I pay tribute to my friends and colleagues. From left to right, Tickersoid, Councilor Big nose,
Shrek with Dog, Sausages, Ed Shot, Max
Cadey, and Pip
Nillips.
OK, I'm a Muppet. I put my hand up.
Having failed to remove the time from the pictures, I set it correctly then put freshly charged batteries in the camera. I know, I should have done it the other way around.
This place is full of caves and disused mines. The underground rivers are fast flowing and bitterly cold. Lives have been lost in these places.
I thought there would be four water falls and that would be it. This walk was a never ending cascade of cascades. Fresh beauty found at every turn.
And such fine weather. It really couldn't have been better.
The drop to the right is most probably fatal. Ridge walks were a common feature of this hike. The underfoot conditions weren't always as good as this. Mostly, we had to pick our way through loose angular rocks and a lattice of tree roots
Getting our feet wet to do this so early on in the walk was worth the fun of standing behind a waterfall.
Under different circumstances, I'm sure most of us would have gone for a swim in some of the many crystal clear deep pools we encountered. Some of the vantage points to these pools would have made very good diving platforms. If
Fewclewz had been here, I'm sure he would have had his kit off in a jiffy and been swan diving into them.
In hind sight we should have split this walk in to two trips. By the end we were becoming a bit blase about waterfall. 16 miles of rough terrain, a lot of it, little better than a river bed or rock fall. In the end, the pace became more important than the endless natural beauty that surrounded us.
The trail actually goes behind this fall. It's the easiest way to cross the river.
There were many, many more amazing sights after this but my camera memory ran out about a third of the way around. Of note the pool and weir at the ruins of the gun powder works.
It took us seven hours to the minute. After, we had a couple of bottles of
Tesco's finest wine and a few laughs and beers in the Bridge Inn at
Abergavenny.
The guy is either a jogger or more likely, a
chav joyrider, legging it from the burning car.
Just a perfect day out, with some good mates.