On the rare occasion that I venture north of Brecon, I’m surprised at how vastly different it is to South Wales, being clean and uncongested in comparison, and almost pleasant when the sun is out. Robby and I had been staying at the Hendre Mynach caravan site, which is on the edge of a relatively obscure little town called ‘Barmouth’, on the coast of North Wales.
Since the A470 runs pretty much 90% of the way there, Robby thought it would be quite a straightforward journey, and it was, until we entered North Wales, and the A470 became a single-lane road that took us up a couple of the taller mountains.
It’s only recently I’ve had time to write about our trip in the Base Camp the other week. We weren’t going to do another one until March, but Robby had quite a bit of annual leave, and he was enthusiastic about showing me the Concorde being stored at an aviation museum. Apparently the Concorde made its last stop there, twenty years ago, and a hangar was built around it.
So, we arranged, at the last minute to book a pitch on the Baltic Wharf CMC site for a few days.
Surprisingly, the Malvern Hills CMC site had become one of Robby’s favourites after just three days there, and I quite like it myself. We have our return pencilled in for next March, as the coastal places are best left until the summer months.
A few people mentioned Malvern Hills to us over the past couple of years. It looked pleasant as a countryside retreat on the maps: Situated amongst some large fields that looked like farmlands, and a few small villages, it’s far enough from the city.
The route to the Black Knowl CMC site from Cardiff is straightforward, but it still took four and a half hours to get there, on account of the traffic conditions. While the roads around Brokenhurst aren’t single lane, they are awkwardly narrow, even without a caravan attached. We didn’t follow the directions given to us by the site’s owners, as that would have taken us through the small village.
Despite it being a very warm afternoon, and the air being stiflingly humid, Robby and I got to work setting up the water and waste systems, and the electrical supply.
This was the trip Robby and I were really looking forward to, because Cornwall is still our favourite region to visit. There are so many places we have yet to explore.
Making our way along the wide, uncongested roads, surrounded by so much greenery as far as the eye can see, I commented to Robby on how much cleaner everything is around Cornwall. All the main roads have the national speed limit, and with hardly any traffic, and there are only a couple of points near Truro where one encounters congestion.
It has been almost exactly a year since I made a short visit to Bracelands, in the Forest of Dean. Robby and I returned there for our first trip of the year. We didn’t want to travel too far, as Bertha had been sitting at the depot since October.
We’re having a problem again with Bertha’s drainage valve, which I managed to close with some difficulty. If the valve is left closed during winter, the undrained water is liable to freeze and cause ~£1,000 of damage.
What a drama our journey to Hunter’s Moon CMC site was! We collected Bertha from the depot an hour later than usual, got caught in a tailback on the M48 for a couple of hours - in very bad weather - and discovered it wasn’t such a good idea to follow the M5 through Taunton because that took an hour longer than going through the A-roads. We were knackered by the time we arrived, four and a half hours after leaving the depot, but we got there just before the reception closed, and had Bertha set up within 20 minutes.
Minehead Caravan and Motorhome Club site is one of the smallest we have encountered on our travels, maybe just slightly larger than Meadow Farm. And it’s one of the most basic, being an acre or so of land just off the main road. From there, it’s just a two minute walk to a couple of takeaways and a Co-Op.
The pitches are on two levels, surrounded by dense trees that shielded us from the colder autumn wind.
For the last 18 months, Carnon Downs, in central Cornwall, had been my favourite caravan site. I think it now comes second to Longleat, which is unique among the sites we’d stayed at. ‘I’ll definitely come here to Longleat again. Definitely.’ Robby told me, as we were driving back from a takeaway in Wiltshire.
Again, we were lucky with the weather, arriving just in time to make the most of three sunny and very warm days.
Tenby is Robby’s favourite destination, and he’s determined to spend a few days there at least once a year. Of course, we booked a pitch at Meadow Farm again. As far as we know, it’s the only site within a short walk of the town, and it overlooks the coast. Like pretty much all the coastal sites we visited, it’s on high ground and exposed to the worst of bad weather.
