As we try to use all three and four day weekends to travel, this Memorial Day weekend, we packed up our car bright and early and headed to Wales. This was our third trip to Wales as we love that area so much, although every time we go to a different part of Wales. This time we drove 3.5 hours to Brecon Beacons National Park. The drive is super easy with beautiful views once you cross from England to Wales. In order for us to save money on lodging (which is always so expensive in the UK), we opted for an early morning departure, getting to Wales around 11 am and then hiking the rest of the day rather then driving down here on Friday night and staying the night in Wales.
We drove to Penderyn area, found an obscure unmarked place to park our van and started our Four Waterfalls Hike.
The projected distance was about 5.5 miles. No biggie. And only a few rolling hills on the way, nothing like Snowdon.
Waterfall #1. Not the little one in the background, but the one that you cannot see. And the worst part I don't have pictures of this actual waterfall:)
The boys were attracted like magnets to any creak and rocks.
And Katya was attracted to trees because that's what she does best-climb trees.
Following the trail was pretty easy except when we took a trail that was sort of closed (but we didn't know that).
This is the "closed path".
Finally, waterfall #2. This was a cooler one.
Nevertheless, if you were to ask our kids what their favorite part was at this waterfall, they'd say this puddle with tadpoles.
Robert, the mountain man.
We were heading to the next waterfall and we were not exactly sure again where we were going.
One of the passages was quite rocky and steep. We didn't want to go back down the same way, so we had to be creative (we ended up just following the trail hoping it would be a loop, and it was).
At this point we had already seen Waterfall #3 and did not take a picture. Seriously, what kind of blog post is this?
But we did see beautiful bluebells.
Finally, we knew we were on the right track as we saw signs for Sgwd yr Eira, the famous Waterfall #4.
Mark in the "forbidden forest", like in Harry Potter.
And this is why this Waterfall #4 is so special--you can walk behind it!
The water was thundering, and you do get wet from the droplets and mist. The kids loved it.
And this is what the world looks like from behind the water curtain.
A classic family picture.
I forgot to mention, to get to the waterfall, you have to walk a hundred or so steps (and walk them up after you are done).
This trio is ready for the final hike back to the car.
So after all, our hike turned out into a 7.5 mile hike somehow. We were slow, but we enjoyed it tremendously. Mark only was, um, a bit whiny tired during the last twenty minutes, but we managed.
We were happy and exhausted to get to our car and drove another hour to the place in Brefta, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, where we were staying. This house was our home for two nights-three bedrooms, kitchen, living room even a laundry room. It had all the necessities and things that were "just nice to have" like beautiful soaps and towels.
The village pub was famous all around for its food, so we were lucky that the manager was able to squeeze us in for dinner without a reservation considering it was a Bank Holiday weekend. We had a very delicious meal of typical Welsh food, prepared fresh using produce and meat from across the road.
The highlight of the evening was our annual tradition of watching Eurovision together. We let the kids stay up late as we see European nations battle in this song contest. We laugh, we sing, we squeal and it's just fun. This year's winner was Swedish Mans Zelmerlow with the song "Heroes". We all loved it, actually, and were rooting for him. Here, you can listen to this catchy tune as well. It's been over a month since our trip and the kids still sing this song at least once a day.
And that was our first full day in Wales.
Lyana.
No comments:
Post a Comment