Heading down south and into the mists. So much myth and magic in Wales…

With thanks… Thursday October 27…
Today I am grateful for perseverance (cue Terrorvision song)…
I was sad to leave Anglesey this morning, and it seemed it was sad to see us go too (ha!), cos the clouds were low and black, like they were going to cry all over us…
We headed back across the Menai Strait for the last time, and north to Conwy for a cup of tea and a quick wander around the walled town, before we hit the road again, destination the Moel Ty Uchaf Stone Circle near Llandrillo. The sky was getting darker and more threatening the closer we got, and we almost piked, since it was a mile walk, then back, and rain would be annoying. But then we figured what the hell, we are intrepid explorers, so we grabbed our umbrellas and set out.
Of course the one mile wasn’t true, it was much further, and I’d missed the “difficulty level: hard” note, and the map I had was backwards, and the instructions terrible, but we didn’t give up, despite the steepest hill we’ve encountered so far, and a crazy boggy track through fields of sheep and wet grass. But that’s half the fun, right?
It took more than an hour to slog our way up the hill, and it started raining just as we got to the top, but it was all worth it. A very cool stone circle, and incredible views in every direction – we were pretty high up! I lost my beanie on the way up, but as we finally staggered back down at the end, we found it on one of the gate posts 🙂
Legs well and truly worked out for the day (and my knee sore and Juz’s feet aching), we hit the road to find somewhere for a very late lunch, then got back to the serious business of our long car trip. Made even longer cos on some of the roads through the mountains you can only go 35 miles an hour. It was an epic journey – not helped by some bad signage, a closed road and diversions, but it’s all part of the adventure 🙂
We finally found our little cottage in Cwmbach (Little Valley) twelve hours after we’d set out, complete with locals not understanding our accent when we asked where Cwmbach Road was. No idea what the cottage will look like in the daylight – another adventure 🙂 Hopefully we’ll sleep well tonight!

With thanks… Friday October 28…
Today I am grateful for pots of tea with real leaves and atmospheric grey clouds over Cardiff…
This morning we headed into the Welsh capital, to have a look around and check out the comic shops. Our first moments weren’t great – two drunk (high?) guys having a punch up and nearly bowling us over, and so much greyness and gloom and construction.
But Juz found the comic book he was after, we wandered past the (somewhat disappointing) animal wall of Cardiff Castle, then found the Gorsedd Stone Circle, which was erected in 1899, in gorgeous Bute Park, and finished with a pot of tea (with real leaves – teabags are king here) at a cute tearoom in the park, before we headed off to find Tinkinswood Burial Chamber, and St Lythan’s Dolmen, which were amazing…
Then we went shopping for groceries (a huge salad at last, hooray!) before returning to our cute cottage and having a cosy, cruisy night in our little home-away-from-home…

