New Year’s Resolutions
Peter Black correctly announced my New Year’s resolution on his blog as walking more– in fact specifically in the Brecon Beacons and Cambrian Mountains and along the Welsh coast. Suiting the action to the word today on New Years Day, my birthday no less I had a long walk through the Forestry enterprise land at Bwlch Nant y’r Arian.just outside Goginan on the A44 east of Aber. Dodging showers of rain and hail and in defiance of new year revelries and a very good curry at Shilam last night I set off at a cracking pace through the forest; the speed motivated partly by storm clouds gathering out at sea and partly by the fact that the Visitor centre and importantly its restaurant were due to close at 2.30 pm.
Very few walkers were out and not a single cyclist did we see.This could all be a feature of late night and early morning celebrations or more charitably misleading weather forecasting which suggested that the weather was going to be far worse than it actually was.In any event we arrived back at the Visitor Centre with time to spare.At 2pm in the winter and 3pm in the summer there is kite feeding at the side of the lake which is a fantastic sight and attracts families from all over the area and holidaymakers in the summer.There really is a great deal to do at Bwlch Nant y’r Arian
Late afternoon after a shower and clean up following the walk Lisa Francis calls around with birthday gifts and a bottle of champagne. Its good to see Lisa especially with the gifts!–no joking apart she is a fantastic colleague and friend.
At leisure in Aberystwyth I realise how much I love the town –its weather, its battered pier,its range of pubs and churches,its crowded Victorian streets, the gothic main college building, its superb views,its heaving seas,its public library barely changed in thirty years,its football team- ditto ( joking ),starlings circling at dusk and its people friendly and cheerful– in short everything about it.
