The road to South Wales from Birmingham winds its way through Abergavenny, and for a long time now I’ve been thinking that it would be fun to climb Sugar Loaf which is on the outskirts of the town. We pass it by on the way to and from the bigger peaks further west, and most recently drove through Abergavenny on the way home from Babcia’s funeral down in Carmarthen at the start of June. On Saturday with no weddings or races on the calendar, we finally made plans to drive down to Wales and walk up Sugar Loaf together. It’s very easy to skip the lower peaks in favour of the bigger climbs of Pen y Fan and Corn Du, but Sugar Loaf on the edge of the Black Mountains is a really beautiful climb, with really good views on a clear day.
For our wedding anniversary this year we walked the Brecon Horseshoe. The weather wasn’t good so, although it didn’t rain, there was no view as we were up in the clouds the whole time. We walked the route anti-clockwise, but skipped out Fan-y-Big as we’d been up it in the spring. I’d love to go back when the weather is better and do the walk again in good conditions. It’s supposed to be really picturesque.
Here are some photos from our holiday in Cornwall over the May half term. The photos are a mix of film and digital, as always, and I’ve added locations as captions. I’d like to recommend a visit to Potager Garden Café if you have the time and are in the area. It’s a lovely little cafe, tucked away in the deepest Cornish countryside and they have a really good cake menu with lots of vegan options. We stayed near St Austell on the Roseland Heritage Coast, but made a daytrip down to the south taking in Lizard Point and Cadgwith, stopping in at Potager on the way home.
Just before I turned 30, Ed and I spent a few days in the Scottish Highlands. We got the sleeper train up from London, hired a car in Inverness and stayed at SYHA Ratagan. It was a lovely way to end the summer and celebrate the last days of my twenties. On my thirtieth birthday, I woke up on the sleeper heading south with Ed passing me his card and whispering “happy birthday” to me quietly so as not to wake the other people in our carriage. It was low-key but absolutely perfect. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate a birthday than spending time with Ed outdoors in a beautiful place like the Scottish Highlands. I can’t wait to go back there again, perhaps for a bit longer and out of midge season!
Up until this holiday, I hadn’t been to France since Ed and I spent a week by the ocean near Bordeaux for our honeymoon in 2010. I love France, but it’s quite expensive to visit as most self-catering places are for large groups. We like to be self-catered as it’s just easier that way since we’re both vegan. We went back this year for Ed’s cousin’s wedding in Roscoff, and stayed a few extra days camping down on the Quiberon peninsula. Our campsite was really good, though the emplacements could have done with a little shade. The whole peninsula is very exposed, with very little forest cover, so I guess it was to be expected. Next time we’ll take a tarp and some extra poles and rope to make sure we can have some shade by our tent.
The first few days of our trip to Brittany were spent in Roscoff and Saint-Pol-de-Léon for the wedding, and then we carried on further south in Brittany, enjoying the heatwave that made it feel like we were down in the South-West. On the last two evenings, we went to watch the sunset on the coast further up the peninsula from our campsite and filmed some footage together which I made into a short mood film. The first evening it was calm, and there were lots of children playing on the sand and surfers out on the water, but the second evening was much more wild and savage; a good reminder of why that stretch of coastline was named La Côte Sauvage.
