Holiday in Wales, Part 2
Day 2 - Hide the Pork Sausage
Sunday commenced with the Obligatory Giant Breakfast. Rhandolph had cunningly planned his breakfast tactics by putting a plastic bag in his pocket as an auxiliary doggy bag container, so most of it got shuffled into this, for later consumption.
We headed out early to the White Castle. It was stunningly atmospheric; lit by the sun and entirely empty apart from us. I Laughed In The Face Of Death by climbing up the tower and teetering along a terrifying sheer drop land bridge (myself and heights - we don't really get along...) Rhandolph, of course, was doing his mountain goat impression.
Afterwards, we went to Caerleon, and rolled around in the sunshine in a roman ampitheatre, hopped about in roman barracks, checked out a museum and a roman bath house and had some lunch in a funny little sculpture garden tea house. The Roman Bathhouse was....unimpressive. The presentation compared unfavourably with the one we visited in Bath - but that was only a tiny factor. The Temple at Bath had a tangible, visceral sense of being a sacred space. Just walking quietly about in the ruins was enough to bring on a contemplative, still mood. In the one at Caerleon, there was...something...but it was very slight, like being in any church or building with a long history of site. Bath was a place of worship long before the Romans got anywhere near it, and still contains running water today, so that's a factor.
We returned to the B&B for naptime, after which R roused for long enough to eat his breakfast leftovers before crashing out again, while I lazed about in the sauna and splash room downstairs. I think R was planning on becoming Self Cleaning for the rest of the holiday. I barely managed to poke him out of the same set of clothes or push him in the wash all week. Think he thought he'd get away with it on the grounds that going in the hot tub was the same as washing. He changed his t-shirt by the simple expedient of turning it inside out and back to front and putting it back on again.
Day 3 - Dripping Icy Nakedness
We set off for our second destination in Carmarthenshire, and decided to stop in the Brecon Beacons for a walk around waterfall territory in Ystradfellte. We took a six mile walk which was perfectly timed to co-incide with a short rain shower just after we'd got back to the car, and only took us a couple of hours. We followed the Four Waterfalls Trail, but unaccountably missed two of them (Go Team!)
The two we did see were absolutely jaw-dropping. At the second one, you climbed down a long path into a glade where the water flowed downriver through the fall, and adventurous spirits could walk behind the water to look down the river through the cascade. Overcome with excitement, I shimmied out of my clothes to jump naked into the icy water, And good lord, it REALLY was cold. Rhandolph turned away, horrified - I could see his point though, as five minutes later a whole truckload of schoolchildren got herded down the path on an outing. Fortunately I was mostly inside my clothes again by that stage. Amusingly, it was Rhandolph who got glared at by the group leaders!
The rest of the journey passed without incident. Our cottage was absolutely adorable. Open to the roof with a mezzanine floor containing a giant four poster bed, accessed by lethal spiral staircase, the fire burnt logs and coal (we had huge amounts of fun playing with it), and was kitted out both very high spec and simultaneously low tech.
Our introductory talk from the cottage owner included an unintentionally funny warning about the local feral cat. "It won't let you get near it" - or is that "don't let it get near you"?! This was the trigger for constant episodes of giggling for the rest of the week e.g. in the hot tub "Is that your leg?", "No! It's the feral cat! Argggghhhhh"...disappear under water screaming...
There were also piggy wigs in the garden and goats in the woods. Sinister goats...
"It would be quite unnerving to look round and find they'd followed us"
"Thanks for that. Just look over your shoulder now..."
"oh"
"yes."
"shall we hurry?"
"yes!"