Wanderung 25

Fall Follies

August - September 2011


 

3 Previous Day
Next Day 4
Index


 

Thursday, August 25th, 2011: LLandrindod Wells

Bob:

Walk # 15 in the Pathfinder Guide for Mid Wales and the Marches was a big figure-of-8 loop starting from the county seat of Powys County, LLandrindod Wells. That guide book listed 28 walks all together in the mid-Wales area, and almost all of them sounded interesting, so it was tough to make a choice. We finally decided on the LLandrindod Wells walk because the town was not too far from our B&B, hence not too much driving for me, and secondly because we knew there were both an Aldi and a Tesco store there so that we could easily shop for groceries after our walk. Central Wales is not that densely populated and correspondingly the frequency of the discount food stores like Aldi and Tesco is low. Since we like shopping at exactly that type of store for our supplies, having the stores right at hand after the walk was a plus.

In fact, Monika had the bright idea of simply parking in the Aldi parking lot in the morning, doing the walk, and then coming back to do the shopping and pick up the car. It was a brilliant idea in that it saved us from the dreaded "Park and Pay" system for the town's public parking, although I had some qualms about leaving our car for the whole day in the store parking lot. Nevertheless, we drove over to LLandrindod Wells right after breakfast, parked far in back at the Aldi lot, and started off on our walk.

Fortunately we found we could join the route specified for Walk # 15 just two blocks up the road from Aldi. On our way out of town we passed some rather nice Victorian-era houses and soon started climbing up to the top of Little Hill. A lot of trails crisscrossed the main one that we were trying to follow, and I started to second-guess myself about being on the right or wrong path. I found out that it was quite easy to get off the correct path even WITH the Pathfinder Guide, so I certainly would recommend that anyone hiking cross-country in Wales would at the very least have a guide like the Pathfinder series plus a compass. We additionally carried a GPS that we could use to orient ourselves to the network of streets, lanes, and major landmarks, and that proved also to be useful, although I think we could have stumbled our way through without it.

The other nice thing about the Pathfinder Guide we used was that it had walks of 3-5 miles, 6-7 miles, and 8-9 miles in length, roughly corresponding to 2, 3, and 4 hour walks, which were just the perfect lengths for us day-hikers. We were, however, noticeably slower than the time estimates given in the guide, in part because we amble along and in part because we probably stop more often than most folks either to take pictures or simply catch our breath! However, the same publishing company puts out the Jarrold Short Walks guides that feature shorter, easier hikes so folks that are worried about not being in very good condition could consider those walks instead.

As it turned out, despite the lack of one signpost and so much moss and lichen growing on another old one that we couldn't even read it, I did find the correct path up Little Hill

Monika:

For our last day in Wales we decided to do one of the medium difficulty walks starting in LLandrindod Wells. The town of LLandrindod Wells is the county seat of Powys and proud of its Victorian Heritage. Today was in the middle of what they term Victorian Age week, where people dress up in Victorian Age clothes. Since we thought parking might be a problem and we knew there was an Aldi store with plenty of parking on the outskirts, we parked there and quickly found the walking route according to our walking guide.

This was a 7 km walk with a significant climb up to a hilltop. We started out through the town and up to the edge of the woods. There we found the most ancient looking finger posts, but it did show the way up through the woods. After the woods came the obligatory bracken and finally a meadow all of which was up, up, up. Finally we reached the marker on top.

Bob:

When we huffed and puffed our way to the summit, we were reward by a magnificent 360-degree panorama of the Welsh countryside, complete with the little town of LLandrindod Wells nestled in the valley below us. Off to one side, however, a copse of woods had recently been clear-cut and they were burning off the leftover branches and stumps, which created plumes of smoke that eddied around us. A stiff breeze was blowing over the hillcrest where we stood to take the pictures, causing us to cool off dramatically--I had to change from my sweat band to my ear warmers as well as put back on my shirt and jacket.

