Old South Wales

For our first weekend trip in the UK we visited a completely new country for both of us. And best of all it took less than an hour to drive there!! We hit the road to Wales fairly early last Saturday morning, relishing our newfound freedom with Beatrice (that would be our new car for those who haven't read that post). First stop was Tintern Abbey, now mostly in ruins but still very impressive and incredibly atmospheric, set in the beautiful and remote Wye valley. We wandered around for quite a while, learning about the abbey's origins dating back to the 12th century, and about the lives of the monks who lived there. So peaceful.


Then it was up through the valley to a town called Abergavenny for lunch (fish & chips which unfortunately came with peas as standard), followed by a gorgeous drive through the Brecon Beacons National Park which covers a vast area in central Wales, including several mountain ranges. The highest two peaks, reaching almost 900m (so not all that high really...), are the Brecon Beacons themselves:

Saturday was the pick of the days weather-wise, so after a cosy night in a Crickhowell B&B (cute little town) we emerged into a dismal, rainy Sunday and headed for Carreg Cennan Castle, another ruin, sitting proudly on top of a huge rocky crag. Unfortunately the weather was so nasty we were scared to climb up to the castle, as our footwear was hopelessly inadequate for anything beyond smooth pavement! We moved on quickly to Cardiff, Wales' capital, but not before again marvelling at the weirdness and wordiness of the Welsh language:

... OK then!

Cardiff was an unremarkable city, made especially unremarkable by torrential rain coming down. There was another castle right in the centre of town but we elected to leave it for another, hopefully drier, day. We walked around the town centre for a while before giving up and jumping back onto the Park and Ride bus with 50 rugby fans, fresh from a game at the Millennium Stadium. Driving back over the Severn Bridge, we both commented that New South Wales looks absolutely nothing like the original South Wales! Somebody's memory was seriously scurvy-scrambled when they thought that Botany Bay bears the slightest resemblance to anywhere we saw!