August 3 - Thursday
Telford to somewhere just past Cyfronydd
The Welsh language is interesting. Lots of consonants not many vowels. We passed through a small village where the name (which I've completely forgotten) had no vowels in it what so ever. It was something like Mwrt. We had our breakfast - continental, in the Manor. Pretty standard stuff: yogurt, dry cereal, coffee, fruit, packaged chocolate muffin for Jon. They did serve apricot nectar instead of the typical OJ which was refreshing. Another gray Welsh day but the roads weren't too busy so the riding was pretty good. We wanted to try to make up some time lost for the extra day we took to recover from our colds so today was going to be a longer travelling day. So we travelled.
We kept the option open for staying at Shrewsbury if we weren't feeling well but when we reached the outskirts we were both up to putting on more miles. The landscape was beautiful but not signifcantly different from what we had already seen.
We stopped in Welshpool for lunch and to regroup. Stay and camp here or go a little farther?
Jon went into the information center while I waited outside and scoped out a place for lunch. Jon came out to inform me that there weren't any campsites in Welshpool so we would continue onward after lunch. There was a local café/bakery that looked promising. We went inside and was served by a young teenage gal. Jon got this rustic looking quiche with bacon, and tomato while I had the turkey sandwich with stuffing and cranberry sauce. I saw a woman outside eating one and thought it sounded like a good idea. Jon had a giant chocolate chip cookie and I had this graham cracker, chocolate bar cookie which I chose with the help of our server. I asked her which was the better between that bar cookie and the one next to it without the chocolate top. That gal was so shy, maybe she was put off by my bicycle helmet and runny nose (it was still quite overcast outside) the woman working with her explained the difference between the two (the nonchocolate one was a maple flavor) but then suggested the chocolate topped cookie which is when the teenager wholeheartedly piped in that it was indeed the better of the two.
You could tell Jon's quiche was made from scratch and 100% whole milk. It probably weighed about two pounds. My sandwich was just right. It wasn't overstuffed with meat like they do at home but rather just as I like it with a little meat in proportion to the rest of the sandwich. In the UK it seems that there isn't wholewheat bread and white bread but brown bread, white bread and grain bread. We've seen more of the fluffy kind of bread brown and white rather than the heartier, denser breads we prefer.
Once lunch was finished we continued onward. After a few miles we reached a roundabout and realized we were going the completely wrong direction. I hate it when that happens. So we turned around, backtracked (which I also hate doing) and started again in the correct direction. In the big picture of life, backtracking shouldn't be such a big deal but it just sucks to have to do it. Maybe because it was getting on in the day, we were getting a little tired from our lunch (maybe the turkey wasn't such a good idea) and had rested too long, who knows, we were both grouchy for having to turn back though. Once we were back on track it was fine, the sun came out and there was less than 15 miles to go before camp.
Unfortunately, once we came up to the sign for the campground we had to go up a super steep hill. There was actually a fork in the road where the sign pointed and I headed immediately to the straight road only to find it leading to a parking lot.
Damn.
There just HAD to be ONE more hill to end the day. Which of course took us around a corner leading us back down hill into the campground.
It was a small place and all the permanent mobile homes were the exact same two tone green color. The only thing that distinguished one from the other were the lawn ornaments. It was either a collection of gnomes or a collections of small furry animals. It was totally quite, no one was outside or on their porch. There was a large grassy area with a couple tents but it didn't look like anyone was there. It was kind of creepy.
We found the laundry room/dishwashing room and bathroom with no problem. There was a sign telling us to go "behind the cabin" to get to the office. What cabin?
We rolled down the path a ways and found a road at the end of the campground. Since we had gone up and then down into the campground the only other way to go to get to any kind of office would be up - again.
Oh my gosh, this little hill was so steep and it ran into a driveway that was even steeper. I was pedalling just, and I mean JUST enough to keep the bike balanced and upright only to find that no one was in the office and no one was answering the phone number that was posted on the door. There was a french couple in a car that stopped and told us they had been looking for a manager or receptionist of some sort to checkin with but were also having no luck. So, we all decided to just pitch our tents and deal with it in the morning.
I must say that we were feeling a bit smug when we had our tent pitched, bedding arranged and dinner ready all before the french couple next door had gotten themselves settle in. The wind had really picked up and there were dark clouds which we were now able to recognize as threatening but with little chance of actual rain. The bathrooms were clean but the showers took £1 coins which we didn't have. Foregoing a shower was not an option so I took a sponge bath in the sink, made a rather large wet, soggy mess of the place but felt much better. Afterwards I was washing some clothes when there was a knock on the door - I thought it was Jon but a french man poked his head in, "Everything ok?".
"Oh yeah." - S
It dawned on me after he left that had he come in a few minutes earlier I would have been buck naked and everything would not have been "ok.".
When I got back to camp Jon asked if I had taken a shower.
"No but I took a spit bath." - S
Apparently, the french man was the owner and was collecting payment for the night at which time Jon got about five pounds worth of £1 coins that he was now offering to me.
Ah, well. At least I had hot water to use.
After we had cleaned up there wasn't much else to do and it was so windy we decided to just call it a night and make the push to Machynlleth and the Center for Alternative Technology (CAT) tomorrow. We knew it would be less than 30 miles but we were also entering Snowdonia National Park and before one can get to a valley which is where CAT is located one must go over some kind of mountain...
