Wednesday 9th June 2010 - Llanddeusant

It was only a short distance to our next stop at Black Mountain Camping and Caravan Park in Llanddeusant and we had a number of options of places to stop on the way. In the end we opted to go via Llandeilo with the option of visiting the National Trust Dinefwr with its house, park and ruined castle. The weather was not at all promising and we knew that we would be lucky to escape without any rain.
We tried to park in the main car park in the centre of Llandeilo but it was busy and there weren't any spaces suitable for motorhomes. We returned to the Coop that we had passed on the way in and were able to fit in a space with the back end over some grass. After a big shop in the Coop we returned to the town centre and started to follow the route on the Town Trail leaflet that Jane picked up from the Fishguard Tourist Information Office. It was a pleasant walk, the highlight of which was the visit to the church of St. Teilo with its interactive display of the Llandeilo Fawr Gospels. The 8th century illustrated gospels are closely related to the famous Lindisfarne Gospels, beautifully illustrated and containing the oldest known written Welsh. The original is in Litchfield Cathedral but excellent PC software allowed us to view high definition images, turn the pages, magnify any parts that we wanted to and read about the history of the gospels. An intriguing aspect of the gospels was its use as a place to record contracts, literally sworn on the bible.
We timed a very late lunch well by having tea and cakes in a café close to the church. The cakes were very good, the service very slow but this allowed us to watch the rain falling almost the whole time that we were there, stopping just as we left.
We were able to buy some more of that lovely Welsh Spring Lamb from one of the real butchers in the town before we returned to Henrietta.
Twenty minutes later we arrived at Llanddeusant to find that the pub next to the campsite had been closed and replaced by the Red Kite Centre Café. We sat outside the van watching the Red Kites circling above us before threatening skies forced us inside. It wasn't long before the heavy rain started and thunder rumbled all around us.
Photos: This intriguing house in Llandeilo is a conversion of the old St. Paul's church; The Red Kite Centre Café.

Tuesday 8th June 2010 - Pumsaint

I suspect that many of you fancy the idea of panning for gold and making your fortune by finding some huge nuggets. Well, today I had the chance.
Opposite the campsite is the National Trust owned Dolaucothi Gold Mine and we walked over to it at the rather late opening time of 11:00. Entry is free for National Trust members but everyone has to pay for the guided tours of which there are two – the Victorian and the Roman. We chose the Roman tour as that was our main interest. We had to wait until 12:30 for that to start but this gave us time to walk around the more modern surface buildings and exhibitions. We were also able to do some do some gold panning. We managed to find lots of small pieces of fool's gold and I found a tiny flake of gold that was just the colour that we were told to expect. This was later identified as a piece of gold tinsel, almost certainly from the children's room where they were encouraged to make gold objects! I obviously was not going to make my fortune panning for gold here.
The tour took us up the hill to the higher levels of the gold mine where the Roman shafts had not been destroyed by later mining. The Roman mining was all done by the drift method i.e. it was possible to walk into all of the shafts from the hillside. However they still ended up deep under the hill and needed a series of foot-operated waterwheels to drain the mine shafts. We went into a few of the Roman shafts observing the classic Roman coffin-shaped cut through the rock and the marks of the Roman tools of the roof. The gold ore is held within the seams of quartz running through the shale, so the mining technique is to follow the quartz seams wherever they go. Extracting the gold is very difficult. The quartz has to be ground down to a fine powder and then water is used to flush away the quartz leaving the gold trapped in a fleece or vegetation on the bottom of the washing table. Burning the fleece or vegetation leaves the gold to be collected. We even shown a section of the side of the hill that has been identified as the three-tier crushing and washing area used by the Romans. The Romans targeted this area for its gold, something they had learned about before the invasion and it is thought that they extracted all of the easily-won metal. The mine was very productive for them but the many owners who ran the mine after the Victorian re-opening all went bust.
Photos: The coffin-shaped Roman tunnel; Our guide demonstrating the use of the Roman waterwheel used to drain the mines; The 1938 miners celebrating the production of their first 3 kg bar of gold.

