Total ascent, 600m (1969ft).
Thursday, 1st August.
My meal last night wasn't great. I ordered the oriental duck which came in a jellied sweet and sour sauce and was served with new potatoes, onion rings, peas and lettuce. Not particularly oriental then, so it's a good job I'll eat pretty much anything after a walk. My breakfast this morning wasn't great either. Scrambled eggs on toast seems pretty foolproof to me, but they had other plans. At least the beer was good and the room was fine.
I'd walked half a mile today before my first coffee stop at a cafe / bakery in Llandeilo. I think the reason why I find Llandeilo underwhelming is because it's got a busy 'A' road running right through it, and the town is strung out along that. It's actually got some decent shops and cafes, of which this was one. After drinking a flat white and buying lunch I was ready for an ascent.
The temperature had been cranked up a few degrees today and it was sunny most of the time, so it wasn't really a day for fighting through spiky undergrowth, which is what I spent a good chunk of the day doing. I must stress that only one such stretch was on the Heart of Wales Line Trail itself; another was when I decided I liked the look of a short detour through a wood that might give some cooling shade (it didn't) and the third was when I got lost.
Cool looking, but sadly non-cooling.
Now I know this completely contradicts what I said about how easy navigation is when you only have to follow a red line on the map, but it only works when you don't ignore the red line and follow a different path entirely. This of course could have been easily rectified. I had only followed the wrong path for two fields, about 5 minutes. However in time honoured fashion I decided it would be far more interesting to find another, ultimately far longer, route with brambles at every turn.
The path.
The reason for my dilly dally approach to today was that it was only 13 miles, and therefore I could afford to drink coffee and make dreadful detours which eventually extended it to 16.5 miles! To be honest it was all good fun and I still had plenty of time to visit Carreg Cennen Castle tearoom (I didn't go up to the castle, Jen and I had been fairly recently) for coffee and cake, along with two more stations.
Carreg Cennen Castle.
WHAT IS IT???!!!
I've been to all of the towns on the route at some point in the past, but south of Llandeilo I was not familiar with. I assumed that I would be entering suburban Swansea territory and that the scenery would become more urban, but that hasn't happened yet. Llandybie had a good try though. When I left the Brecon Beacons National Park today I had a long descent on a lane, which became a road on the outskirts of Llandybie with enormous houses on either side. And every one of them was horrible. It was as if people had been sold a plot of land to build a house on, on the condition that when it was finished nobody else in their right minds would want to live in it.
The centre of Llandybie never really materialised, though I did find the station which wasn't on a par with others I'd seen (though Llandeilo's wasn't either), so I set off on the last 4 miles to Ammanford. Now I must confess that in my head Ammanford was going to be a dump, and it isn't. It's a much bigger town than I've been to for a long time, but it's quite attractive and the locals are very friendly. And the station is much nicer than the previous two.
As I wait for my food to arrive in The Cottage Inn there is a sign on the wall. It says, "If ¾ of your gin and tonic is tonic, then mix with the best - Fever Tree." I do indeed mix with Fever Tree, but I can guarantee that ¾ of my gin and tonic is NEVER tonic.
“Do you feel lucky, punk?”
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