Whenever I told anybody I was going to Wales to tour, they’d say ‘don’t miss the Gower, you big poncey flower’ – so I didn’t – Kate and I spent two days there. Have at it!
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30.06.2014 – 01.07.2014 |
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The cute terraced coal miners cottages in the valleys |
In Caerphilly we visited the castle. It was a pretty impressive defensive fortress, big moat. The great hall and inner gatehouse have been re-constructed which was cool to explore. The really stand-out bit for me was the wonderfully developed touch-screen table display thing detailing information about the castle! You could light a match and set it to powder kegs and open flood gates, pinch and zoom images and things – totally cool.
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Caerphilly Castle |
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The neat table thing |
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Kate hasn’t boundaries – busting in on me in the latrine |
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The great hall – where’s the wally? |
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The Craig-y-Llyn layby at the top of the A4061 pass |
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The Melincourt waterfall |
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Pub grub at the Kings Head |
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The sunset, Cefn Bryn. |
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Bovine intervention |
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Arthurs stone (standing on 6 small stone legs!) |
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The Helvetia – pissing off fontophiles since forever ago. |
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Kate and I above Rhossili |
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I GOT ONE WITH A PROPER SMILE! |
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Worm’s head – from Wyrm, as it looks like a dragon. See? Accessible at low tide. |
In the afternoon we headed back South West to Oxwich to visit the Oxwich castle and perhaps another cute seaside town. This wee outing was not our finest. We parked at the beach by accident, so walked up the steep hill to see the castle. We found it was closed on Tuesdays.
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Oxwich Castle |
Determined to make a success from this failure, I convinced Kate to not return the same route, but take a shortcut through farmland to the coastal pathway and loop around there.
Walking through deserted farmers fields was lovely; getting completely lost wasn’t. Dodging gorse around a sheer cliff face, we came across some WW2 gun emplacements and eventually, thanks to Google Maps, we found our way down to the coast path. A brown snake was spotted as we headed back. Steep banks were climbed, then promptly descended, only to find the field from the start of our journey nearly adjacent to our end. I should probably mention here that Kate did this all in jandals that were little more than slats of plastic at this point – it was bad enough for me in my boots!
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Kate near one of the surprise WW2 emplacements at Oxwich |
Arriving back at the van, we were both buggered. We booked a Caravan Club site in Gowerton in for two nights and hit the road, keen for booze and showers.
But fortune does not smile on the wary. En route, the traffic slowed, then stopped. There was an accident that was blocking both lanes. One by one the motorists ahead of me made their U-turns. Luckily there was a driveway close by, else I would’ve been stuck reversing on those hedgerow-locked lanes!
Back in motion, our rerouted convoy headed back east and up past our cow buddies by Arthurs stone. We stopped at a Nisa to pick up some plonk, because if we didn’t need it before hand we sure did then! And the last nail, the ATM ate Kate’s EFTPOS card. It was the end of the month, the card had expired – it was gone.
It could be a comedy of errors, if it weren’t all such a pain in the ass! A beer in a camp site never tasted so good.