Welcome to Wales

Nearly.

Monday evening we made to Ross on Wye and felt that was a good place to stop. The Wye river is the boarder into Wales, after all, right? So we'd made it! Nearly. Turns out the Wye river is the boarder into Wales down south around Monmouth. Meh. We got there the next morning. ;-D

We were pretty much bushed, needed to plan out a bit about our next phase of the trip, had some post cards begging to be written. I'll just say right now that we were incredibly thankful for Kate's assistance as to where to go. She directed us out the A-40 road, away from Cardiff and that coast where we probably would have gone otherwise. Every inch of the A-40 is drop dead gorgeous!! It goes right through the Brecon-Beacons National Park, which while doesn't really resemble a national park in the US in the fact that there are fully populated towns throughout it, it is never the less incredible scenery. Kate had recommended Ross on Wye as a good place to stop and we weren't about to refute that. Found our first B&B with no trouble at all, which had two lovely pubs across the way on the river side.





Did dinner, then pretty much crashed at 9 pm. After 3 action packed days in Oxford, I seem to recall we didn't even close the blinds to shut out the not-yet-set sunlight from our room.

The next morning we walked around town a bit. A section of the recreated city walls was to be found just up from our B&B.


An attraction of the area are the town markets, which have operated for a long long time - local merchants and farmers bringing their goods together. Tuesday was not Market Day in Ross, but there was no mistaking the Market House with its prominent position in the center of town.



We walked through this cemetary hopeful to get a nice view of the river, but no go on that. The grounds were beautiful none the less.




We also found the library, which had an internet terminal available for the wandering through visitor, so I did a quick check on email while Dave looked up the addresses for the post cards. In all we'd farted around in town for about half the day and decided we needed to get a move on!

We had heard from our B&B proprietor that Tuesday was market day in Abergavanny which was right on our path. So when we got there we stopped to check out the fuss. Oh it was fun!







Much like a flea market here, with some produce vendors, some junk vendors, and some vendors with really cool nick nacks. They also had a full service butcher and fish seller, as well as the electric guitar booth. :-D We did a bit of souvenir shopping here, and got us lunch for the day as well.



Leaving the market we discovered that our awesome parking spot was actually illegal. WELL... the sign was hidden by a potted plant! In anycase, we didn't get a ticket nor a boot - so we congratulated each other on getting away with it and then skedaddled out of town.

This was our view much of the time we were driving in Wales. Just Gorgeous!