Monika:

The view from here was truly breathtaking, 360 degrees of wonderful scenery. Well, make that 330 degrees. At one corner was a smoldering fire, where they were burning the stumps after having clear cut what used to be woodlands. But otherwise, there were fields, little towns, meadows, hills, and all things bucolic. Bob and I took turns trying to take the perfect panoramic picture, that still covered only a small part of the scene. I finally took a movie, where I slowly turned in a circle, to have a memento of this delightful place.

Bob:

Our downhill track passed that clear-cut area and wound around past the home of "Captain Chainsaw" a wood sculptor who worked with a chain saw. He was, in fact, sawing away at a huge block of wood on the back of a flatbed truck as we passed the entrance to his place, and we enjoyed the display of artwork he had produced in that fashion. But we didn't stop in to chat and ask questions because the man was, after all, working and we try to be sensitive about such things.

Monika:

From the top we walked down to a lane, by the former woods, and on the lane down to a bridge. I heard a chain saw and thought someone was cutting down a tree. But then we came to a driveway with beautiful wooden sculptures and a sign saying "Captain Chainsaw". He was a little farther down the driveway carving his next masterpiece. It is amazing what you find on these walks.

Bob:

We continued descending into a small valley where we turned North to follow a brook through a nice, shady forest. At the far end of this big loop the guide mentioned a "Shaky Bridge" that was the only entrance to a rather isolated church, St. Michael's Anglican Church. I wanted to try out the Shaky Bridge and was bitterly disappointed to see that it had been replaced with a broad, steady, sturdy bridge. Nuts! I later found out from one of the ladies in the congregation that the pretty, old swaying suspension bridge had been torn down and replaced with the efficient but soulless modern one just a few months back. Oh well.

St. Michael's itself was, however, a very pretty rural church. Services are apparently held there only once a month, but we saw fresh flowers up in front so the monthly service must have been in the recent past. We also saw kneeling cushions that had each been uniquely cross-stitched with some picture or scene from rural life. I was not sure if each parishioner had stitched his or her own pad or if the good ladies of the congregation had done the job for everyone, but it surely added a personalized, homey note to the otherwise austere interior of the church.

Monika:

A little farther on, our guide said we could walk across a "Shaky Bridge" to an old church. Unfortunately, the old shaky suspension bridge had been supplanted by a nice new solid stone bridge, much safer but not nearly as much fun. But St. Michaels, the old church, was well worth the visit. It was a very simple old church, very peaceful. But the fun part were all the kneeling pads that were embroidered by the local people. Really fun to look at.

Bob:

Working our way back over the hills in to LLandrindod Wells, we stopped to chat with a farmer who was just replacing a stile, where you must step over the fence between farm fields, with a welded metal gate with latch. Given that we are both not as spry as we used to be, we prefer the gates to the stiles, so we stopped to chat with the farmer about it. He was very friendly and talkative, and showed us the top of a hill across the valley that had the ruins of two different castles at either end, one of Norman vintage and one even earlier than that.

Monika:

Back across the no longer shaky bridge, we had to climb again, first across a field, then up a lane, and finally again up a couple of fields. There we met a farmer who was replacing the old fashioned stile with a nice self-closing gate. We started chatting, and he told us some of the lore of the area. For instance, on the next ridge where the remains of an old Norman castle. He also told us all about the stiles versus gates, etc. I took pictures, while Bob chatted.

We finally reached another high point, not nearly as high or picturesque as the first one, but you could see the old church in the distance, and the Norman castle ruins off to the side. We kept on walking past the sheep that seem to be everywhere and finally came back to the woods.

Bob:

We continued back across the mountain and along a small stream to finally arrive at a fishing lake that had a very fanciful sculpture of a dragon fashioned to act as a fountain. Along the way I saw the deeply-notched leaves of the stinging nettles in time to avoid contact, which was quite a relief after the throbbing hand and numb finger that I had had to endure a couple days back. We cut back to town through one of the fanciest "kissing gates" I have ever seen: it was made of nicely-painted black wrought iron complete with upper tips gilded with gold leaf. Wow.