Monday 7th June 2010 - Pumsaint

After saying goodbye to Gareth we headed off for our first stop at Pentre Ifan, a Neolithic burial chamber. Dated to possibly as early as 3,500 BC, this is the most impressive and best known megalithic monument in Wales. The setting gives lovely views over the countryside and down to the sea.
We then drove the short distance to another important archaeological site. Castell Henllys is the site of an Iron Age Hill Fort where the archaeologists have used experimental techniques to rebuild some of the roundhouses within the fort. When the fort was abandoned, it appears that the people deliberately destroy the stone entrance and then blocked it with stones. When the area was later farmed, it was too difficult to get farming equipment over the banks and ditches to farm the interior of the fort. Therefore it remained a very rare case of an unploughed hill fort. An entrepreneur bought the fort and the surrounding land with the idea of creating an Asterix theme park. The council were somewhat horrified by this and insisted that an archaeological survey was undertaken. This was done by a friend of a friend who was an archaeologist at York university. He discovered that the site had been wonderfully preserved and it was scheduled as an ancient monument. This bought the theme park plans to an end but gave the site a wonderful future. The redundant giant plastic dinosaur, not exactly Iron Age, remained at the site until only a few years ago.
The site was so well preserved that post holes were found and they could even identify the remains of Iron Age food such as burnt grain and animal bones in the soil. The archaeologist rebuilt one of the roundhouses in its exact position on the site. Eventually, in 1981, the site was sold to the Pembrokeshire National Park on the condition that the work on excavation and reconstruction was continued by York University. Each year they came to dig the site and work on the reconstruction and there are now five reconstructed buildings. Our very good guide quite candidly admitted that none of the buildings could be considered entirely 'correct'. The first was built with telegraph poles rather than oak logs and they didn't have the strength to support the thatch. Additional internal posts had to added latter to avoid a collapse. However, the thatch on this roof was perfect as the smoke rose from the fire inside the enclosed roof and filtered out through the thatch. There is no hole to let in the rain, the smoke preserves the wood, deterring woodworm and bugs and the smoke level at about 8 feet extinguished sparks from the fire without asphyxiating the occupants. In another few of the rafters reached the apex and this resulted in the whole structure twisting, which would eventually have resulted in collapse. The 'Chieftan's House', the largest on the site, is very well build with impressive oak rafters but the thatcher insisted on laying the thatch too thick. Still, this is what experimental archaeology is all about – learning by your mistakes and finding out what works.
They have identified the site of over 30 roundhouses , although only about 10 are thought to have been in use at any one time, so they have plenty more possible reconstructions to try. If, of course, they can get the funding!
I thoroughly recommend a visit to Castell Henllys but do ensure that you take of of the two (free) guided tours, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. If you can't do this then ask the staff lots of questions as they are both knowledgeable and helpful.
We drove on to Ogofau, the National Trust site (affiliated to the Caravan Club) at Pumsaint. It had been overcast all day but the rain started soon after our arrival and it rained all night.
Photos: Pentre Ifan – imagine a crescent moon with the arms coming towards you creating a courtyard in front of those huge entrance stones. The huge stone cairn extend all the way to the modern fence in the background.; An overview of Castell Henllys hill fort; The roundhouse with the fire showing the level of smoke held by the thatch.

Sunday 6th June 2010 - Rosebush

The Preseli Hills had disappeared this morning. Mynydd Preseli and even the quarries on the edge of the village were hidden behind a wall of low cloud. It was a cool, damp, miserable day and certainly not the day for a long walk to admire the views.
The furthest that we ventured was the perimeter of the campsite but this was very rewarding. Gareth Williams, the owner, is the grandson of the maintenance man at the slate quarry and the campsite is the site of the pleasure gardens created for the Rosebush tourists. Gareth has made the large lilly pond and small wood behind into a nature area and has received the David Bellamy award for the campsite. He is very proud of this and has a sheet of paper with the names and pictures of the large number of birds that have been seen on the site. He told me that three Canada Geese had flown in this morning and sure enough they were swimming around on the pond.
We wandered around the lake, through the wood and Rhododendrons and ended up at the monument erected by the villagers as a thank-you to Messrs. Cropper and Macaulay for the creation of their village. Just beyond this was part of the platform of Rosebush station and sounds of the steam trains drifted across from the Tafarn Sinc station further along the platform.
Photos: Part of the Rosebush nature area; The Rosebush lilly pond.

