Wye Valley - Wales vs England

The super pretty ruins of Tintern Abbey

We visited the Wye valley, mainly to run in the Forest of Dean 10km race. The Forest of Dean runs along the very southern border of Wales and England. We drove there from Bristol, so over the Severn bridge. There are two of them, we went over the first, which has Grade I listing and is 1.6km long. I had no idea it was there, or was that impressive. You see it in the distance as you drive along, and you're thinking, what the hell is that. And then you realise it's a bridge. 

But apart from the bridge, the Wye valley is actually beautiful in it's own right. We didn't really know what to expect visiting the area. English forests are generally pretty tame, not much undergrowth, and have obviously been felled throughout their life. But this area was really thick and quite large. True it still had a bunch of villages and roads throughout it. But it also had the ruined Tintern Abbey. That was really pretty, and in such a great location. Surrounded by forests and on the banks of the Wye river. It was huge too, again I did not expect something that large.

How many stories is that?

What I found most strange about this area is that it rivalled the Cotswolds in terms of natural beauty. And all along the English side there would be these charming little villages, just really pretty and quaint. Then the road would cross into the Welsh side, and the same villages would be super ugly. You would have the foot on the accelerator to get through as fast as you could. What have the English done to the Welsh, you really have to wonder. Why would two sides of the same river be so different. There were no tourists on the Welsh side, there was nothing for them there, no cafes, no forest parks or anything. It was really weird. Because there were obviously a lot of tourists around, and a lot of money, but it just wasn't going to be spent in Wales.

Hungry caterpillar at a pretty old mill

Anyway the race was pretty good, I took it easy, and felt really good at the end. Poor Dave got massive blisters on his feet, which was weird. We had to plead with one of the tourist sites to get some bandaids for him. Not sure I'd go back for the race, but I think I would definitely investigate that area of Wales more.

Madrid

On our running tour

Aaaaah how I do like Spain, so warm, and the people are so great. If only it was a financial hub I would be set. Perhaps the only bright light with Britain steering towards exiting the EU will be if the financial capital moved to Spain. Unlikely I know (it'll probably end up in Dublin), but how good would that be. Living somewhere with great nature, great food and great weather. I think it's the only positive from a Brexit.

There must be something about Spain, it's the country I've visited most whilst I've been in London (after Scotland, but that's the same country). You seem to be guaranteed good weather, which you definitely can't say about Scotland. The people are more friendly than in France, and there seem to be fewer tourists, at least where we go.

I was pleasantly surprised by Madrid, I'm not sure why I hadn't visited earlier. I think I thought it was just a big city, with nothing to see or do. With nothing really going for it. Perhaps Barcelona just has much better PR, but after this visit I am definitely going to try and see more of southern/central Spain. For too long I have restricted myself to the north of the country.

Our impression of ABBA

After a long, cold London winter, there is nothing like 4 days of total warmth, with no clouds in the sky. It was Rosè time for sure. The first morning we were there it was up early for a running tour. I think these rival walking tours for me, they are generally a bit smaller and you get to see so much of the city. We basically covered everything, and it set us up for the weekend. Suddenly you feel like you know the city, we got a bit of everything with this tour, history, sights, and parks.

I wasn't aware that Madrid has this great city park right in the middle of it. It's definitely something pretty special. I also wasn't expecting all the great buildings either, there is a bit of a fascist twinge to them, you could definitely imagine Gotham city here.

It was interesting to hear the guide's view on Franco. He was the dictator up until 1975 when he died, and I always found it interesting that when he died it was as if Spain kind of shrugged it's shoulders and went, hmmm glad that's over. They then just transitioned to democracy and re-introduced a whole bunch of laws. There was no blood-letting or civil war, it kind of just seemed to go back to what it was before he was in power.

The royal palace

The beautiful botanic gardens. Nice and cool

I think I may prefer Madrid to Barcelona, Barcelona is way too full of tourists, and you always feel like you have to watch out for scammers there. Here they just seem to love food, there aren't that many people around, but since it's the capital there are heaps of things to see. We saw a few of the sights, but really I think you could easily spend a weekend just admiring the buildings and eating.

The ticketing hall at Kilburn underground station - captures the
mood of the underground perfectly

One thing I noticed was how it didn't feel like a city in a country with such a high unemployment rate as Spain is meant to have.  They could really do with hiring a lot more people everywhere we went. You go into a cafe and it would be packed, but there would be one server. There would be one person selling tickets at museums, that sort of thing. Everywhere you went you had to wait because there just weren't enough people employed. They could easily drop their unemployment rate a few percentage points by employing people where they are most obviously needed.

We spent a lot of time in the parks, mainly because we happened to be there on a holiday again. In England they have the early May bank holiday, which I think is the first Monday of May. This is going to occur around the 1st of May for some of the time. And you forget, living in the capitalist UK, that the 1st of May in the rest of Europe is Labour day, and is a super important holiday. So we always forget that everything elsewhere is going to be closed on the 1st. And end up wandering around these foreign cities going why is everything shut, this is so weird. Until you remember where you are and what the date is.