With thanks… Saturday October 29…
Today I am grateful for the beauty of the mists…
When it finally got light this morning and we looked out the window of our cute little cottage, the whole valley as well as the mountains around us were totally covered in a thick white mist – we couldn’t see anything! I was a little nervous driving down off the mountain, but it was so beautiful and mysterious.
We headed north (via south, still getting my head around the unmarked roads and stupid roundabouts) to Brecon for brekkie, then west, to the village of Myddfai, home of the Physicians of Myddfai, and a sweet legend of a Lady of the Lake/faery woman – she married a mortal, and had children with him, but he broke their agreement by striking her three times, and she returned to the lake – but continued to visit her sons, who she taught to heal with herbs, and they became the first of the Physicians of Myddfai, a calling that lasted until recently.
And then we set out to find her lake, Llyn y Fan Fach (Welsh for Lake of the Small Beacon-Hill), where the legend began – which was an adventure in itself. The narrow lanes here, bordered by tall hedges, are kinda scary to drive down, but thankfully I only encountered a few oncoming cars, and each one we managed to reverse back to get around them without too much trouble.
And then we began the hike up the slope of the Black Mountain – which was so Otherworldly, all wreathed in mists – we couldn’t see very far ahead of us, so we had no idea where we were going, or what we were passing, or where we were heading, or how far we had left to go, which was a bit nerve-wracking, but also really magical. We were well and truly walking into the mists 🙂
It was weird too, it wasn’t raining, but it was kinda wet, like the air was wet, and it was swirling too, the mists, almost like it was dancing around us. It was a long walk, and really steep, but fascinating – there were little mossy waterfalls along the side of the path, but we couldn’t see the mountains around us, just the blanket of white that surrounded us and made the whole world so silent.
After more than forty minutes we finally stumbled upon the shores of the lake – yet the whole thing was covered in mist – we could only see a few inches of the edges of the water, we had no idea how big the lake was, or what was surrounding it, or where the horizon was – it could have been the edge of an enormous ocean, or the side of a tiny lake – and it looked as though the barge from Avalon would glide through the curtain of white at any moment with a tall, black-cloak-draped priestess at the prow. It just might have been the most magical moment of our trip…
And it’s been fascinating looking at blue-sky, mist-free photos of it online tonight – I could barely recognise it as our lake. Walking back down from there, hand-in-hand through the mists, was also beautiful – such a wonderful adventure, two hours all up, and loads of steps 🙂
After that we went to an ancient settlement, Garn Goch, made up of two Iron Age hill forts, which was sorta cool, but a bit disappointing, although we walked through a field of wild mountain ponies, which was pretty special. One of the foals came over to us, almost close enough to pat, but sadly it shied away at the last minute. But being that close to them made the walk worth it, especially the white one, symbol of Rhiannon 🙂 There were also hill sheep, red kites and more…

With thanks… Sunday October 30…
Today I am grateful for Juz’s patience on my potentially wild goose chases 🙂
It was lighter earlier this morning, after the clocks went back last night, and there was mist around the edge of the valley, but nothing like yesterday’s blanket of white. We headed south-west to the Gower Peninsula, for our last adventure into the Welsh Neolithic.
We started at Parc le Breos Burial Chamber (also Parc Cwm long cairn), which was really cool. It was once a bit like West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury, except there’s not as much left. But you can see what it would have been like, which is fascinating. [The shape of the tomb is trapezoidal – with the upper part of the cromlech and its earth covering now removed – surrounded a low dry-stone wall. A bell-shaped, south-facing forecourt, formed by the wall, leads to a central passageway lined with limestone slabs set on end. Human remains had been placed in the two pairs of stone chambers that lead from the passageway. Corpses may have been placed in nearby caves until they decomposed, when the bones were moved to the tomb.]
It’s set in a huge deer park, and we wandered through it for a while, watching the autumn leaves falling and twirling and dancing through the air as they fell to the ground – it was so beautiful, and magical, like it happens in the movies. We climbed the little slope to Cathole Cave, which was interesting too, the place where Mesolithic hunters took shelter, and later Neolithic people stored their dead before placing their bones in the burial chamber.
Then we headed to the next village, Penmaen, where there was a burial chamber, the Penmaen Burrows Tomb, plus the ruins of a medieval church and a Norman Tower. We asked the woman at the caravan park shop where we parked about it, and she gave us directions for the forty-minute walk to it – although it turned out she thought we meant the one we’d already been to, so it was a long steep walk for nothing.
Lucky we like walking, cos when we got back we decided to search on our own – and took a wrong turn, so ended up on a gorgeous cliff-top trek along the stunning coastline. Admittedly we didn’t see the positive for a while – my knee was really hurting, and Juz’s feet were really sore, and we had a moment or two of grumpiness and frustration, but then we took a deep breath, laughed and trudged on.
And finally – after almost 10,000 steps and another local telling us the only burial chamber in the area was the one we’d already seen (ha!) – we found it 🙂 Which made it worth our aching legs. When we got back to the start the woman at the caravan park was embarrassed that she’d sent us to the wrong place, and gave us some Welsh Cakes 🙂
We lost time with all our walking, and the early dark, but we found our way to Maen Ceti, aka Arthur’s Stone, just in time for sunset, and walked across the commons, through another gorgeous wild pony herd, and although we didn’t get to see everything we’d hoped to today, and things got a little stressy trying to get through Swansea to get home, it was a good day…

