Wales - Rhayader

Although there are some pretty spectacular castles in Wales, we opted for what we thought would be an hours drive to our destination....but the Tom Tom had other ideas adding about another hour, so we figure using our map as well will be a good idea in future. This was a little stop to stretch the legs. There was a time when you could see up to 50 or 60 salmon spawning in the river under the bridge, but now they are hardly ever seen. Over fishing and illegal poaching are to blame. Same old story hey.

The hills are beginning to become treeless.

There are a series of dams in the Elan Valley that are famous for the testing of the bouncing bombs depicted in the movie "The Dam Busters". In 1942 the British airforce were in given a dam to blow up for target practice in this area.

Below the dam wall is a small hamlet of occupied homes....why???

But they are great to look at

UK roads are not well sign-posted with speed signs. I hadn't research any of this so found myself noticing speed cameras everywhere with little indication of speed zones ....scary. I was to find out that it is a very simple system....not like in Australia where roads change speed limits all the time.

The system goes like this; will  if there are street lights the limit is 30mph...if not its 60 mph, unless its dual carriage then its 70mph. You will see only one 30mph sign at the beginning of the zone and that's it! If you miss it....look for the presence of street lights. When the street lights finish there will be a sign with a national speed zone symbol which we later found to be 60mph (or 70 if dual carriage).

The narrow hedged lane above is therefore a 60 mph zone and carries vehicles in both directions. Of course you can't do that but some of the locals seem to have a death wish on these roads! They are all fast drivers and more skilled than I. If you make a mistake there is often nowhere to go....oh, yes, oncoming cars overtake in your face and no one blinks.....and finally you can park on either side of the road facing any direction you wish....unless there are no parking signs of course. So someone coming in the opposite direction can beat you to a park that is in front of you on your side of the road.....they just drive across in front of you and pull up face to face....and back in....go figure!

In some cases there are 40 and 50mph zones but they have repeating sign posts every 100m or so, but I haven't encountered too many of them.

Rhayader - Pop about 2000

Fantastic expanses of treeless hills and valleys

And the 17th Century pub I couldn't fit through the door. And yes I have accumulated a small collections of skull scrapes. Well its back to my cheap French beer....a 10 pack for 3 pound 19 pence or abour $(AUS)5.