Wales

Q: How do you get two whales in a Mini?

A: Over the severn bridge!

We used to love that joke when we were kids, but when my kids hadn't heard of the Severn Bridge, or the River Severn for that matter it didn't have quite the same effect! Of course now there are 2 bridges across the Severn and Dad tells me that the new one is the most magnificant bridge in Europe!
Anyway off we went over the old bridge and into Wales (had also told the boys that they would need there passports but they didn't fall for that one)! To start with we noticed that the road signs wer in English with the Welsh written underneath, but the further into Wales that we got, the Welsh was at the top! We stayed in the Brecon Beacons National Park and our Welsh Long House was on a hill looking across to the Black Mountains. We were a long way from any towns down impossibly narrow lanes, onto a dirt track and over a ford....Brilliant! We did go into a couple of the nearest towns, but 3 of them all started with Ll, Llandeilo, Llangadog and Llandovery. Not suprisingly we got quite confused as to where we were!

It was a great week, with lots of walking including taking the Boys up onto Pen y fan (about 3000ft) where the SAS do alot of their training. The area is also a place where the Red Kite birds of prey have made a comeback from near extinction. It is a beautiful bird with a 2m wingspan and distinctive forked tail.Hundreds of breeding pairs are now thriving in Wales and we had 2 to watch every day out infront of the house!
This part of Wales is relatively unknown and is so beautiful and yet it is so close to the heavily populated "Valleys" area.

We came back to England over the New bridge and boy as that impressive!

The interesting thing was we one only had to pay a toll going into Wales, but not coming back out!