Monika:

We now crossed over the path we had started on that morning to make a kind of figure eight and came out by a little lake. In the middle was a fountain in the form of a serpent spurting water in a wide arc. Across from the serpent was the fanciest kissing gate we had yet to wander through.

Bob:

Once back in town we stopped off for a quick lunch of a jacket potato in a sandwich shop right beside a bicycle museum! First things first, so we ate lunch but then we wandered around the exhibits in the bicycle museum for maybe a half an hour before continuing over to the town square.

Monika:

But after that we finally ended up in the city. We found a little sandwich shop that offered the beloved jacket potatoes and chowed down. In the same place was a bicycle museum. It looked rather unassuming from the outside, but once we were let in it was chock-a-block full of bicycles from the earliest to the latest. Bob was in heaven and aimed the camera everywhere.

Bob:

At the town square the city was celebrating "Victorian Days". Apparently the town of LLandrindod Wells had become a popular Victorian spa after the railroad line was completed in the late 1800s, and the town folk memorialize that period each year for a week by dressing up in Victorian garb and having old-fashioned arts, crafts, food, and entertainment on the village green.

We finally closed the loop back to our car, did some quick shopping at Aldi, and started on our way home. But we had heard so much about all the bookstores in the village of Hay on Wye over on the Wales-England border that we kept on driving past Builth Wells to take a quick peek at it. It was raining a bit when we arrived and while we walked through the town, so we didn't linger much more than and hour or two, but it was fun perusing the books in just a few of the 25 bookstores that populate the town. I was, however, afraid to look too hard for fear that I would really find another book that I could not live without, and then I'd be stuck trying to figure out how to get it into my luggage, which was already dangerously full from slate items bought up in the Lake District, spoon rests and mugs bought in northwestern Wales, and heaven only knows what else!

Monika did find a small, wooden jigsaw puzzle at the "jigsaw puzzles and Teddy bears" shop, but it was small enough that we figured we would slip it into a pocket somehow. After that we were through for the day and drove back to our B&B, dragged ourselves upstairs to our room, had our dinner snack of pastrami and cheese sandwiches, and then collapsed for the rest of the evening.

Monika:

But we finally did manage to get out of the museum and walk around the town a little. We saw several people in Victorian clothes, but I was too polite to jump in front for a picture, so I got just some side views. In the middle of town was a little kiddie carnival. All very nice.

By now we were getting tired, so we went back to Aldi, bought a few things so that we felt better about having parked there and drove off. One of the places our host and hostess had told us about was the little town of Hay-on-Wye, it was a town of bookshops, just up our alley. We thought it may be fun to just look at it. It was south of Builth Wells, so we drove back through it and on southward to Hay-on-Wye. The rain that had been forecast finally started and came down heavily. But Bob drove us safely to the little town and we parked in the car park.

Since it was still raining rather heavily, we waited in the car for about 10 minutes, until the rain let off. We then started walking through town and there were indeed about 25 bookstores, used books and new. We walked into a few, but decided we really did not need anymore books. Instead we went into the puzzle and Teddy bear store. Here they had more jigsaw puzzles than I have ever seen from the small 25 to 50 pieces to really, really big. Can you imagine a jigsaw puzzle with 32,000 pieces? And yes the clerk told us they had sold one of them. I rather bought a wooden puzzle with only 40 pieces but with rather interestingly cut pieces. I am looking forward to putting it together at home.



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

3Previous Day
Next Day4
Index

Prolog Map of Drive in England Map of Transatlantic Cruise Epilog

August 2011
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31
September 2011
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30

Return to the Wanderungs Homepage.
Sign the Guestbook or Read the Guestbook.
Comments about this site? Email the Webmaster.
Contact Bob and Monika at bob_monika@hotmail.com.