Saturday 27th to Sunday 28th July 2024 with Ali & Chris.
Popped down to Cardiff for the weekend to see Tom, arrived around lunch-time and it was straight to the shops! Ali & Chris who had gone to Tenby met us there.
We were booked in at an apartment in Cathedral Road and checked in around 3pm.
Pre-drinks at Heaneys courtesy of Tuva and Alex, along with a full plate of Oysters which was a bit like a bush-tucker trial!
Dinner was at Thomas, unfortunately Tom couldn’t join us as he was in the kitchen! Lovely meal as ever.
Met for drinks afterwards back at Heaneys.
Sunday – went for breakfast at ‘ground bakery’ which was very good.
The plan was for us all to go for a walk to the top of Pen Y Fan in the Brecon Beacons along with the dogs, with 3 cars we set off, unfortunately it unravelled very quickly, Tom had sent me a link to the car park using Apple Maps and it wasn’t playing nicely and we missed the first turn off, we had to wait a bit before heading back to the correct turning. Once in convoy I then needed a wee stop, pulling into a lay-by the others carried on. Confident we would soon catch them up, things became worse, we hit some roadworks and Apple Maps didn’t spot the turn off and we got into a back and forth in the road works. We tried to call Tom and there was no signal! I asked Gilly to put the details into Google Maps and were back on our way, however it didn’t feel right and it seemed to have added 10 minutes to our journey, we carried on and we soon reached the turning. If things had been bad they were to get a whole lot worse, the road we turned into could just about fit 1 car down and we continued for a bit, by this time I knew this wasn’t right and was extremely rattled and needed another pee stop and had to stop down a lane just as a motor bike arrived who wasn’t impressed having to wait!
We had to get out of these lanes and of course encountered traffic which was a problem, luckily the other driver wasn’t too fussed and we squeezed through. Once out of the lanes I checked where we were and it turned out we were the wrong side of Pen Y Fan and it was 45 minutes back to where we should be. As we got closer back, Tom, Ali & Chris had driven back from the car park to get phone signal and we met up about 20 minutes away our destination.
It was decided that we would continue with the walk and we all drove to car park, again via narrow lanes.
The walk itself was very good, albeit very rocky at the start, it took probably an hour to get to the foot of the mountains and it was decide that we would do the first high-point rather than carrying on to Pen Y fan which would’ve added quite a bit more time. Tom & Gilly waited down the bottom while myself, Ali & Chris went to the top, we even had time for a quick drone flight!
Walked back to the car and headed home, wrong turns hadn’t finished as we had to use the car sat nav due to no mobile signal, arrived home safely!
