Getting on the Road or 1st day in Wales

Well, it took us some time to get ourselves sorted out on that cold, cloudy and even rainy Saturday morning. I have already told you that we got a Focus instead of a Fiesta and that was a good thing in the end, as you can see for yourself on the picture. We finally managed to sqeeze all stuff and ourselves in and off we went.

It took quite some time to decide which way we wanted to go and how to start our tour. The only fix destination we had was Cardiff on Tuesday as Vanessa had to get a bus from there back to London. We had argued about a route for quite some time the evening before and I finally managed to convince them that we should head north as far as we could on our first day and then decide from there where to go next. To get a better impression on where we went, have a look at the map of Wales with its gorgeous countryside and sheep of course ;-)

There was no accomodation booked, even though it was a long bank holiday weekend, but we were certain to find something somewhere. We took the motorway towards Newport and finally crossed into Wales over the Severn Bridge (which was ridiculously high priced!). It was still quite cloudy but at least it was not raining. That is us by the way: Christoph, Vanessa and Nadja!

Our first cultural stop brought us to the gorgeous Wye Valley with the most fascinating ruins of Tintern Abbey. We were quite impressed and the £3.00 entrance fee were well spent. It must have been an enourmous complex in former times, as you can see from the hight of the main church. As it was already early afternoon, we had a good long walk around the ruins (to get the stiffness out of our limbs after the long car ride) and then had an improvised picnic in the car park.

We moved on through the Wye valley, had a good look at some castles at the wayside (but did not go in) and passed through the gorgeous Brecon Beacon Nationalpark with its beautiful landscape. We stopped just everywhere we found a nice spot or village on the way up to Brecon itself, which is the main town in the heart of the National Park. Unfortunately we had not enough time to visit the Waterfalls (they were too far off the road we were intending to travel).

When we finally got to Brecon (it was about 5 pm) we were told that there was nothing available around the town, everything fully booked because of the bank holiday. But we had intended to head further north anyway and after some waiting and having a good look around the town, we got a family room on a farm in Pennal near Machyntleth. This meant at least another 2 hour drive further north and I can tell you I was quite tired by that time. We intended to be there by 7, but in the end it was nearly 9 until we got there, because the sun came out and we just stopped at this gorgeous lake near Llangurig.

It also took us some time to find Gogarth Hall Farm because it was literally in the middle of nowhere. It was a small farm and we were lucky to find a place to stay that night as our landlady told us later on. She had a cancellation and therefore the room we got was free. There were a herd of cows, two dogs, some chicken and I guess several other animals around this place and Vanessa especially made friends with the dogs. She adored them even though they were not quite "clean"!

The B&B room itself was just as you imagine it to be: many cushions, MANY flowers and everything in these pastel colours. In my opinion it was just great. As Vanessa and Christoph had only met for the first time last night, we decided that Vanessa and I should sleep in the double bed and Christoph took the single. Of course the double bed had only one duvet, but I thought we could manage. That was, however, before I knew that Vanessa is such a light sleeper and turns quite a lot ;-)

We had a hearty improvised meal (Tikka Masala Wraps) in our room which was definitely not made for something like that. As the weather was threatening to get worse again, we had only a short walk around the farm even though we had longed to get to the river mouth to get the first glimpse of the coast. But we had to content with what we got and I cannot tell you how glad I finally was to get to bed, I was truly "smashed out". But that was only our first day and four more to go...