We've dug out the tent

An early morning coffee
Now we know we're getting a campervan, each weekend without it is almost unbearable.

This weekend the weather forecast predicted gloriously warm days and so we decided to get the tent out. We gathered up some of our new campervan purchases including our wood stoves, threw it all in the back of the car and set off for Wales, to a campsite I'm hoping we'll visit regularly.

Cwmdu in the Black Mountains is a site we've visited several times before and we like it for it's quiet and simple feel. It's not open during the winter though, and since we're expecting delivery of the campervan in December we'll not be able to make our first overnight stay there.

It took longer to get there than we'd planned on and we ended up setting up the tent in the dark. This was made a little easier thanks to the wind-up LED lamp I was given for my birthday - 23 LEDs combine to create an almost floodlit area.

With the tent pitched by 9pm we started cooking our dinner on our wood stoves. Mushroom risotto was easily prepared and eagerly devoured. It was a little eerie as everyone else on the site had retired for the night but we weren't yet on camping time.

The weather stayed fine and it was warm and occasionally sunny the next day as we decided to go for a walk along the towpath of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal. There's 50km of towpath in all and it's not something you're likely to stumble upon as it's half way up the hillside. It really is worth making the effort to find though. Just pick a section to walk with a pub at the end!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Baghera beach

Image
Our bikes were unlocked from the tree we attached them to five days beforehand when we decided we would spend the day on the beach to which we had walked for over an hour the previous day. It's not unheard of for us to take the bikes to France for a holiday and for us never to use them. Considering the Nice to Corsica ferry had charged us €70 for the extra length they added, I was pleased to be using them. Corsica didn't appear to be cycle friendly and our only option was to ride along the main road. For quite a significant portion there was a generous verge to cycle out of the way of the passing traffic, but at bridges and several places we had to share the road with the cars and lorries hurtling past. When we left the main road to take the route to the sea, after a time, we were blocked by the grounds of a campsite. Since there was no other road route around the perimeter there was not much choice but to push our bikes past the barriers and cycle through the s
Read more

Biarritz

Image
  October holidays are often about embracing autumn, wrapping up warm and enjoying walks in the countryside coloured flame red, orange and yellow. That was almost the holiday we thought we were going to be having this week after French fuel strikes and the inevitable shortages steered us towards a plan to visit northern Germany. The weather forecast had us rethink and decide to try our luck at getting fuel enough to make it to the southwest of France. This new plan was only hatched after we'd left home, about half of the way to Eurotunnel. We do love the sandy coast of France's Atlantic coast and have stayed everywhere from the Vendée down to Landes. So when the best of the weather was to be around Biarritz, a part of the coast we'd not yet explored, it seemed the ideal choice. We arrived in France at about 11pm and decided to use the Camping-Car Park at Incheville, a two-hour drive away in Normandy. We've stayed twice before and I checked the Camping-Car Park app a cou
Read more

West coast of France campervan tour

Image
Having decided there's no need to travel half way across a country between camping stays, to mix things up a bit, this summer's fortnight holiday will be spent along France's West coast, starting at Ile d'Oleron and then heading a couple of hours south for each of our other two bases. We were worried about a reported two hour delay near to the Folkestone Channel Tunnel terminal and so, before the Dartford Crossing, we put back our scheduled train by 90 minutes. The traffic was just clearing as we got nearer and as it turns out we'd have been ten minutes early for our original booking. The delay meant it was already 10.30pm by the time we were on French roads and wouldn't reach our chosen aire, Neufchattel en Bray, until 1am. Unfortunately the aire was completely full and so we had no choice but to continue. We arrived at our second choice of aire at 3am. The two extra hours drive through the night meant two hours less the following day though. We d
Read more