September Holiday 1

A few weeks ago I had a grand holiday, staying with my good friend Robin and his family in South Wales, touring around for a couple of days and then moving on to the MZ Riders Club national rally and AGM at Porlock in Somerset. I chose to go on my MZ ETS 250 Trophy Sport, which was good as gold I am pleased to say. I had to adjust the back brake which arguably I should have done before I set off and it did leak a little bit of oil, not bad for a 40 year old bike. I managed to get 2 Round Britain Rally clues on the way down and then stopped off at a pub for a meal somewhere south of Builth Wells. It was one of the worst meals I have ever had, sadly, so I won't bother mentioning the establishment. Pictured above is the bike in the car park of the pub, well loaded as can be seen.

The next day Robin and I set off exploring, searching for more RBR clues and looking at anything else we found to be of interest. First stop was the very excellent transporter bridge at Newport, recently restored to working order. It's a fine old thing, now over 100 years old and used to get traffic from one side of the river to the other. There is a good website all about it at

http://www.fontb.org.uk/

Our visit did not quite go to plan though and we were not able to take a trip across the river. I knew something odd was going on when I drew up to a pelican crossing right by the entrance to the bridge and had to wait for Batman to cross!
It turned out that members of the Father for Justice organisation had taken over the transporter bridge earlier that morning. Here are some of them, a mate of theirs, the Incredible Hulk was on top of the structure and so it had been closed off by police. While I can understand the frustration of a parent who is unable to see their child, I am not sure what this was actually achieving to help matters along. Virtually nobody was taking any notice of them, and I can't help thinking that any self respecting child who found out that their dad was dressing up as a superhero and making himself look an idiot and a nuisance would surely choose to keep away from them anyway! Still, it takes all sorts to make a world and I am sure the transporter bridge will still be there next time I am down that way.
Here's a view of the travelling part of the bridge upon which light vehicles and passengers cross the river.
And here is a view across to the east side of the river.
Afterwards we went to the charming town of Usk to get a clue and have some lunch, then went to look round the castle, which is in private ownership but for a bargain fee of a pound can be wandered around. Here is the fine view scross the town from the grounds.
Here is part of the castle structure, a more peaceful spot it would be hard to imagine, but I guess being a castle it was anything but at other times in its history.

From Usk we headed westwards across the valleys to get some clues the other side of Cardiff. We stopped off on the way at the Llandegfedd reservoir where it can be seen that Robin's 800 BMW dwarfs my little MZ! The view across the reservoir is rather pleasant as can be seen below.


We got the clues we were looking for and headed back to Robin's house, pausing on the hills somewhere near Caerphilly to watch the glorious sunset. A good end to a great day with perfect weather.