Day 9 - UK

3 April 2011

And so last night we ended up in a campground in Abergivenny, Wales and have decided that today there will be minimal driving. Instead we are going to walk and explore.

The campground we stayed in is in fact a farm with a couple of paddocks set up for camping. It’s well done and I would say that over half the caravans are permanent structures. Rather obvious really, not just for the mini gardens and paved areas for the cars, but because of all the satellite dishes attached to the caravans!

I was absolutely gob smacked when we discovered this phenomenon when we arrived at the campground n Exmoor and while we sat and ate dinner, watched a family pull up in their new Nissan 4WD, with their new looking caravan and then watched the husband attempt to erect his satellite dish on tripod outside the caravan in gale force winds. It was hilarious. He would erect it then go inside and then out he would come again, head down as though wife and daughter had blasted him for poor reception. Then he would reposition it, go in, come out, and then repeat the process again and again before eventually anchoring it close to the caravan.

Next he tried to erect the awning, still in gale fore winds. Unable to cope by himself he called out the wife. She held one corner that threatened to turn her into a human kite while he struggled to hammer in another. Eventually he succeeded and as he stood and moved towards his wife’s corner the pegged corner ripped from the ground and went skyward. I had to stop watching and just giggled at the expressions on Aaron’s face.

In the end the wife disappeared inside to watch her tv and he undid the awning and angrily bunched it into a ball and hurled it into the back of the car.

But I digress. This is camping people! You have your flash caravans, your flash cars and still you want more. Why are you leaving home???

We parked our van in the tent field, away from this consumerism excess and found ourselves alone bar one man and his single pup tent. It was bliss as we set up the table and chairs on the grass and sat in the sun eating pasta and salmon (Sarah please note this was completely sustainably fished salmon that we had bought in Totnes) and drinking cider and beer.

The farm had a number of animals including Jacob sheep and their newborn lambs. Such gorgeous old English breed sheep and of course I automatically wanted some.

There are new born lambs everywhere we drive, basically since we left London. There are swathes of daffodils colouring the countryside and the odd patch of bluebells to offset the stunning yellow of the daffodils and dandelions.

We’ve seen quite a few free-range pig farms and lots of piglets and calves.

Free-range eggs are for sale everywhere and we’ve seen plenty of free range chicken paddocks.

Today in Wales was no exception. We saw a great little free-range pig set up today and when we stopped the car to go for a walk through bush or over fields there were little lambs frolicking and baa’ing all over the place. Overall it’s been a very pleasant day, except of course the weather. It’s been a little schizophrenic to be fair. Sun and blue sky, drizzle, rain and even a hail shower.

We went to a little market in a small town called Talgarth. There we bought the most fabulous handmade bread. I have to say it probably beat the Kaiwaka bakery for taste and texture. We sampled cheeses and bought some stuffed chillis and olives for dinner.

The scenery so far in Wales is quite breathtaking. The land in the south is gently rolling and there are farms everywhere. I have massive farm envy today. The land is quite beautiful and just as England has, there are rocks galore. Rock walls and rock littered paddocks and well I have major rock envy too. Damn it, I too want rock walls, streams filled with rocks and large boulders protruding from my paddocks and old castle ruins atop my hilly pastures.

After our walks and wanderings we headed towards Methyr Tydfil. The scenery was quite stunning with numerous rest stops along the way. Eventually, about 4pm we found a nice one next to a stream, with trees to shelter us from the highway and another campervan parked up as well. Then about 15 minutes after we arrived a 3rd campervan pulled in. It seemed it was going to be a good stop for the night.

Ever heard of the saying ‘What a difference a day makes’?

We made ourselves comfortable with a couple of drinks and our books.

Over the next 3 hours the rest stop proved to be very busy. Numerous cars pulled in and parked, either for seconds or minutes and then left. No one got out to go on the streamside walk. Then we started to notice something very odd. As many of these cars left they would cruise by us very slowly and stare inside the van. What the hell? Nosey bloody Welsh.

And then we noticed something odder, several of the same cars came back, 5, 10, 15 minutes later and repeated the same process, drive in, park, drive off slowly.

The campervan that had arrived after us left and then an hour later returned and then 20 minutes later left again.

It was all very odd and while not actually scary was getting weirder and weirder and then at about ten to 7 the first campervan suddenly started up and left.

“Okay, that’s not good. This is not looking good”

“You think?!?”

With only an hour of daylight left we quickly put the seats back into place, packed things up and took off.

A mile down the road we hit the city and it all started to become clear. The end we arrived in looked grubby and run down. We traveled to near the end of the city and then found a turn off into a park.  It looked like a good spot. We turned left into the park and noticed a car parked on the side of the road with someone in it. That shouldn’t actually be any case for concern but I didn’t like it so Aaron turned the car around and we took the other entrance in.

“Wait. Wait. What do all those signs say?”

‘Warning! Don’t leave your valuables in the car’ Okay, that’s standard.

‘Warning! Unlawful activity is known to take place in this park.’ Okay, that’s not standard.

“Okay, we’re out of here!” and so we left.

It was almost dark by this stage and Aaron wasn’t happy. We were both tired and we’d both been drinking.

We kept driving and found ourselves in Llandbradach Bedwas almost straight away. Another grungy built up area, we drove for what seemed like ages to get away from this town/city, eventually, just before Caerphilly we stumbled on a back country lane and we desperately hung a right and drove up this lane. Afetr what seemed like ages we found a little pull in. It was in fact a driveway with a large steel bar across it. It wasn’t good but we’d run out of options. It had a large ‘Warning!  CCTV operating in this area’ and ‘No dumping!‘ signs and so we made the assumption it was a farm entrance and hoped like hell no irate farmer would demand we move from his gateway.

By then it was dark and so we made bed for the night. For a little country lane it was like a main road and cars seemed to go past all night.  A little freaked out by the previous rest stop experience, we both ended up sleeping in our clothes, using our sleeping bags only as duvets in case we needed to make a quick exit.