Probably the last bit of Wye Valley Walking for 2011 - Glasbury to Boughrood, and back again.

Mostly flat, walking through fields alongside the river, plus a little bit of road at Boughrood Brest.

When I reached Boughrood I stopped for lunch, then walked back to Glasbury along the road (the B4350).  I'd hoped to cut a corner of that with a footpath, but what was visible on the map was not obvious in real life!

Did randomly discover a roadside bird hide though - looking across Pwllpatti nature reserve.

Rather than driving straight home once I had a little detour further upriver, for... continue reading »

In their infinite wisdom, facebook have decided to remove the ability to import notes from an RSS feed.

ie the feature I've been using for the past however long, to cross post my blog posts to facebook, so there's more chance of people actually reading them!

The only explanation given is for why you can no longer import to pages:

We want you to connect with your fans in the most effective ways possible. [...] The best way to get people to interact with your content is to give them insight into the links you share on your Wall by... continue reading »

Tyne Tour - a new one for my kayaking repertoire!  I wanted to go last year but was away working, so was quite excited about actually going this time.

Hexham is a long way away, so we left at lunchtime in order to get there at a reasonable hour and perhaps avoid the worst of the traffic.

But nooo. There'd been an accident on the M42, so it took 2.5 hours to go about 8 miles. Then we hit rush hour around Nottingham, and at some point stopped for food too, so eventually reached our Travelodge (yes, really) in Gateshead at something... continue reading »

Just because the map says 'bridleway' does not necessarily mean 'this will be a nice route to cycle rather than walk'.

I should probably learn this lesson, and do more google maps spying when planning stuff (in fairness, I had done some...).  Especially when the bridleway in question is on top of a small Welsh hill where it's been raining on and off for a few days...

Builth Wells to Erwood, along the Wye Valley Walk. Starts off on country roads and tracks (including some steep bits which I walked). Then you get further up the hill, and the path heads off... continue reading »

This is the river Teifi between Llandysul and Henllan falls, as captured by my dinky little gps:

Surprisingly accurate! I was expecting it to be all over the place, what with being buried inside my bouyancy aid.  Though I have tidied up some of the messy squiggly bits at the start and end, and also where I swam (oops) and where I portaged the evil weir (which I think everyone else ran anyway, but I was having a rubbishy day so wasn't going to risk it).

As with last year's Teifi Tour we headed over in the daytime on Friday... but with... continue reading »