We rose slowly, enjoying the last of the “best room” hotel luxury. We also made the most of the large welsh breakfast which was amazing – all the food had been amazing actually.
It had been a mixed holiday but definitely improved through the week. It was time to head home and while we were feeling tired, we also wanted to go for a walk to enjoy the beautiful weather and scenery some more.
After a couple scenic hours of driving, Aimi spotted a lone hill topped by some sort of obelisk. She said we should head for it, gave me directions and then once we had arrived at the car park, lost all motivation and was really lethargic. I felt the same, but I was curious about what the tower on top of the hill was all about so I re-motivated (forced) her to get moving.
Once she was walking, she took off, powering up the hill. I think she had sneakily downed a bottle of lucozade because I was struggling to keep up. The tendons or something stringy behind my knee was aching a bit from the ride yesterday so I wasn’t so keen to set a hill climbing record.
We chose the steepest and what turned out to be the slipperiest route to the top, literally walking thru a stream in places. It was a fun climb, but VERY humid so we were both sweating bullets by the time we got to the top. It felt like ages, but actually, we managed the 350m climb in 23 mins. We weren’t going for a workout and I’m certainly no fell-runner, but I was quite happy with that. Especially seeing all the other people at the top who had brought full packed lunches and so much stuff they clearly planned taking all day for this one hill.
The tower was called Admiral Rodney’s Pillar and disappointingly had a metal fence around it so we couldn’t go up and read the plaque. If you want to know more see here.
We spent about 5 mins trying to get a good photo off Aimi. She has a great smile, but only when she doesn’t realise shes doing it. If she tries to smile on command, shes like a nervous robot. Eventually we got a nice one after a bit of poking and teasing.
Another 5 mins was spent finding a Geo-cache. I’m up to 102 found caches now and literally every time I find one, I always forget to have brought a pen with me to jot my name in the ledger. This one was well hidden and dry (which makes a change)
We decided to take the long way down and encountered people from the car park still coming up the hill. We really did motor up here!
We only made one stop on the way home after that, to be robbed at a farm shop. The meat was excellent, certainly some of the best steak I’ve ever had, but I wouldn’t remortgage for it. We also got some Wild boar sausages, homemade pies and a load of veg. It was all grown on the farm apart from the corn on the cob which we feel deceived us as it was from the Netherlands after close inspection of the label.
Getting home was nice after such a long time away and such varied quality of accommodation. We literally sat on the sofa with a cup of tea and enjoyed our view for the evening.