When I spoke to Garry on the Saturday morning he said they planned to have a flat walk and Nick confirmed that it would be about 7 km. Both of them lied. We agreed to meet up with the campers at Pencelli, which lies about 5 miles outside of Brecon. Both Ian and I drove as I wasn’t sure I could make the whole walk.
We arrived in the small peaceful village and immediately started to climb up the road and then onto the Taff Trail. We climbed for approximately 30 minutes quite steeply. I felt a little bit cheated that the promise of a flat walk hadn’t been fulfilled.
As we rose over the the Usk valley the views became better despite the lack of sunshine. The weather forecast had promised rain, but apart from a brief drizzle we continued on our walk in dry conditions.
Once we had reached the highest point the walk continued at a fairly steady altitude and was very pleasant. Eventually we came out at a point where we found a couple of people from the local mountain rescue team who stood acted as stewards for a group of hill runners to pass. At this point Ray and I decided to descend while the others continued along the path.
Ray and I found a pub called the Star Inn in Talybont-on-Usk where we had a drink. The rest of the team joined us after their additional excursion. All the campers ordered lunch while I felt too full fro our breakfast to eat anything so early as lunch time.
After our sojourn at The Star we continued our walk, but this time the path remained flat all the way back as we followed the Brecon Canal bak to Pencelli. As we left the village we came across a small bridge across the canal. For canal boats it meant the bridge needed to be lifted for them to pass.
We walked along the towpath and on our journey we saw an adder swimming in the canal.
We made our way back to the Beacon Guesthouse and in the evening we all met up at The Brecon Tap again after we watched the Women’s World Rugby Cup Final which England won quite comfortably.
We had booked to have our evening meal in The Hop Inn. The campers had already established themselves. Ian, Matt and I arrived. The place had a very narrow entrance with a bar at the back. The other clients appeared to be well inebriated by the time we arrived. The campers sat upstairs next to the toilet. We eat a mixture of different dishes, which were ok. Just before the food arrived we found this huge bloke promising to buy our food and drink if he could sit with us. Nobody reacted to this promise. He was also drunk and fairly obnoxious.
When we had finished our meal we all returned to our homes and the evening was over.