Sunday 13th to Wednesday 16th July - S Wales

Sunday 13 July - Abergavenny(ish)

Where's Bertie? He spent the night in the National Trust car park below Ysgyryd Fawr, at a cost of £6 (although I would have had to have paid £3 of that to cover the time I was up my hill)

Weather: Hot and sunny

A mid-morning conference call for Mick, then it was time to leave Bridgnorth and head for S Wales, via lunch in Hereford. 

We arrived at our destination car park earlier than I'd wanted, which on an ordinary sunny Sunday would possibly have been a problem, as it tends to be busy on a weekend. We found it almost empty, probably because temperatures of over 30 degrees tend to put people off going for walks up hills. 

We'd arrived not knowing exactly where we were going to spend the night. I knew there were a couple of campsites not far away (cheapest: £28), but we didn't need any campsite facilities. I'd not even considered spending the night in the car park, because I'd expected it to be full of 'no overnight parking' signs, so it was a surprise to arrive and to find no such thing. So, rather than buying a £3 ticket for the two hours I would need to nip up my hill, we bought a £6 'all day' ticket. There was also a lack of signage to say what 'all day' meant, and having bought a ticket I found that it expired at 6pm. I took that to mean that charges weren't applicable between 6pm and some unknown time in the morning. 

I went up my hill. I came back down again. The few cars there on our arrival left, then an evening batch of (presumably local) dog walkers arrived, then they left and one other small van arrived and put themselves right at the opposite end of the car park. A quiet night was had. 

Monday 14th - Abergavenny and Glanusk Estate

Where was Bertie? He spent the night at Glanusk Estate Caravan Park at a cost of £30 for a hard standing pitch, including electricity and good wifi.

Weather: Sunny start, then some sunny intervals, but mainly overcast with some showers

Mick's back was so poorly by Monday morning that I drove myself to my start point for my morning's hills leaving Mick just a few miles to drive to the end point of my walk. 

With my hills visited, I found Mick exactly where I expected him to be (I'd set the SatNav for him before I'd left), and via a supermarket, we headed off to the Glanusk Estate campsite. 

As explained on my walking blog, my reason for choosing to stay there was because the next hill I wanted to visit lies on their land, with no public access and with no obvious nearby parking for a Bertie-sized vehicle. I'd sent an email enquiry over the weekend, asking for permission to visit the summit, but hadn't received a response, and I'd held off booking a pitch pending the response. Equally, I was sufficiently confident that permission would be given, that we went to the campsite anyway, and I figured I'd enquire about the hill in reception when we arrived. 

It turned out that they don't have a reception, but rather have a board saying which pitch is allocated to each pre-booking. So, we sat at the entrance and booked a pitch, and after two phone conversations and one in person conversation, I had the okay to go up my hill (I phoned the Estate Office to enquire about our pitch number and spoke to Harry but before I got as far as asking about accessing the hill he said he'd come out to see me, however, he sent someone else to escort us to the campsite and she said that she couldn't give permission but that I needed to speak to Harry. I phoned the office again and got a different person again who said "that should be fine", which I took as sufficient permission). 

Had I not walked through the estate to access the summit of Myarth, we wouldn't have appreciated how much this campsite has to offer. They've put in permissive paths, a picnic area, a riverside beach area and a firepit, and a sauna (which unfortunately we didn't have time to use). On top of that they had a smart toilet block (the postage-stamp-sized showers left a little to be desired, but they were hot) and even provided washing up liquid at the sinks (because they only want eco-friendly stuff to be used). It was also a bonus that they provide dog-poo bags (we availed ourselves of one as we'd run out of rubbish bags ... or rather had forgotten the whole stash in the wardrobe). 

It seems that £28-30 is the most common price range for campsites hereabouts, and this one offered much more for the money than some others I'd looked at (see tomorrow's comments!). 

Tuesday 15th - Talybont-on-Usk and Llansantfiraed

Where was Bertie? He spent the morning in the Village Hall car park at Talybont-on-Usk (honesty box) and the rest of the day and night in a large layby just S of Llansantfiraed.