Fascist buildings everywhere

Luckily there were some great places to walk around in Madrid. The city park, which has a full on boating lake in the middle of it. The main street, which is just full of these grandiose buildings, the botanic gardens, which were so cool after the heat of the streets.

We also did the three main museums; Prado, Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofia. The Prado is kind of like the Louvre or the National Gallery, the main museum with the older style paintings. It's not as big as the other national museums, but still has 2 large floors, with paintings from 1100 through to 1800. This is definitely the museum of the tour buses, so either go early or order your tickets online, since the lines stretch round the building.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza was my favourite museum I think. Probably because it was both quiet, you can just turn up here and buy a ticket, and has slightly more modern paintings. It also has a great terrace, so kind of a cafe, but way more relaxed and attractive. I would visit just to have drinks here, which you can't say for many museum cafes. Finally there was the Reina Sofia, which was definitely the weirdest of the museums we visited. This is the modern art museum of the city. And even the visit was very modern, in that there were these big floors, but it was kind of hard to work out where the art might be. There were strange corridors, and empty rooms.

We had some great food there too, I'm never very good at finding restaurants in foreign cities, I never book anything, and so I just end up wandering around for ages until hunger forces my hand. Luckily the people of Madrid seem to really like their food, so even the obviously touristy places were tasty. We went to one place which did this super slow cooked lamb, oh that was so good, it just fell off the bone. I think it's really a town of tapas though, I've never seen so many tapas bars. And the thing to do, apparently, is they each do one specialty, so if you want mushrooms you go to one place, if you want prawns you go somewhere else. And you can spit your olive pits on the ground. That seems to be why they are so open, for ease of cleaning out the pits at the end of a night.

Aonach Mor

Ben Nevis is the biggest one

This was our last walk of the week, and we definitely saved the best for last. It's a 1200m mountain, but the best thing is you can get a gondola up the first 600m. Now that's the way to climb a hill. The climb pretty much starts from sea level, so even with that head start you still have another 600m to go, but at least you can avoid some of the slog.

This was a great little spot, you are walking up the mountain that is right next to Ben Nevis, so you actually get the views with Ben Nevis in it, which you could argue is better than the view when you are on Ben Nevis. And we chose a perfect day for it too, or rather Scotland finally blessed us with some sun. Well maybe not sun, but at least there was no hail or mist, which in Scotland is a perfect spring day.

The flat plateau of Aonach Mor

The snowless slopes at the start, this wasn't to last long

Even the gondola ride up and down was pretty cool. I really like gondolas, so much more secure than a little chair lift. Probably not really, but I like to think that they are. That wasn't the really cool thing about the ride though, apparently the World Mountain Bike championships were going to be held on the slopes the next week. So there were heaps of bikers there trying out the course, which goes right under the gondola.

It's a pretty good idea, during winter you have all the skiers going up and during the summer you have heaps of bikers. Year-round use of the gondola. The bikers would slot their bikes where you would normally expect the skis to go. It's funny that more ski areas don't turn their parks into multi-use facilities. The other great thing about the gondola was at the top there was a cafe serving macaroni cheese. Just what you need before starting a munro ascent!

Starting to get into the snow - an impressive ridgeline alongside

So I took a lot with Ben Nevis

The walk up the mountain was great, no path, you just walk out of the cafe and start heading up. Even in very late spring there was heaps of snow about. So much snow that there were still people skiing on the main slope. No chair lifts were running, that would have made the climb even easier. I guess they slogged their way up carrying their skis, in ski boots too, now that is the sign of true addiction.

This has got to be one of the easiest munros, which are Scottish hills over 3,000 feet, you only have to climb 600m, there is no scrambling along exposed ridges, you don't have to rope up or abseil down anything. Overall a very pleasant walk, a little steep, but then the top is quite a broad plateau, so you can really enjoy the views.

Surrounded by great ridges - with a view towards Aonach Beag

The plateau at the top.

Most of the walk was covered in snow. So it got a little bit scary on the very steepest part of the hill. It was always going to be ok, it was just that it was a bit more slippery than what is comfortable. But after a nut bar break I felt like I could tackle it. The very steep bit only lasted for another 50m or so up, and then it flattened out again. So I'm really glad I carried on.

The "walk" back down - so nice on the knees

I really like the valleys too.

The walk down was the best too, it was more like a run down. Rather than gingerly kicking steps down the ridgeline we had walked up we decided to "walk" down the bowl of the main ski field. Which was still covered in snow for the whole 600m elevation descent. It wasn't really a walk though, we could run down through the snow. With a few butt slides thrown in, it was the best way to descend a mountain. It had taken us about an hour or so to walk up, and we were back at the cafe in about 15 minutes. Really go climb this mountain, it's easy, and the view to effort ratio has to be the one of the highest I've ever done. Now to fill your screen with photos.

Starting to really get into the snow now

Yet another of Ben Nevis

Just such great views all round