Tour of Wales - Part One

We had intended to go to Europe in September but medical things meant that we had to tour at home. Wales is a place we have not been to on a regular basis although we have stayed at Lady Margaret’s Park a few times. So what was the plan? Well we would start in the north, make our way down the west coast and end up at Brecon having first visited Cardiff en route. As with all plans things change, more of that later.

On the last day of August we set off for Oswestry as the first stop on our tour where we arrived mid-afternoon. This is a fairly basic C&CC site but it does have hardstanding which we had booked in advance. There is not much in the immediate vicinity of the site but it does have a bus service into Oswestry and that is where we headed the following day. I always find it difficult to get my tongue around this name which is, apparently, a corruption of Oswald’s Tree. He didn’t meet a pleasant end so I suppose the least they could do was name a town after him!!! Oswestry is a nice little border town just before you get to Wales. It has a good range of shops and a lovely town park called Cae Glas Park which is a lovely place to sit for a while. Wilfred Owen, the Great War Poet, was born in Oswestry. Sadly he died seven days before the peace treaty was signed to end the war. He was posthumously awarded the Military Cross.

Our three night stay at Oswestry was soon over and we were soon heading into Wales to Llanberis in Snowdonia. It was quite an interesting journey, the final part of which was over the Llanberis Pass. Whether this was a good idea I don’t know but even in the pouring rain the scenery was magnificent. Mind you it’s not a wide road and I was pleased that there was so little traffic! Our home for the next four nights was the Llanberis Touring Park run by the Morris Leisure Group so members get a handy discount on production of their membership card. This site has only been open for eighteen months and it is superb. The only thing I could find to be critical of was the fact that the motorhome service point did not have an open grill grey water waste drain but the more old fashioned heavy metal covers which needed lifting off.

As everyone knows weather in Wales can be wet. We decided that in order to make the most of our stay we would have to ignore the weather. The site is about a mile and a half from the Snowden Mountain Railway. Our first day was spent getting used to our surroundings and we walked into Llanberis to see the lie of the land. We took the path along the lake edge into the town and ended up at the Electric Mountain exhibition centre which is where you can have a tour of the Dinorwig Power Station. Dinorwig is a pumped storage hydroelectric generating power station. Water is released from a higher water storage reservoir to a lower reservoir to create an immediate fill up to the National Grid at times of peak demand. The upper reservoir is replenished by using off peak electricity overnight. We didn’t bother with the tour but instead enjoyed a coffee in their handy café.

What we had forgotten to do was to post a birthday card because we couldn’t find the post box! So we had to walk back into Llanberis the following day. We discovered the reason why we did not see the post box. It was outside of the café called “Pete’s Eats” which had such lurid coloured tablecloths that we completely ignored the big red post box outside the café!!!

The weather thus far had been dull although in fairness it had not been too wet. Our final day here and we are back into Llanberis and it was a bit brighter. We had seen advertised the Welsh National Slate Museum so we thought we should go and have a look. Slate was obviously the big industry here abouts. However, today, most slate is imported and the Welsh slate industry a shadow of its former self. We watched a demonstration of slate splitting, which of course, was made to look so easy. What intrigued me was that the slate workers did not get paid for a 100% of the slates they produced but had to accept only part payment to allow for breakages during the transportation of the slates to their destination.

Just by the Slate Museum is one of the stations of the Llanberis Lake Railway and we stopped a while to watch one of the narrow gauge trains go by. Llanberis is also home of the more famous Snowden Mountain Railway. As the weather had not been that clear whilst we were here we decided not to buy tickets which cost about £40 each. Having said that there seemed no shortage of people willing to pay and the sold out signs were up. We got talking to a couple who were our neighbours on the campsite and they had tickets for the 3.30pm train.

Our four days at Llanberis were up and time to move on to our next campsite, Hendre Mynach Touring and Camping Park, at Barmouth on the coast. En route I thought we would stop at the Tesco at Porthmadog for some shopping. No room in the car park so I thought I would fill up with fuel. Most Tesco forecourts are quite large but I obviously found the one example that was on the smaller side. When at the pump some cars were having difficulty getting round the back of me!  

Hendre Mynach has a nice situation right on the coast about a mile and a half from Barmouth. There is direct access to the beach which does involve crossing the local railway line which divides the site from the promenade. The next day we walked into Barmouth along the promenade but had to use the opposite footpath as the tide was right up and waves were breaking over the sea wall. At least the sun was making an effort to come out and in the end it was quite a sunny day. We wandered round to the harbour where we had a coffee in one of the numerous cafes that overlook the sea. We detoured into the town which had quite a lot of shops although many were serving the needs of visitors. A bit of shopping in the Co-Op next to the railway station and we made our way back to the site. The tide was now out which exposed a beautiful wide sandy beach looking out onto Cardigan Bay.

Watching the news we seemed to be getting lots of warnings about gale force winds and heavy rain coming in a day or two. Originally we had intended to continue down the coast via Aberystwyth to Tenby. However we were concerned about being on the coast in that sort of weather with the additional problem of finding sites around Aberystwyth with hardstanding. Perverse as it might seem we decided to head back to England for a few days staying at the Luckshall Caravan and Camping Park near Hereford. This was a site we had intended to visit towards the end of the holiday anyway so no real hardship.

Luckshall is a very nice site and as it’s a Club AS site you get a small discount on presenting your membership card. Whilst a few miles out of Hereford it does have a handy bus service which operates from immediately outside the campsite. It was our first visit to Hereford and it turned out to be a very pleasant place. The Cathedral houses the Mappi Munda which is an ancient map of the Christian world. On initial viewing it is difficult to make head nor tail of the map but spending five minutes having it explained in a video they show, it all starts to make more sense. In the precincts of the Cathedral is a sculpture of Sir Edward Elgar famous for his Pomp and Circumstances Marches from which Land of Hope and Glory came and is performed every year at the Last Night of the Proms.

Time to go back the Wales, see part 2.