Saturday 5th June 2010 - Rosebush

Bad weather is forecast for tomorrow so we decided to walk today when it was supposed to be wall-to-wall sunshine.
The Preseli Walkers' Bus only operates in July and August so we were unable to do the one way walk along the ridge of Mynydd Preseli on the ancient 'Golden Road' trade route used for over 3,500 years.
We drove Henrietta to the eastern end of Mynydd Preseli via Maenclochog, stopping on the way at Gors Fawr the only stone circle in the Preseli Hills and one of the few in Wales. We moved on to find a car park marked on the OS map just west of Crymych. At the place marked, there only seemed to be space for two cars but one hundred metres back there was a good sized lay-by with plenty of space for the motorhome and a few more cars. We parked there and headed up the footpath opposite to the open access land. On the way we passed a plaque to a successful campaign by the Reverend R. Parri Roberts and many other people of the Preselau. Soon after the Second World War, the War Office announced that it intended to use the area as a permanent military training area. This was very strongly fought against by the local people, including the 200 farmers who would have lost their houses and livelihoods.
Our first target was Foeldrygarn an Iron Age hill fort occupying a very impressive, high rocky outcrop. The steep climb and the remains of a series of defensive banks emphasised its power. The history of the site goes back even further with three magnificent Bronze Age cairns on the top of the hill. These were huge and consisted of an enormous number of stones with perhaps 10 burial chambers surrounding a central chamber. The panorama from here was absolutely beautiful and any tribe occupying this position, overlooking such a vast area and on the Golden Road trade route must have exerted great power.
Descending to the Golden Road we soon came to the Bluestone outcrop of Carn Menyn. This rock is very distinctive, any recent breaks exposing a strong blue colour and a crystalline structure. In 1923 Dr. Herbert Thomas of the Geological Survey discovered that most of Stonehenge's inner circle and inner horseshoe stones came from this outcrop. And thus started the great debate – were the stones moved by a glacier in the last Ice Age or were they transported by the Bronze Age Beaker people across land, sea and rivers? It is easy to see that the required size and shape of stones could simply be chosen from those laying around, no quarrying was required. And there are still plenty available should you wish to build a new henge.
We walked on to Beddarthur, a “boat shaped” (if you have a good imagination) set of low standing stones. This is allegedly the burial place of King Arthur, a claim that has as much credence as that of Glastonbury Abbey. However it is another sign of the importance of the area to the ancient peoples. We sat on the rocky outcrop above Beddarthur and eat our picnic whilst admiring the views and enjoying the lovely bird song, especially skylarks and the cuckoo. We have heard and seen more cuckoos in this area than ever before. We were enjoying the peace and quiet until a mischievous sheep crept right up behind us and let out a very loud bleat, making us both jump out of our skins. We watched the sun shining all around us but Mynydd Preseli had its own weather system, resulting in almost constant cloud cover with gaps only appearing occasionally to light up the land that we had just left. Still, it was very pleasantly warm and made for excellent walking. We walked back on a track very slightly north in order to visit the rocky outcrops and cairns on that route.
We took a more minor road on the way back, passing closer to the bottom of Mynydd Preseli with lovely views up to it and stopping at a small farm to buy a dozen free-range eggs.
Photos: View from Foeldrygarn Iron Age Hill Fort looking towards Foel Cwmcerwyn; The Bluestone outcrop of Carn Menyn from where it is thought that the Stonehenge stones were collected; Freshly cut Bluestone shows its blue colour; View over Beddarthur towards Foeldrygarn Hill Fort.

Friday 4th June 2010 - Rosebush

After yesterday's longer than normal walk, we decided to have a quiet day today. In the afternoon we walked to the Pant Mawr cheese farm and bought a selection of cheeses. We were told that they also sell on the Internet and, as it is their 25th year, they are offering a special discount on the 25th of each month.
I decided to do some exploring on my own and headed for the quarries.
Rosebush has an interesting history, only being created in the 1870's. Before this it was a wilderness with just two small slate quarries on the hillside. In 1869 Edward Cropper, a retired merchant banker from Kent, with the assistance of Joseph Macaulay, bought the run-down quarries, improved the quarrying technology and expanded the output. They spent a fortune building a connection to the GWR railway in order to transport the slate and in 1876 it was also opened for passengers. They built cottages for the quarry workers and the village came into existence, named Rosebush after the quarry. Lilly ponds were dug close to the station (now in the grounds of the caravan park) together with Chinese pagodas, rockeries and shrubs to form a pleasure garden. The tourists were attracted to Rosebush by the fresh air, scenery and relaxed atmosphere. Unfortunately, the high price of slate that had encouraged the quarry development, collapsed in 1876. This together with a short tourist season meant that the venture was not viable, output from the quarry fell and the railway closed in 1882. Although the railway reopened in 1895, the quarries produced little more slate. In 1937 the railway was closed to passengers, closing completely for the last time in 1949.
The quarries are now abandoned but are some of the best preserved in South Wales and coming from a quarrying background, I was keen to investigate them. I worked for a company that produced crushed limestone and granite and was used to seeing huge piles of waste that consisted largely of clay. These quarries were very different – all of the faces were solid stone. I was surprised to see neatly demarcated benches, a feature of modern quarries not often seen in old quarries. The reason for this was not health and safety, it allowed workers to win rock from multiple levels at the same time, increasing production efficiency. Although there was no clay in the rock there were absolutely huge waste tips everywhere. They produced slab slate (for doorways, lintels, flooring etc.) and roofing slates of many sizes but slate is very difficult to work and the rejection rate must have been huge.
Above the main Rosebush quarry I found the small flooded workings that Gareth Williams had told me about. The reservoir here was used to power a turbine in the slate finishing shed below and also supplied the drinking water for the village. There were also vestiges of a tramway used to transport waste to the tips and good slate from the faces down to the finishing shed and the railway. As with all stone quarries, transport was a very expensive part of the cost of the final product. Rail provided a much cheaper method of transport than road. Transport by ship was even cheaper and this is why much of the output from the coastal quarries went by ship to Bristol and other South West England ports. Even transporting roofing slate, a relatively expensive value-added product, from Rosebush to the sea could cost as much as the slate was sold for ex-quarry.
I descended to the bottom of the valley having collected a sample of Rosebush slates from the waste tips on the way. On the opposite side of the now non-existent railway line is the old railway engine shed. Gareth had told me a story about this. His father explained that the engine driver had gone in to the Precelly Hotel for a few pints before he returned to take the loco back down the valley. He went into the engine shed and neglected to engage reverse gear – he went straight though the end wall of the shed, leaving a perfect loco-shaped hole in the brickwork. Unfortunately, the wall has long since collapsed but it is a lovely story and it is easy to understand why the current railway companies have a zero tolerance to alcohol for their employees!
Photos: The Rosebush Quarry – imagine quarrymen on each bench splitting slate from the faces; One of the tunnels in Rosebush Quarry used for access to lower levels and also for drainage; The reservoir used not only to power the turbine in the finishing shed but also as the villages water supply; The vast waste tips of the quarries.

