Well, what a blinding weekend that was. Sue was feeling ticketyboo after her eye operation so she gave us the thumbs up to head off camping on Saturday lunchtime. Me and my two boys (Dafydd and Dylan) arrived mid afternoon at Cwmdu and found Gareth, Liz, Warren, Ash and baby Jordan already in residence (Gareth has a caravan on the site and Warren, Ash and J were camping. Some of you will have met Gareth, Liz and Warren at the dragon rally and other events.
As I set up my tent I noticed that the next two tents were surrounded by Metal Mule panniers and sure enough later in the day four BMW F650 Dakars arrived back on site. These were ridden by two couples who have twice undertaken year long world tours in the last nine years or so. In fact Metal Mule has sponsored them. Much interesting chat as you can imagine.
Warren was on his newish XT660 and I rode that around the site, not on the road (I'm still uninsured for bikes, at least until late April
). Nice bike.
BJ (whom some of you will have also met at the Dragon) turned up with his son Jacob and our party was complete. The boys played like demons all day and then in the evening Gareth and Warren took care of BBQ duties. Because of the kids the three sets of parents were in bed by 9.30
BJ left midday Sunday and by then we had also heard that Simon Morgan wouldn't be coming up with his daughter Sioned. It seems the weather in Reading was dreadful and he didn't want to risk it. It's a shame because for the three days the weather was glorious here in Wales, God's own country™.
Gareth and the others went off for a drive to Llanthony Priory and just before they got there they saw Jethro and Julian coming away from the site fully loaded (yes lads, that was Gareth in the red Mondeo shouting 'slow down'
). Gareth drove on up to Hay bluff where he saw
THESE lads arsing around, only this time instead of towing a sledge behind the car they were towing a bloke on a mattress
We all met again for a fantastic café lunch near Bronllys before returning to the site for a rerun of Saturday's events, including another BBQ at Gareth's van.
We had a slow start this morning, but we managed a café breakfast before piling into/onto our respective cars and bikes for the journey home. My boys had had a fantastic time doing all the things that Daily Mail journalists moan that children don't get to do any more. They got horrendously wet, muddy and scraped. They drank out of hosepipes. They went off all by themselves and managed to find adventures and they made friends with the other kids on the site. A bloody success I'd say.
As for the biking activity, that part of Powys is like a racetrack on sunny weekends and as usual we saw the usual assortment of weekend sportsbikers, Harley clones and even a fully-tricked out Hinckley Bonneville café racer.
Cheers
GC
