Swimming at Shepperton

Rowan and I had a lovely swim at the Shepperton Lakes.

The lakes are on the West side of London next to the River Thames.
It is a beautiful location, within an large and private park. The lake is exclusively for swimmers and ducks.

This is a fantastic facility for open water swimming and a good opportunity to test out my new tri-suit. I enjoyed it so much that I returned on Saturday morning for another swim.

They have moored buoys to mark out two routes. One is 400m and the other 750m.

 I remained very warm in the wetsuit and it was very comfortable for swimming.

I will be back.

The Glamorgan Ridgeway

The Glamorgan Ridgeway is a scenic long distance path from North of Newport to Llanharan.

I had two Duke of Edinburgh Award groups to monitor and the weather forecast was poor. As it turned out the weather was much better than expected, no thunderstorms and just a little light rain.

Day 2 of their expedition took them from Llantrisant over Mynydd Garthmaelwg on forest tracks.


I decided to track them on my mountain bike so that I could move around faster on the forest trails.

The Ridgeway leaves the forest and flows over farmland at Mynydd Meiros. I stayed in the forest and headed to the NW tip where a track exits that I could use on my bike.

The track gently undulates heading towards Mynydd Portref with the wind turbines standing tall against the blue sky. 

I carried on over mynydd Hugh and was picked up where the minor road crosses from Brynna. 

Sgwd yr Eira

We have had a few days of unusually hot weather for the UK,  the July record was broken at Heathrow  Airport with a temperature of 36.7C.

With that in mind I decided to take the school group to Sgwd yr Eira rather than Pen y Fan; especially as thundery showers were forecast. The inquest into the death of three SAS soldiers in July last year has been in the news over the last few weeks and the press would have a feast if a school group got into difficulties. Anyway the Hepste gorge would be in the shade. 

The river Hepste plunges over a 30m cliff at Sgwd yr Eira (Fall of Snow). The underlying rock is limestone but a resistant band of millstone grit provides the ledge for the falls. 

A footpath follows a natural rock shelf behind the falls allowing walkers to cross the river behind the falls.

This is a classic walk, one not to be missed.