Weather: Overcast and very windy with some showers, but nothing like the forecast of almost certain continuous heavy rain between 11am and 7pm.  

Had the weather forecast been better, we would have happily lounged around at the campsite. As it was, if I was going to avoid the heavy rain and strongest winds on my first hill of the day, then I needed to get out relatively early.

It's not possible to access Glanusk Estate Caravan Park from the A40 because of this bridge...

 

...and it's also not possible to use the next bridge to the north in a Bertie-sized vehicle as it has a 7' width restriction. That meant that we needed to use the B-road up to Talybont-on-Usk, which in turn made me think that I may as well tackle the hill Tor-y-Foel from there, if we could find somewhere to park, otherwise I would get the bike out and cycle in from Llansantfiraed (on the original plan for this trip, this hill was going to be combined with two others as a linear walk, and Mick was going to meet me at the campsite in Talybont; however, by this point of this trip we'd discovered that it would be beneficial for us to go home on Wednesday, rather than Sunday, which threw all plans into disarray). 

 

The B-road to get to Talybont wouldn't have been so bad to drive had it been just after the hedges had been trimmed in autumn. As it was they were nicely trimmed up to 6' high, then bushy above (like in the photo below, but far bushier than that example ... and the road was also a lot wider than the one in the photo, which I'd walked up). 

 

So, two cars could comfortably pass, but taller vehicles had a narrower road and, of course, taller vehicles tend to be wider too. Most of the time, we met oncoming vehicles in places where we could pass fairly easily (even if Bertie had to get more friendly with the hedgerows than he would have preferred) and the hierarchical rules of who gives way to whom on the roads ("I'm bigger so you can reverse") only came into play once. When I rounded a bend and came upon a tractor towing a trailer, it was clear that it was me who was going to be reversing all the way back to the nearest field entrance. Thank goodness that the bus I met a while later hadn't been 300m behind him, requiring me to reverse on the same section of road twice! I met the bus just as I got to a driveway opening. 

 

Phew, that's a lot of words before 9am! So, more succinctly, road signs sent us to the car park at the Village Hall and Google told us that there was a cafe a two minute walk away in the Post Office/General Store. Thus as I set off towards my hill, Mick came along for the first two minutes before veering off into the cafe. 

 

He was back in Bertie by the time I returned and even though it was only noon, we were soon off to our nightstop - which happened to also be from where I would be setting off for my afternoon hill.

 

It's a good layby, set well back from the road, with plenty of flat-enough roadway, and with a snack wagon and toilets (although we didn't explore them). 

 

There's access to a small holding from the layby, and they have a campsite (advertised by a shoddy hand-painted sign at the bottom of the track, although I'd already looked it up online as a potential night-stop before we set out). They describe themselves as a 'wild camping' experience, although they do have a 'no frills' toilet and a shower (but no electric hook up) and for this they charge £35 a night, on top of which you need to be a member of 'The Greener Camping Club' (I'd never heard of them, but they have a network of 170 campsites) at a cost of £12 per year. I have no idea who is paying that much just for somewhere to park overnight, especially when you compare it to the facilities at other nearby campsites, but I can understand why we were joined by two other vans in the adjacent layby overnight.  

 

Wednesday 16th - Dinas Castell Inn & Home

 

Where was Bertie? He spent a few hours in the car park of the Dinas Castell Inn at a cost of £5 (a steep increase from the £2 they were charging last year, but not unreasonable)

Weather: Back to hot and sunny 

 

Snapped on my way to my hill. The caravan being taken over by brambles and blocked in by rolls of hay would have been good in itself, but it was the open door of the caravan that made the scene in my eyes. 

  

Dropping me off at Waun Fach, for me to have far more of an adventure than I'd bargained for, Mick went to spend a few hours at Dinas Castell Inn - or, more precisely, in their car park as he found them to be closed.  

The car park filled up around him, but he reported that everyone else headed up Waun Fach (the hill; not the place where he'd dropped me). 

 

I arrived in the car park by late morning, and took to the wheel to get us home, whilst Mick sat uncomfortably, with his poorly back still plaguing him. Goodness, it was a long journey on a series of slow roads - and I had to stay awake for all of it!