On to London from Wales Day 7

Sad to say we are leaving Wales today. 

Summer lodge we stayed at for one night

Beautiful outside of lodge

We debated going to Bath to spend a good part of the day since we weren't due in London until dinner time, but decided to stay in Wales since we are already here, and who knows when we will be back.  So todays hike took us to another beautiful spot that the woman at our hotel recommended.  OK, this woman is old Grandma age who has just finished doing the cooking for everyone at the hotel. She warns us there is about 100 steps at the beginning, but it is worth it once you get up there.  Well old Grandma can't count, there are over 250 steps and I was not too thrilled, my heart was really pumping, good thing we have been doing lots of walks all week or it would have been a real killer. 

Little church on todays walk

Steps, steps and more steps

We get to the top and walk through a forest area for quite a while.  It is a beautiful morning again, and this is the first time we have really walked through the forest.  We walk for about 1 mile through here.



Yes, we had to go down too...wild garlic, amazing smell

Now time to reverse of the beginning, lots of steps going down to sea level again.  We are doing a circular route today, my favourite.  Maps are left in the car, but Grandma has told us it is well marked.  So off we go, visit through the fields cows, horses, and sheep. Through lots of gates that say permissive path, only to come to one that says no foot path.  We had passed the permissive path gate on the other side of the field, but Andre thought that was not right, so we traversed another whole field.  Backtrack we go, hello to cows and sheep again in this field to get back on track.  Our walk that was supposed to take 2 hours turned into 3 hours, but that is fine, we are still talking.  The very end of the walk was along this fantastic path that was lined with wild garlic, amazing smell.  We had seen these flowers all week on our walks but didn't know what it was, but on this path we came across a fisherman and he told us all about it.  You just need to go off the path a bit to where to dogs haven't been and the leaves are great for salads, and make great soups.  Maybe another time we will get to try it.

This is the view we got when we got out of the forest (and steps)

Hello horses

Love the stone fences

Hello cows, we will see you again in about 30 minutes when we need to backtrack

Next off we venture to find Arthurs Stone.  There are different fables and myths out there about this stone, and it was fun to try to find.  Again lots of narrow roads that you can't see around the hedges until we got into the area where we found the stone which was wide open.  This is also the first time we have ever had to stop because of horses all over the road.  We've seen lots of sheep loose, but this is the first time we have seen horses free roaming.  Definitely the back roads of Wales.

Horses all around this spot loose

Arthurs stone - estimated to be over 5000 years old

Next we are off to Karen and James for the night. 

We knew dinner as at 7:30 and we thought we had lots of time.  A few stops along the way as it was supposed a 3.5 hour drive and I needed tea once, a short nap another time.  Next we hit the traffic, oh my this was bad traffic.  We were stopped on a highway that we were supposed to be going 70mph.  We did evenentually make it there, but 1.5 hours later than we had planned.  A great supper at a pub close by, and fun to catch up as it's been a couple of years since we have seen them.  Also we find out today is their wedding anniversary, so we've crashed their party!