Abergavenny Food Festival

Regarded my many highly respected gastro's as the 'Glastonbury of food festivals' the highlight of this year's visit for Wandering were the Churros dipped in chocolate sauce by Churros con Chocolate.

Christmas Food Festival takes place on Sunday 9th December.

Festival website

Stage 6 - Tour of Britain 2012

It was always the intention of Wandering to be a spectator on this stage of the Tour of Britain but Lord Twynyrodyn expressed a curious interest when it was mentioned in a conversation between them, so it was two Strollers that made the short journey to the Storey Arms at mid-morning.



The start of this stage was from the National Trust's Powis Castle completing a loop of Welshpool before a fast descent of the Honddu valley. Soon after leaving Brecon the A470 gradually begins the climb in the shadow of Pen-Y-Fan, as the steepness of the gradient increases after Libanus, which starts the seven-kilometre SKODA King of the Mountains climb up to Storey Arms.



There were big crowds lining the route north of Storey Arms as we took our vantage point. Because of significant head-winds the peloton was behind schedule as they thundered past heading towards the open moorland that eventually descends to Penderyn and Hirwaun.



A brief climb to Ystrad Mynach through Nelson and Parc Penalta, towards Llanbradach to the edge of Caerphilly. The route passed Caerphilly Castle taking the one-way system the wrong way in order to maximise the approach to the climb, which proved to be one of the iconic moments of this years Tour of Britain.

The stage was eventually won by Leopold Koenig, of the Team NetApp with Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, of Endura Racing taking second place on the stage and overall GC winner.

Brief video footage taken by Wandering as the peloton passed our vantage point on the climb to the Storey Arms!!

Mercy

A thought provoking video from the Dave Matthews Band.

"Mercy" embraces the song's themes of unity and harmony in a new collaborative video, made with the help of a few thousand fans. According to the band, 14,334 people provided original photos and videos for the inspirational clip.

Matthews recently told 'Billboard' that he hopes this release "inspires [people] to find the things that they love, inspires them to feel good, to feel love, or ambition, or feel powerful. Whatever they need."

"Mercy" is realesed from the Dave Matthews Band's latest album, Away From the World.

Garth Mountain

This was a walk that was partially abandoned earlier this year in low cloud, so with the recent spell of good weather a 'second attempt' was made to reach the summit trig point.

Another reason for completing the walk was football related. During 2010/11, the Martyrs spent a season in exile away from our spiritual home of Penydarren Park, during the games in the Western league I often used to gaze up at Garth Mountain and wonder what the Rhiw Dda'r ground looked like from the bluff, 1,000 feet above the extremely busy A470.



Well I was about to find out.

The early stage of the walk was exactly the same as the original, starting from the Lewis Arms car park. However, on this occasion I climbed the steep path that eventually led to the bluff, that is so prominently visible from the A470 as you approach the outskirts of Cardiff.



And there it was the ground were the Martyrs spent a year in exile climbing their way back through the non-league pyramid.



The all-round views are really spectacular. With Cardiff Bay to the South and Castell Coch just a few miles away, to Llantrisant in the west and Caerphilly Mountain in the north-east. After gazing at the two main communities situated directly beneath the mountain - Taff's Well and Gwaelodygarth, it was onwards to the trig point.



The circular route was completed when you leave the mountain to return through Pentyrch and back to the Lewis Arms.



The movie staring Hugh Grant, 'the Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain', is based on a story about the village of Taff's Well and the neighbouring Garth Hill.

Set in 1917 (with World War I as a backdrop), the film is based on two English cartographers. They arrive to measure the local "mountain" – only to cause outrage when they conclude that it is only a hill because it is slightly short of the required 1000 feet in height. The villagers, aided and abetted by the wily Morgan the Goat and the Reverend Mr Jones (who after initially opposing the scheme, grasps its symbolism in restoring the community's war-damaged self-esteem), conspire to delay the cartographers' departure while they build an earth cairn on top of the hill to make it high enough to be considered a mountain.