Tag Archives: Brecon Beacons

Humour, Travel

Hot Tarmac Addiction?

Our friend Glyn is drowsy with counting sheep, coming up the valley every day, after a day’s work, to be jostled by our impatient flock because this is the time of year that we go gallivanting.

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In the last ten days we’ve travelled 1300 miles (that’s not far –I hear you New World readers say). It’s far enough in this overcrowded island!

We picked our way over the mountain pass to South Wales at walking pace, avoiding the hundreds of road-runners who were jogging up on the hottest day of the year. We gave them wide berth to allow for heat-exhaustion-wobble, weave and collapse while also avoiding the pulses of road racers on two wheels coming the other way (only two lanes – this is Wales) – pelotons of cyclists, who had just crested the summit, had heads down and were hurtling in squadrons, turbocharged with huge potential energy and suicidal intent, lemming like, towards Brecon.

We glanced at the stunning scenery and at the idyllic path on the other side of the valley, made for walkers and wondered what it is that draws humans in such numbers to tarmac. Our musing was ended abruptly by the thud of a discarded plastic bottle flung, elite-runner like, against our windscreen by a mature but plucky lady with exceptional BMI and poor aim, probably due to chaffing.

As we eventually sped away from the last — or rather, the first of the runners and the last of the cyclists, the bikers started to overtake us, flashing past at every opportunity, like when one slows down to turn right! I have a horror of killing a biker and they come to Wales in huge migrations at holiday times: Hell’s Angels – 1950’s re-enactors on vintage Nortons with side-cars – even an intrepid band of ladies, several with L-plates, on Honda ‘50’s almost grinding to wobbly halts on the hills (though that was on the A30 high-speed dual carriageway in Cornwall!)

We made it to Cornwall without fatality, and back.

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Just when we thought we were out of danger, we had to set off again for a family funeral in Scunthorpe – more of that later.

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Wales

Brecon Beacons

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Call it serendipity, call it making the most of a bad job — this week-end we found ourselves, unexpectedly, in South Wales.  The rain cleared and the winter sun peeped over the hill blinding us with its reflection in the reservoir.

Pontsticill Reservoir

Pontsticill Reservoir

So we set out to explore this big splodge of green on the map of South Wales, north of the industrial Valleys and the metropolitan south.  The Brecon Beacons National Park stretches from Brecon in the middle of the country right down  to the Heads of the Valleys Road, along which you can drive and (if you want to) turn down each of the famous coal mining valleys that once fed the industrial revolution — that criss-crossed the area with canals and railways that turned the stone of the terraced houses, bridges and the tree trunks black and scarred the hillsides with mine workings and slag heaps.

All that has changed now but the Heads of the Valleys road still marks the boundary between valley bottoms of dense habitation and a wild paradise, though on the wild side there are still some signs of the human activities in the past — hillforts, burial mounds, quarries, mine workings and, of course the dams and reservoirs that still satisfy our needs.

Not a farm track but a hang over from a more industrial past.

Not a farm track but a hang over from a more industrial past.

Under the sward, the moss and the lichen the industrial history is written into the hillsides.

P1040670 (2)Now it’s all farming, forestry and tourism — watch out for the cyclists!

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To the north is Brecon, a garrison town — the first soldiers who stayed near here were probably Roman in the first century AD, now they  are Welsh and Ghurkas and that is why this sleepy little town has a Cathedral and Nepalese restaurants.

Brecon Cathedral
Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist
Cathedral Gardens — Brecon

Driving along the northern edge of the Brecon Beacons after visiting Brecon Cathedral we see the peaks in the distance

? PEN-Y-FAN (886M) and GWAUN RHUDD (746M)

? PEN-Y-FAN (886M) and GWAUN RHUDD (746M)

 

Within the National Park the River Usk separates the peaks of the Brecon Beacons from those of the Black Mountains to the east.  The sun, setting in the west,  bathes the eastern side of the Usk Valley in golden light, beyond is the Sugar Loaf. P1040705 Usk Valley skyAn epic sunset reminds us what a bonus sunny winter’s day we have had in the company of one of our children.

Sunset over Merthyr

Sunset over Merthyr

 

Merthyr Tydfil Pylon

Merthyr Tydfil Pylon

 

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