With thanks… Monday October 31…
Today I am so very grateful to two wonderful strangers who helped us so much in a stressful situation.
Our last morning in Cwmbach began with blue skies and sunshine as we packed up to head off to England. And I’m so glad I stopped to take a photo, because within twenty minutes we saw a strange white cloud on the road ahead. It was so thick that we thought it might have been some weird gas cloud from an accident that we’d have to drive through – but no, it was a thick white blanket of mist, which covered the whole county, and didn’t let up until several hours later. So we took a deep breath, and dove into the mists. It was a little spooky, and so magically Otherworldly, like living my own story 🙂
We stopped off in Hay-On-Wye – town of books – for brekkie, and wandered around some of the thirty-eight book stores, then set out on our mission to find Arthur’s Stone (yep, another one), near Dorstone. It meant briefly leaving Wales for England – we could tell because the signs stopped being in two languages… It was a challenge to find, although we knew we were on the right track as soon as the lanes got narrower and the hedges taller.
And finally we found it, emerging out of the mists in the most magical way. It’s a Neolithic chambered tomb (so nothing to do with Arthur really, but the legend lives on!), dating from 3,700 BCE, situated on the ridge line of a hill overlooking the Golden Valley and the Wye Valley in Herefordshire. It was especially poignant, being at an ancient tomb on Samhain in the northern hemisphere…
Then we set off for Trellech, and the standing stones and other monuments there, travelling back into Wales… But just as we approached the village, a lorry driver tore around the corner a million miles an hour, in the middle of the road, and swiped the driver side of our car – then sped away. We’re both fine – and I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am to the couple behind us, who stopped and came to see if we were okay, and to help us, in practical as well as emotional ways. Best of all, they had seen the name of the business emblazoned on the side of the truck, and not only went off to find out the number for us (no phone reception where it happened), but also called the truck driver’s company and reported the incident, telling them in no uncertain terms that it was totally the truck driver’s fault (I’d actually been frustrating them a little because I was driving under the speed limit, the roads being so narrow and windy)…
They both offered to be witnesses, and gave me all their details, and took mine, and were so so lovely, and helpful too, since she was a former police officer, and they helped take off the broken bits that would have made it illegal for me to drive the car. The car accident line of the rental place was nice too, especially as I was pretty shaken by the time I called them… And our friends laughed when they asked where we were heading – to the Trellech Stones – 100 metres from where the truck hit us…
So we had a cup of tea in the pub (tea cures everything, ha ha), then walked to the other end of the village to see the standing stones – three massive pillars, which gave the village its name, and which looked so beautiful in the sunshine, against the blue sky that had finally appeared as the mists dispersed. (My legs are still burning, several hours later, from all the nettle stings though, sigh…)
It calmed me down enough that we could continue on our way to Bath, a little stressed because we were running late, although fortunately when I stopped for petrol I found an email from our accommodation place, with the code to get the keys, and no deadline to make it by 5pm. So we took a moment to take a deep breath, and have a chai, then we finally headed in, only getting a little bit lost in the dark…
And our apartment is beautiful. I lashed out a little on this one, booking in Jane Austen’s old home, which has been converted into a few apartments. NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, so I’m hoping I’ll feel inspired. The first thing I saw when we walked in was the writing desk at the window – and on top is an amazing limited edition illustrated hardcover omnibus of Jane’s works. Off to bed now, but hopefully tomorrow morning I’ll get a bit of writing done before we head off to wander the streets a little…
Love this – In Northanger Abbey Jane writes; ‘They arrived in Bath. Catherine was all eager delight; – her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and she felt happy already.’ Oh, and we saw lots of kids trick or treating as we drove – so cute! And I wore my bat ears headband and ate some Halloween smarties. When in Rome – or the Roman Baths of Bath, in our case…