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. 

Black Mountain traverse

This weekend was spent supervising Duke of Edinburgh groups on their Gold and Silver practice expeditions.
We spent the Friday night camping at the Red Kite Feeding Station near Llandeusant.

Pwll y Cig in the Black Mountain

The route headed south on the lanes through Llandeusant an into the access land at Twyn Draintewion and Pen Rhiw Goch near Careg Ogof. I followed the groups at a distance keeping an eye on their progress and ensuring that they remained on route, but sufficiently behind so that they were unaware of my presence. The route becomes rather vague as the Afon Twrch is approached but is clearer from then onwards. The path improves towards Afon Geidd and becomes a track from here onwards to Glyntawe. The swallow holes are impressive some are full of water which Toffee took advantage of for a quick swim.
We spent the night at the campsite next to Dan yr Orgof caves where all the midges of Wales live!

Day 2 the cloud was down and it was raining, The groups of explorer scouts walked across the beautiful limestone moors of the Ogof Ffynnon Ddu National Nature Reserve to Porth yr Ogorf near Ysradfellte on the Beacons Way. What a pity they could not enjoy it fully. The area has a lot of history being used for quarrying, and rabbit farming.
The sun came out just as they finished.

Kempton Park Pumping Station

Kempton Park Pumping Station is one of the steam powered pumping stations that kept London supplied with water.

 It is a massive construction and if you like steam power this is going to impress due to its sheer size.

Consists of two triple expansion steam engines one at each end of the grand Art Deco building.

Each engine is 19 meters (62ft 6in) high, weighing 1016 tonnes.

 The engines ran from 1927 to 1980 pumping 19 million gallons of water a day.

One engine has been restored to running order while the other triple has been partly dismantled enabling visitors to see the inner workings of the engine.

Pin valves supplying oil to various parts of the engine

One of the big ends!

Connecting rod and small end at the top.

If you like steam power this will appeal. I could not get enough of the sound, small and sight of this massive engine.

Thanks to Rowan for the photographs.

Budleigh Salterton

Budleigh Salterton is located on the south Devon coast between Exmouth and Sidmouth. It's name derives from salt panning that took place here up to the 18 Century. Salt was sold by the monks to surrounding villages as a preservative for storing meat.
We parked at the eastern end of the town in the car park on the estuary of the River Otter. There are remains of Lime Kilns here for the production of lime used in rendering houses and adding to farmland.
Our walk for the day was to take us along the coast towards Sidmouth but head inland to Otterton then back down the River Otter to Budleigh Salterton.

From the car park we headed north following the River Otter towards Ottery as far as the first bridge. There are good views of the estuary with various birds such as Egrets.
We crossed the bridge and headed on the footpath on the other side of the estuary back towards the sea at Otterton Ledge with views back towards the estuary mouth and Budleigh Salterton.

We continued east on the coast path that heads towards Sidmouth along the cliff tops. The cliffs re a beautiful red Jurassic limestone and in places they are crumbling so it is wise to keep away from the edge.

The fields were fringed with bright red poppies and the cliff tops covered in Sea Pinks and red campion. Sea campion and thistle were also in flower.







The coast path passes places with interesting names that indicate what happened here in the past.
Brandy Head had obvious connections with smuggling but more recently was used in testing various guns for aircraft used in WWII. A derelict observation hut and information display is all that is now left.

Ladram bay with Sidmouth in the distance

We continued on the gently undulating path to Smallstones Point to see Ladram Bay that has some impressive sea stacks off the beach. Unfortunately the little valley has been totally spoilt by a massive static caravan park.









From Smallstones point we headed inland on a footpath to join a track and a minor road that leads to Ottery.




The pretty village had a stream running down the main street, lots of cute houses and a grand church set high above the village.

 We stopped for tea and cakes in the Mill before crossing the river Otter and following the footpath along the west bank all the way to the our start in the Lime Kiln car park.

The Tarren Hills

Where I hear you say?

These hills are overshadowed by Cadair Idris on the other side of the Talylyn Valley. 

I think they are well worth a visit as they should provide fine views over the Dovey Estuary and Cadair Idris. I sound unsure because we were mostly in low cloud. The only views we had were limited to parts of the Dovey Estuary. 

We parked in Abergwynolwyn and headed up the beautiful valley of Nant Gwernol, with cascades and emerald green pools. 

Of course, Toffee couldn't resist a swim. 

The first mountain top of the day was Tarrenhendre (634m), an uninspiring top made more so by the veil of cloud obscuring our views. 

The second top Tarren y Gesail (667m) was again shrouded in mist, so no views, but significantly this was my last 2000ft mountain top in Wales! 190 visited in the 7 years since my 50th birthday. 

Now I need to finish the English tops. 52 left to do out of the 252 in England.