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Our love affair with Wales continues. I found a cottage with my usual thrift and speed - a week later we were off to the West with Eesvan and Ro, a doctor and a lawyer. They're not as bad as they sound.
We picked said individuals up from Oxford and forged ahead. Things got amusing when the normally infallible Tomtom started to play up - having decided we felt peckish, we instructed the machine to find sustenance. It found us a rabbit. The blasted satnav decided that instead of taking us to the motorway services stop via, say, the motorway, it would indulge in a geographical flight of fancy and take us via the small backroads. On the backroads, I squashed a rabbit (they're pests here, be ye not squeamish). Thus the makers of Tomtom are directly responsible for the death of Fluffles.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, as we zapped along Wales' brilliant roads - soaring viaducts float above the valleys and convey a pleasingly piffling number of vehicles towards their destination. I never thought I would enthuse quite so much about a grey, flat surface that aids the release of noxious gases, but there you go.
Three
paragraphs of dross and still nowt about Wales. We arrived late and quickly retired to bed. In the morning, our hosts cooked us an amazing full breakfast, complete with recommendations on where to go. We were told to head for Stackpole, from where we could walk to what has apparently been judged one of the better beaches in Europe. What?! you cry, better Greece, Spain, Italy? I don't know. To give you an idea, we felt like we could have been back home. A remote, golden, sandy beach that would happily have fitted in Northland presented itself. Practically empty. Clear, vivifying (read cold) water under a blazing sun. And all this a 15 minute walk from the carpark, through fields of cows.
An easy walk down more coast then through ponds of lilies brought us to the pub. Beer, food, sunshine, nap. A nap in the sunshine opens every 'this feels like the right thing to do' valve in the brain...
After lunch we wandered back to the car and tried to visit another beach, but Russell Crowe was apparently filming Robin Hood on the shore, the inconsiderate blighter. I kid you not - it's Swanseawood, baby! We found another
beach, where we adorned our faces with ice-cream and sat in the sunshine.
Dinner was curry by the river. We were an exhausted but happy crew that night...
After another superb breakfast from our hosts, (who in their own words had been kicked out of the rat race by the rats) we started on the long drive home, punctuated most gorgeously by a wander through a valley in the Brecon Beacons Natural Park. Lush, mossy paths along the river leading to a waterfall... We sadly waved goodbye to the highly entertaining roadsigns in Welsh (favourite is Araf! which means slow - this was joyously called out every time we saw it).
Out of Wales and back into traffic-land. A slow, uneventful drive brought us home after a very full 2 days. We were left wanting much, much more. Wales has very much cemented itself as our get-away of choice, due to its multifaceted awesomeness...
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