Saturday 26 July 2014

Wales Trip July 2014

Wales Trip: 12th - 14th July 2014
Day 1 - 12th July 2014
So my third trip to Emma's family cottage in Wales and we finally managed to bring the motorbikes. Not convinced that we would have a completely dry weekend, I opted to bring the SV rather than the blade (yes I am rather fussy over the blade getting wet...).

We opted for a pretty straightforward route - the A40 all the way - relatively fast but not as boring as sitting on the M4 for several hours. The weather forecast predicted that it wouldn't start raining in Llanelli until around 2pm. And it was bang on schedule...

...However it wasn't in Llanelli that we encountered the rain. You see, we took the A40 so that we could ride through the Brecon Beacons. I am not sure what which road we ended up on but it reminded me a lot of when myself, Rob and Emma ended up stuck in the Pyrenees in very foggy weather. This meant tight bends in poor visibility and the sad fact that we couldn't take in the views. Of course, the visibility was no where near as bad as the Pyrenees but thats to follow in more Pyrenees blog entries!

It took around 6 hours for us to finally arrive in Llanelli, where we grabbed a KFC before heading to the cottage. We had a great surprise when we got there... the place was infested by honey bees. Many hadn't survived, but a few were trying to escape. Emma cleared up what she could whilst the 3rd-place playoff of the World Cup was on.

Day 2 - 13th July 2014
Today we continued along the A40 west to ride the road between St. Davids and Fishguard.

Once we got off the A40 we had some lovely coastal views on the way on and through St Davids. We wanted to walk along the coast, but were unsure whether motorcycles had to pay for the parking and so carried on past the old harbour. On the way back we went through a national park that is not really highlighted on the map known as "Forest Wood". We went for a walk, but then realised it was around 4pm and we hadn't had lunch. With around 40 miles still to go we went back and headed back to the cottage.

Back at the cottage the trouble with the bees continued with the World Cup final in the background. I managed to convince Emma to see the ducks before we headed back home the next day. There is a duck sanctuary nearby and every time we have been to Wales we have always had to get a bag of bird seed and walk around and visit the ducks, so it seemed only right that we did it before we left!

Day 3 - 14th July 2014
Emma's bike decided that it didn't really want to go home... we had to jump it from my bike to get to and from the duck sanctuary.  We spent around an hour feeding the ducks, some more willing to eat from our hands than others. Emma always tends to get through her bird seed really quickly whilst I manage to ration mine for the whole tour. There were a few ducklings too which I managed to get a close up shot of.

On the way back we stopped at Bridgend for a short time looking for a present for Emma's friend but they didn't have what she was after so we continued back, heading back through Wales to the A40 and taking the ring round round Cheltenham to continue to A40 to Oxford.

I would recommend not using the A40 if you want to get over to Wales as quickly as possible. We were staying in Pembrey which is still a couple of hours once you get over the Welsh border so its worth bearing that in mind.