim. The hill fog was right down and it was raining just for a change!


The forecast suggested that the fog would lift during the afternoon to over 600m, so we planned a route that would take us only slightly higher than that altitude. The forecast was wrong and three hours later we had pulled the plug on the walk. We were soaking wet and the weather was getting worse! We did reach the top of the first mountain at 631m. We could see about fifty yards at the summit!



Saturday evening was spent at our accomodation with another lovely meal but less drink! The weather forecast for Sunday did not seem too bad, so we had planned to go for the high tops of Pen Y Fan etc. Unfortunately, when we woke up and looked out of the window, the weather was even worse than on Saturday. We went downstairs for a hearty breakfast and decided not to even try walking, but instead we would visit Cardiff.


We packed our bags and said goodbye to John and Val. We headed down towards Cardiff, but the closer we got, the worse the weather became! Plan C was to head to Cribbs Causeway shopping centre in Bristol. We headed along the M4 in terrible conditions and decided to carry on to Exeter instead. We spent the afternoon in the town centre and the weather was fine.

It was a nice weekend, but a shame about the weather. I suppose we should be getting used to the rain now as it has rained virtually every day for two months!





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