Easter in Brecon

Well we should be able to say that things have been quiet since our last posting, but it's been more the case that the monotony of preparing ourselves for our next holiday hasn't produced anything worth mention. We did get a nice break in over Easter though when we went to stay in Brecon which is in south Wales for a few nights. We left home early on Good Friday and got to Brecon in time to have a relaxing day setting up and walking into town to see what was there. The walk was along the side of the Brecon-Monmouth canal and it was a fabulously sunny day - the first one of the year.



After a night interupted by a screaming badly behaved small boy next door to us (a bit too much like home really) we woke to find the weather hadn't held out and any walking in the Brecon Beacons wasn't going to provide us with the views we wanted to see. Luckily we had a few other things we wanted to do, including a trip to the Big Pit National Mining Museum . This turned out to be the highlight of our weekend.



The beauty of this museum, aside from the fact that it was completely free, was that ex-miners would kit you up with a hard hat and light and take you down into the mine for a 1 hour tour. It was really, really, interesting and honestly, you've never seen total darkness until you've been down a mine. Here's a picture of Vonny looking thoroughly relaxed about the whole thing at the pit head. We had to give up everything that had a battery in it including watches and cameras due to the theoretical risk of explosion from methane seeping out of the rock, which unfortunately meant no pictures of us underground.



Up on the surface there was much to see including one of the first shower blocks provided for miners at the mine site (they used to go home filthy and have to wash at home, can you imagine the dust??) and lots of original equipment and photographs. There was also this sign which made us laugh. Big Pit won the award for best museum in Britain last year and we'd be suprised if it doesn't retain it's title. Hardly suprisingly once they had found out we were from New Zealand, most of the miners wanted to talk about rugby.



Afterwards we did a bit more industrial history visiting an old tinning mill site owned by the National Trust, and then went to see this waterfall which they also own. You can just see Chris standing behind the water.



The next day we had to get on and do the walk we had planned and fortunately it wasn't too cloudy. We walked in a big loop along the ridge you can see in the background below, taking in Pen-y-fan which is the highest point in south Wales. We don't really have a good photo to show what it's like around there, only this one of Chris which could easily be somewhere near Waiouru. The hill tops are covered by brown grass and as you head down into the valleys everything suddenly turns really green and there are sheep grazing in fields with trees and hedges.



On our way home we went to Hay-on-Wye which is the second hand bookshop capital of the world. Funny how these things pop up in the middle of nowhere in this country. There certainly were a lot of bookshops, far more than Vonny wanted to look at. This is the shop of the man who started it all, Richard Booth and it was quite an attraction in itself. It could easily have been the set for a ghost movie with dark musty rows of books and poor lighting.



We took in one more National Trust property just up the road where spring was in full bloom, a bit earlier than we were having it back in Chesham.



We were completely amazed at how much there was to do in Brecon and it's surrounds, including some great mountain biking, so we'll definitely be going back. First however we have to complete our upcoming adventure cycling on the road, as we cross Switzerland starting this coming Friday. At the moment it seems an even scarier prospect than a night alone in a second hand bookstore.