Thursday 3rd June 2010 - Rosebush

Before we had arrived in Rosebush, I had roughed out a walk from the campsite to a large reservoir – Llys-y-Fran. Unfortunately, there are no buses available so the walk is a long one. We subsequently found a similar walk in a Pembrokeshire National Park leaflet and decided to use that route on the way out. Unlike our experiences on the coast, we found that the footpaths were very poorly signed although, with the aid of the OS map, we didn't get lost. There was a very memorable incident on the way – Jane, knowingly, entered a field with a very large bull in it. Anyone who knows Jane will realise that this took a lot of courage. It was a dairy bull and he was with his harem of cows. They are supposed to be harmless, provided that you don't get between them and their cows and we were careful not to do so. It has to be said that the bull watched us all the way across the large field but didn't move, much to Jane's relief. I have never seen Jane climb a farm gate as quickly as she did to get out of the field!
On the map I spotted a cairn close to our route and, rather than the pile of stones that we expected, it turned out to be very impressive. There was a circle (possibly two) of standing stones, many had intriguing natural indentations and they had obviously been specially selected. Different types of stone had also been used. The northern stone was the largest and was a different type, rather like schist, the eastern stone was particularly tall and pointed and the southern stone looked as if it might have something carved on it. All of this might be down to an over-active imagination on my part! Shortly after this we passed the ancient St. Brynach's Well site of a very vigorous spring that must have been a very important water source for thousands of years.
The reservoir is very large, the walk around it is 6.5 miles, and was very popular with walkers, joggers and fishermen. We walked down the length of the reservoir to the dam and visitors' centre and after eating sat on a bench overlooking the reservoir, we bought well deserved ice creams.
I had plotted a different route back via the intriguingly named hamlet of Henry's Moat. Here there was a church directly in front of a Norman Motte and Bailey Castle site. The mound is clear to see although the dense covering of trees and vegetation made further investigation impossible. I suspect that 'Henry's Moat' probably came from 'Henri's Motte', or is my imagination working overtime again? Once again, the footpaths had been poorly signed and the footpath from Henry's Moat to St. Brynach's Well had no signpost. After following the route on the map for a quarter of a mile we gave up as there was simply no way through the field boundaries. This meant a long diversion around the minor roads. The rest of the walk was done on minor roads apart from one stretch of footpath that crossed the route of the Rosebush railway. By the time that we got back to Henrietta we had walked 12.5 miles and were very glad to sit down with a cup of tea.
After a long walk, it was a good day to eat out and we set off for the Tafarn Sinc (the Zinc Tavern), so called because it is made from galvanised corrugated steel. It was erected by the railway company in 1876 as a temporary building to provide hotel accommodation for the expected tourists and was given the name of the Precelly Hotel. In recent years its condition deteriorated and the brewery who owned it in 1992 decided to close it. A couple of years later it was bought by a local couple for £18,000 who then spent over £70,000 refurbishing it. They have done an excellent job recreating the atmosphere of olden times even down to sawdust on the floor. The walls and ceilings are covered with curiosities and old photographs. Outside, they purchased the old station from Gareth Williams, the owner of the campsite, and recreated the look of the station in the early 20th century complete with people on the platform and the sound of steam trains playing through hidden speakers. The food wasn't cheap (e.g. £9.50 for home-cooked ham, chips and peas) but it was good and plentiful and the real ale was excellent.
Photos: A wooded footpath; The cairn; Natural marks or prehistoric art?; The interior of the Tafarn Sinc.