Sunday, 19 August 2007

We eventually left the house about 6:00 am and on a whim decided to drive to the Brecon Beacons without the aid of motorways. This proved to be a good decision and we saw plenty of the country: Hemel Hempstead, Aylesbury, Bicester, Oxford, Chipping Norton, Stow-on-the-Wold …

At Tewkesbury we paused briefly to visit the Old Baptist Chapel where I have ancestors buried. Tewkesbury is a beautiful town but the evidence of recent flooding was all too plain: water marks, removed skirting boards, boarded up windows, and occasional piles of domestic furniture and ruined white goods. During our visit, the water level was back to normal - a good 12 feet below the flood.

Rather subdued, we continued to our journey via Ledbury, Ross-on-Wye, Monmouth, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, and Bwlch to Pencelli. At Pencelli there were only two campsites: a multi-award winning site of pebbled pathways and numbered pitches, and a field on a working farm. We chose the field, where several families spent the evening playing a game of football-cum-rugby all conducted in the loudest Welsh. We drank wine and toasted them occasionally.