Our trip to Wales at the end of October was quite an adventure. For the first time since I'd been in England, we weren't driven by someone else but drove ourselves out west. After a rather wild first 10 minutes of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, Henry did great for the rest of the trip, including our first stop in Avebury. I'm glad I was tasked with navigating, though, and didn't have to negotiate those roundabouts and tiny Welsh roads!

Brecon Beacons National Park [Parc Cenedlaethol Bannau Brycheiniog] was our destination and we spent two full days exploring its great scenery from our base in the nearby small city of Merthyr Tydfil. The first day featured waterfalls and the second the Beacons themselves—starkly beautiful ridges and hills with the highest elevations in southern Britain. Here are the blog posts for the outings: Waterfalls • Beacons. And I've divided up our favorite photos into two batches for the website, too: Waterfalls • Beacons.

If you want to get a better idea of southern U.K. geography, you can find the places covered in this section of the website on this map:

View a larger version of this map here.

Here are a few photos to show some of the driving and other non-hiking activities we engaged in there:

the impressive bridge over the Severn Estuary		Embracing my heritage: my paternal grandfather was from Wales
		an example of rural road with claustrophobic hedges on either side...plus raindrops on the windscreen

traffic on the M4 just into Wales (I was charmed by the bilingual signs)

Henry relaxes in a Pontneddfechan pub after a strenuous, wet, but satisfying hike

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