Wales

The Mumbles
I arrived at my house sit at the Mumbles in Swansea and there were two tabby sibling cats and an old golden retriever called Woody to look after, all very agreeable animals although the owner was rather worried about Woody when I arrived as he had gone off his food, he was fine 24 hours later but did look a little sorry  for himself initially. First I went to explore the Mumbles which is a nice village on the peninsula of Swansea bay with some fishing jetties at one end and a pleasant walk around the headland to a sandy bay with a row of beach huts, I made this into a circular walk back to the high street again where I saw a nice shop selling replica 50's dresses and shoes, I went to buy something but the payment portal machine was just read 'communication error', which indicated it perhaps wasn't plugged into to whatever it needed to communicate. The lady in the shop was getting in a slight flap about it.
    "Oh I don't know what to do, I was on the phone about the internet yesterday and perhaps I unplugged something because I remember them asking me to unplug some things, I'll have to phone my son and it's Saturday tomorrow!" She said.
    "Does your son know much about these machines? '' I inquired.
    "Not really but I'll have to phone him and he won't be back from work till 5".
    I suggested the machine is probably unplugged from telephone line and traced the telephone cable from the machine to nowhere, it was unplugged. She tried to plug it back in under the till cabinet but couldn't reach so asked me to help so I plugged it in and we tried the machine again. This time is did dial which was progress but after second dialing it gave up, which was most certainly fixable by the number one way to fix things you don't quite understand - turn it off and on again. I suggested this would probably fix it as it most likely needed to reset, see it now had all its cables in which case it would probably work. At this point she thought I was an expert on these machines. We turned it off and on again and hey presto it worked.  My work here done I went off to buy some fish, thankfully I still had about 5 avocados.

    That evening I learned in a program by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall that seeming recyclable takeaway cups are not recycled because even though they contain elements that can be recycled, by the way they are put together with the plastic lining they actually cannot be recycled currently, so really are not recyclable at all. We've all just have a big old load of wool pulled over our eyes by Costa lot and Starbucks and the like.  Shame.

Woody

Walk around the headland from the Mumbles

Brecon Beacons

The next day after animals duties I headed to Aberdulais Tin works and waterfall on my way to the Brecon Beacons. There's a waterfall at Aberdulais which was used to turn a big waterwheel which powered the machinery of the tin plating works which were built on flat land next to the waterfall. Essentially they were making tin sheeting for use in food packaging. They started with iron bars which were squashed flat and then chopped into foot square pieces, then heated and squashed and folded and flattened a number of times more to achieve a thin sheet. These sheets were thin dipped in molten tin, heated again and cooled and polished . The finished sheets were then ready to made into biscuit tins and so on.
    It wasn't much further to the Brecon Beacons, the road passed over a nice sheep covered moor, it was obvious when I'd reached the tourist spot to go up one of the popular hills, it was clearly too popular so I carried on to a car park with half a dozen cars in and walked up an opposing hill instead which looked much more interesting which looked back to Pen Y Fan where everyone else was snailing up. From the top of my hill with only a few other people on it I could see people at the top of Pen Y Fan, I'm sure it's lovely walk, but there was people in it. The other benefit was I could enjoy a nice alfresco pee without anyone seeing me whilst at the same time being on the top of a hill, you couldn't have done that today in privacy at the top of Pen Y Fan.

Looking towards the popular walk of Pen Y Fan

Map of the walk I did instead that was nice and quiet

Aberdulais Tin Plating works

On the way back are a number of waterfalls not far from Aberdulais, I couldn't find the one I wanted to go to but there were plenty in the area so I had a nice walk to a falls and then to the top of the falls and down a sort of Winnie the Pooh-esk woodland stream, until it got too boggy to go much further and so I returned to Bluey and back to the Mumbles we went. I took Woody out for a walk, he did 3 poops, you probably don't need to know but there it is. You can write that down if you like but I doubt it's of much use.

Winnie-The-Pooh like place

Nearby waterfall