Brecon Beacons, day 0

An early afternoon departure to Wales. Sans cat, needless to say, so some exit-jitters. We learned from our last trip out and travelled via Newbury rather than Salisbury. Two sides of the triangle pointing to Bristol, but much faster than the Stonehenge hypotenuse. Arrived in vowel-less Bwlch for 5pm, a circa-3 hour trip. Not bad.

The house we’ve rented is brilliant. Three bedrooms, a large living room, a well-provisioned kitchen (including washing machine) and a large, secluded garden. It’s only a short distance from the A40 which passes it, but the noise is easily tolerable given the other pluses. Difficult to judge its age, but its odd internal arrangement, large open fire and small windows point to a good age (or a short-sighted retro-fanatic). Dinner in the garden, followed by a game called “Form A Word”, a shameless rip-off of “Scrabble”. Imagine, if you will, a game just like “Scrabble” but where the letter-value of your words is irrelevant, where your positioning of words is randomised by a spinning dial and where the only goal is to ditch your 8 (i.e. not 7) letters as quickly as possible.