(Brecon, Wales, United Kingdom)
As some time opened up for us, we decided to take a day trip from Llandrindod Wells. But where to go? There weren’t enough trains to make such a trip workable, so we turned to the local bus network.
The two nearest towns that could support a day trip by bus appeared to be Newtown and Brecon. Both were reachable within an hour. Newtown’s attractions leaned toward its industrial past, while Brecon was a more traditional “tourist” destination and also was the gateway to the Brecon Beacons National Park. With that quickly-gathered information, we chose to make our way to Brecon.
The choice seemed to be correct. Our first stop was the ancient Brecon Cathedral, and it seemed to be full of impressively-robed dignitaries. We discovered that it was about to host the appointment of a new deacon! Many of them were making their way to the altar when we arrived (see the red robes in the photo below).
The inside of the cathedral was beautiful, as you would expect. But the grounds surrounding the cathedral were equally impressive. One side was almost completely surrounded by a thick forest that was threatening to overtake many old tombstones. It was very peaceful, and the grounds connected to a trail system that surrounded a nearby gorge. It was quite different from your typical urban cathedral.
We didn’t have time to explore the gorge in detail, but did manage to see a lot of interesting things in the town itself. As you can see from the cover photo at the very top, Brecon is a busy little town. And it wasn’t just tourists milling about. The Saturday antique market was filled with local residents buying and selling all kinds of unusual things.
In addition to cozy homes, we saw many small specialty shops…including an artisanal chocolate maker. And, of course, I had to take a picture of the local lawn bowling club. There was only one green, but it still had an impressive-looking clubhouse.
The rolling hills surrounding the town provided a nice backdrop. The bus ride through those rolling hills had been a little unsettling (I thought the speed limit ought to have been a little lower, given the very narrow and winding roads), but nobody else seemed to be too worried about it. Part of my issue might have been the whole “driving on the left” thing: even after two weeks in the U.K., it still is unnatural to me.
One drawback about getting the half-board (e.g. dinner included) package at our hotel in Llandrindod Wells is that we felt an obligation to get back in time for the evening meal. After all, we had paid for it. As a result, we didn’t feel we had enough time to explore the National Park…or even the above-mentioned gorge trails. Those activities would have to wait for a return visit to Brecon.
This also meant that we couldn’t have dinner at one of Brecon’s many interesting restaurants. I was quite tempted, after all of the traditional British food we were having, to try the momos at a frankly unexpected Nepalese restaurant in Brecon. We could have gone there for lunch, but we became aware of an interesting and uncharacteristic (for us) alternative.
After carefully weighing the pros and cons, we decided to have lunch in a very special place that was beyond our usual budget and didn’t really fit our usual preference for independent family-run eateries. But what was it? I’ll have more details on that in the next blog post!