Wet……Wet…..Wet…. leaving Bristol. 20th-23rd July

This was our first really wet ride…..not heavy rain, just that fine mist that is determined and relentless…..I kind of like it…..saying our goodbye’s to Carol and Steve we headed to Avonmouth, where we stopped off to get a few extra supplies for tea  and crossed into Wales over the first Severn bridge crossing…by this time, the drizzle had turned serious and the crossing fun though it was….was windy and wet, for a bit of company we had met a family from Scotland also cycle touring also having a lot of fun. I have some video of the crossing that I’ll share at a later time when I get a bit more of a chance to continue making a film.

We stopped by Fedw forest and made a wild camp in torrential rain…..I hasten to add that all our stuff remained dry in our panniers but we were soaked.

This turned out to be a very strange camp…..once sorted out, with both of us changed into dry clothes and food on the go….. it seemed a great place…Until both in our tents there came these strange sounds from the copse of trees we camped by……sort of creaking  and the snapping of twigs….it did not sound like people though and at first I thought it was a badger, but I was not sure…..asking myself….Badgers….do they eat tree’s….. I think not and with that thought there was a really strange, and extremely loud retort which could only be a tree collapsing. But there was nothing to see and over the next hour or so similar retorts and branches breaking….It was spooky and it was getting dark. On walking around I finally caught sight of the tree as another large branch broke off…..Mystery solved…..But we were both glad it had happened during twilight, and not in the middle of the night….that would have been just too spooky…..We have never witnessed a collapsing tree before…..very odd….

The next day came with showers and sunshine and by mid day we were dry and packed and on our way.

In some strange way we had made a tentative plan to meet up with a good friend of mine and Julia’s back when we were studying for our M.A. in fine art at Cardiff and somehow with bad signal and a dodgy mobile…….I had dropped it into my cup of tea a couple of days before we left St Just…we met up at a great place called Crickhowell just 26.8 miles down the road, the next day, and were treated to a glorious sunset……good conversation and some well earned beer…..

someone fly fishing

Reflections

Sunset

It was lovely to meet up with Donna again, and to meet her husband Gareth….reminiscing about that shared house and the weekend long drunken games of Risk, learning to snowboard……fun times and good memories. So we were now in Wales and heading North……

In my mind I had a difficult choice when planning this part of the tour…..I have never been cycle touring in Wales and I was completely torn between the route I had planned which would take us North along the coast….or to head diagonally North through the heart of Mid Wales……Now a few glorious days later we are on the edge of Snowdonia national park and I am so glad I changed the route at the last minute. Cycling through mid Wales has been one of the best cycle touring journeys of my life…..Steve and Carol back in Bristol had mentioned the Red Kite Feeding center at Rhayader…..I have always wanted to see Red Kites, and so that was it……. we were on our way to see some Red Kites…….